Thread: Finally! An Accurate Poll

A new Zogby poll of likely voters, using neutral language, finds that Americans prefer the House of Representatives’ enforcement-only bill by 2-1 over Senate proposals to legalize illegal immigrants and greatly increase legal immigration. The poll was conducted for the Center for Immigration Studies.

Click here for detailed analysis of the poll conducted April 17-24, 2006.

On immigration generally, Americans want less, not more, immigration. Only twenty-six percent said immigrants were assimilating fine and that immigration should continue at current levels, compared to sixty-seven percent who said immigration should be reduced so we can assimilate those already here.

While the Senate is considering various bills that would increase legal immigration from 1 million to 2 million a year, two percent of Americans believe current immigration is too low. This was true for virtually every grouping in the survey by ethnicity, income, age, religion, region, party, or ideology thought immigration was too low.

When offered by itself, there is strong support for the House bill: sixty-nine percent said it was a good or very good idea when told it tries to make illegals go home by fortifying the border, forcing employer verification, and encouraging greater cooperation with local law enforcement while not increasing legal immigration; twenty-seven percent said it was a bad or very bad idea.

Support for the House approach was widespread, with eighty-one percent of Republicans, seventy-two percent of independents, fifty-seven percent of Democrats, and fifty-three percent of Hispanics saying it was good or very good idea.

When offered by itself, there is also some support for the Senate approach, thought not as much as for the House bill: forty-two percent said the Senate approach was a good or very good idea when told it would allow illegal immigrants to apply for legal status provided they met certain criteria, and it would significantly increase legal immigration and increase enforcement of immigration laws; fifty percent said it was a bad or very bad idea.

There were few groups in which a majority supported the Senate plan, even when presented by itself, exceptions included Hispanics sixty-two percent of whom said it was a good or very good idea and the most liberal voters (progressives) fifty-four percent of whom approved of it.

When given three choices (House approach, Senate approach, or mass deportation), the public tends to reject both the Senate plan and a policy of mass deportations in favor of the House bill; twenty-eight percent want the Senate plan, twelve percent want mass deportations; while fifty-six percent want the House approach.

But when given a choice between just the House and Senate approaches, without the choice of mass deportations, the public prefers the House approach sixty-four percent version to thirty percent.

One reason the public does not like legalizations is that they are skeptical of need for illegal-immigrant labor. An overwhelming majority of seventy-seven percent said there are plenty of Americans to fill low-wage jobs if employers pay more and treat workers better; just fifteen percent said there are not enough Americans for such jobs.

Another reason the public does not like Senate proposals to legalize illegals and double legal immigration is that seventy-three percent said they had little or no confidence in the ability of the government to screen these additional applicants to weed out terrorists and criminals.

Public also does not buy the argument we have tried and failed to enforce the law: seventy-one percent felt that past enforcement efforts have been "grossly inadequate," while only nineteen percent felt we had made a "real effort" to enforce our laws.

Prefer Lower Numbers

Fifty-seven percent of Americans think the May 1, 2006 illegal alien solidarity protests did more to hurt their cause than help.

http://www.numbersusa.com/interests/publicop.html

I believe that it was early this morning or yesterday after dinner that I looked over the latest faxes from NumbersUSA. They mention this poll in one of the letters. I always doctor mine up to make sure my reps know that I know what they have and haven't done but that poll was there. Go to NumbersUSA and send out today's faxes.