25% Have Favorable Opinion of Immigration Rights Protesters, 50% Unfavorable

Tuesday, May 04, 2010

Following weekend protests against the new Arizona law cracking down on illegal immigration, support for the Arizona policy remains unchanged.

However, a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 25% have a favorable view of those who marched and protested for immigrant rights in major cities. Fifty percent (50%) hold an unfavorable opinion and another 26% are not sure.

Fifty-nine percent (59%) of voters still favor legislation like Arizona's that authorizes local police to stop and verify the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being an illegal immigrant. Thirty-two percent (32%) oppose such a law. Those figures are virtually unchanged from a week ago.

The support remains even though 57% of voters are at least somewhat concerned that efforts to identify and deport illegal immigrants will end up violating the civil rights of some U.S. citizens. Forty percent (40%) do not share that concern.

Those figures include 27% who are Very Concerned about possible civil rights violations and 17% who are not at all concerned.

Fifty-seven percent (57%) also continue to support a welcoming immigration policy that only keeps out "national security threats, criminals and those who would come here to live off our welfare system."

Twenty-six percent (26%) do not agree with that goal for U.S. immigration policy. Seventeen percent (17%) more are not sure.

The responses to both these questions are also virtually unchanged since the May 1 protests.

The survey of 1,000 Likely U.S. Voters was conducted on May 2-3, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Eighty-two percent (82%) have followed recent about marches and rallies for immigrant rights at least somewhat closely.

Eighty percent (80%) of Republicans and 62%of voters not affiliated with either major party favor the law that gives local police greater authority to question immigration status. Fifty-five percent (55%) of Democrats are opposed to it.

Republicans and unaffiliated voters hold a more negative opinion of the protesters than Democrats.

Democrats and unaffiliated voters are more worried than Republicans about possible civil rights violations. But Republicans believe more strongly than Democrats and unaffiliated voters in a welcoming immigration policy.

As on many issues, there is a wide gap between the Political Class and Mainstream Americans. Seventy percent (70%) of Mainstream voters support legislation that authorizes local police to stop and verify the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally. Sixty-six percent (66%) of the Political Class oppose such a law.

This helps explain the difficulty Congress has in coming up with immigration reform legislation that passes muster with voters. Eighty-one percent (81%) of Mainstream voters continue to view controlling the border as the top priority of any such legislation, while 70% of the Political Class say legalizing the status of the millions of undocumented workers already in the country is most important.

Three-out-of-four voters believe that the federal government is not doing enough to secure the nation's borders. In fact, 56% believe that the policies of the federal government encourage illegal immigration.

Forty-nine percent (49%) of voters now believe relations between whites and Hispanics in America are getting worse, up 15 points from December. But it's important to note that voters who are angry about illegal immigration are overwhelmingly more angry at the government for failing to deal with it rather than angry at the immigrants themselves.

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