Thread: Poll: Americans Back Comprehensive Immigration Plan

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Poll: Americans Back Comprehensive Immigration Plan
April 13, 2006
By RONALD BROWNSTEIN, Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON -- Most Americans say the United States should confront the challenge of illegal immigration by both toughening border enforcement and creating a new guest-worker program, instead of by only cracking down on enforcement, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found.

By a 2-1 margin, those surveyed said they would prefer a comprehensive approach, such as the one a bipartisan group of senators has proposed, to an enforcement-only strategy, which the House of Representatives approved last December. Support for a comprehensive approach was about the same among Democrats, independents and Republicans, the poll found.

"Do you remember 100 years ago, when we were saying `give us your tired, give us your poor?'" said David Wells, a Republican who works as a golf course groundskeeper in Plant City, Fla. "How come that doesn't still stand? I don't think it is right to send all the people back who have been here 15 or 20 years, who have families here, who have been good, who haven't been in jail and have been productive."

Still, Americans showed markedly less enthusiasm for allowing guest workers to continue to flow into the United States than they did for proposals to permit the estimated 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants already in the United States to remain.

Even some who rejected efforts to remove illegal immigrants already here made clear in interviews that their opposition was more practical than philosophical.

"I don't think you should be in the country illegally, and I think the people who are here are taking away opportunities from Americans," said Bill Erner, a Democrat who is a factory worker in Dubuque, Iowa. "But the ones that are already here, it would be almost impossible to find them all and send them back to Mexico or wherever they came from."

The Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll contacted 1,357 adults nationwide, including 1,234 registered voters, by telephone from April 8 through 11. The survey has a margin of sampling error for both groups of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The poll had ominous findings for the Republican House and Senate majorities as the 2006 midterm elections approach.

Although President Bush's job approval rating rebounded slightly from his 38 percent showing last month, the new poll found Democrats opening double-digit leads on key measures of voters' early preferences for the November balloting.

Democrats now lead Republicans 50 percent to 35 percent among registered voters asked which party they intended to support in their congressional districts this fall. When registered voters were asked which party they hoped would control the House and Senate after the midterm election, 51 percent picked the Democrats and 38 percent the GOP.

On both questions, independent voters preferred Democrats by ratios of about 3-1 or more.

Forecasting the effect of these broad national attitudes on the results in individual congressional contests is an imperfect science. Republicans could be helped this fall because relatively few House districts are closely balanced between the parties, and many of the key Senate races are occurring in states that lean toward the GOP.

But the 14-percentage-point lead for Democrats in the "generic" ballot test could represent an unusually formidable threat to those defenses.

In these early soundings for 2006, Republicans face the potential re-emergence of a gender gap that Bush narrowed in his 2004 re-election. While men split evenly when asked which party they intended to support in November, women preferred Democrats, 57 percent to 31 percent, the survey found.

I certainly don't agree with that. The illegals that are here should leave. The border should be closed. NO GUESTWORKER PROGRAM is NEEDED.

MJ

"I don't think you should be in the country illegally, and I think the people who are here are taking away opportunities from Americans," said Bill Erner, a Democrat who is a factory worker in Dubuque, Iowa. "But the ones that are already here, it would be almost impossible to find them all and send them back to Mexico or wherever they came from."

The problem is that some people, like Mr. Erner, have bought into the arguement made by pro-amnesty forces, that "you can't deport 12 million people overnight". Of course that's a totally false concept, that the pro-amnesty people know. Through strict enforcemnet of our labor laws and better border security, we would GRADUALLY decrease the amount of illegal aliens which would have no choice but to return to their home countries, once they realize they have no job and no welfare safety net. After all, the illegals claim they are just here for a better life. With no job and no benefits, they won't stay here long.