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Thanks KickEmOut

W

The poll that concerns me the most is the one that actually says the MAJORITY of Americans believe that those illegals who have been in this country for several years DO DESERVE TO BE PUT ON A PATH TO CITIZENSHIP. I have seen several polls that concur on this issue and it just really SHOCKS me because it is so contrary to the other poll questions. I will have to see if I can find some of those polls but, if I remember correctly, it was over 60% of Americans that agreed with that "path to citizenship" bull.

I found this one at www.usatoday.com:

Public divided over how to treat illegals
Poll: Let them stay, tighten borders
By Susan Page and Kathy Kiely
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — It's easy to understand why Congress is having so much trouble settling on an approach to immigration: Americans endorse the most controversial proposals of both those who want to penalize illegal immigrants and those who want to let them stay.

A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday found a majority of those surveyed want to make it a crime for foreigners to immigrate illegally to the USA and for Americans to help those illegal immigrants once they arrive.

Still, nearly two-thirds also say the government should allow illegal immigrants to remain and become U.S. citizens if they meet certain requirements over time.

“The same problems that bedevil Congress in trying to figure out how to handle immigration are bedeviling the American psyche and the American public in trying to deal with it,” says Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll. “There's no easy solution, as Congress has discovered, and I think the public holds these same almost-contradictory attitudes about immigration.”

That means the debate being waged in the halls of Congress and at rallies across the country Monday could shape public opinion and, with it, public policy.

LeRoy Gomez, 58, a part-time union representative from Fort Collins, Colo., who was among those surveyed, says the rallies have been inspiring for many Latinos — including those, like himself, whose families have been in the USA for generations. “They want to be part of the American dream,” he says of the marchers.

Linda Martin, 56, a private investigator from Visalia, Calif., says the rallies she watched on TV only reinforced her view that tough measures need to be taken to deal with illegal immigrants.

“If they've come here illegally, then they all ought to be sent back,” she says. Of the children shown marching, she says, “A lot of them are just doing it to get out of school.”

There is nearly universal agreement on one point: The system needs fixing.

Eight in 10 say illegal immigration to the USA is “out of control.” More than nine in 10 say it's important for the government to take steps this year to control the borders and deal with those illegal immigrants who already are here. The feelings about border security are particularly intense.

Yet most Americans are pessimistic about whether that effort could ever succeed.

Six in 10 say that no matter what the government does, a “sizable number” of illegal immigrants will be able to get into the country.

William Gretler, 77, of Shell Lake, Wis., worries about undocumented workers taking jobs from Americans and creating burdens for taxpayers. “The local government has to pick up their medical care, the school system has to pick up their schooling and health care systems have to pick up the price for helping keep them alive,” the retired steelworker says.

On the other hand, he doesn't like the idea of forcing them to return to their home countries. “I can't see splitting up families,” Gretler says, and he thinks it's “crazy” to penalize those who try to help them. The bill passed by the House of Representatives in December would make it a crime to assist illegal immigrants.

Joshua Akers, 22, a grocery-store stocker in Columbia, S.C., feels little of Gretler's ambivalence toward illegal immigrants. “I think they should be deported if they can't meet certain guidelines,” he says, including having a family member who lives in the USA and already is a citizen. “They know it's wrong to come across the border and they do it anyway, which is not right.”

There are close divisions over one of the most drastic proposals: building a wall. The House bill includes plans for a 700-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexican border where illegal crossings are most common.

By 48%-49%, Americans split over whether that would be effective in curbing the number of people who come here illegally.

Layne Sanders, 42, of Oakland, Calif., supports setting a cutoff date to prevent a new wave of illegal immigrants from taking advantage of any program enacted to make current ones legal. But erecting a wall is “going a little far,” he says. “It's just a little too East/West Germany for my taste.”

Most useful, according to those polled, would be instituting tough penalties for businesses that employ illegal immigrants; 84% call that an effective step. A similar number say that significantly increasing the number of law-enforcement officers patrolling the border would help.

By more than 2-1, they say taking steps to raise the standard of living in the immigrants' home countries would be effective, too.

“Different polls have reached different conclusions, but a common thread has been that Americans are concerned about the lack of enforcement along our borders, and rightly so,” says Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. He opposes a bipartisan Senate plan — crafted last week but then ensnared in procedural roadblocks — that would allow illegal immigrants in the USA for more than five years to stay here and move toward citizenship.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., says Americans “know that our immigration system is broken and are demanding that Congress take action.” He helped draft the Senate plan. “The only way to break the cycle of illegality is to offer a path for earned legalization.”

Views on immigration differ depending on where Americans live, how much education they have — and whether their family includes a recent immigrant.

In Sara Brodsky Sieman's family, her grandparents emigrated from Lithuania and Russia, her father from Ukraine. “People come here, as they did in all the generations before us, to help the people back home, and I think that's a very important thing to remember,” says Sieman, 53, a ballroom-dance instructor from Newton, Mass. “I'd like to bring people into the civic and economic life of our country, and make for them what I hope would be a more productive life and a less scary life.”

When it comes to whether illegal immigrants should be able to stay in the USA and become citizens:

• Those who are immigrants or have at least one parent who is an immigrant are more likely to support the idea; 71% do so, compared with 62% among those whose parents were native-born.

•Among Democrats, 68% support citizenship for illegal immigrants, as do 65% of independents. Among Republicans, a 55% majority endorse the idea.

•By region, those in the West are most favorable, at 67% support. Those in the Midwest are least supportive, at 57%.

•Women are more supportive than men, 67% vs. 58%.

Some conservatives questioned those findings. “If you mention ‘amnesty,' you tend to get much different numbers,” says Will Adams, a spokesman for Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., who is leading the fight against legalization.

Lawmakers such as Kennedy who favor allowing illegal immigrants to stay deny their proposal is “amnesty” because it includes fines and other requirements.

Just more than one-third of those surveyed say they know a recent immigrant who they are sure is here illegally, or think may be.

Those relationships have tempered the views of James Stoddard, 52, of Santa Maria, Calif. On one hand, the salesman questions whether the children of illegal immigrants born in the USA should be granted citizenship, as they are now. On the other, he says the undocumented workers he knows personally are “good people” and “hard-working.”

He adds, “Some of the ones I know I would love to have stay.”

Carolyn Long, 62, a retired insurance manager from Alpharetta, Ga., says she doesn't know the legal standing of workers she sees in her neighborhood. “We have a lot of Mexicans that work … here for the landscaping businesses, and I have no idea if they're illegal or not,” she says.

In any case, her view is unyielding: “Any illegal immigrants need to be sent back to wherever they're from, and then they need to come through whatever the correct way is.”

Fewer than one in five Americans think all illegal immigrants — a group estimated at as many as 12 million, equal to the population of Ohio — should be deported. A similar number say they should be allowed to stay and work for a limited amount of time.

Instead, a significant majority, 63%, say there should be a way for illegal immigrants to stay here and become citizens if they meet certain requirements.

More than eight in 10 say those requirements should include:

•Having a job.

•Learning to speak English.

•Passing a health screening.

•Paying federal taxes due on past income.

Two-thirds say illegal immigrants should be required to have lived in the United States for at least five years and pay a fine for coming to the USA illegally.

The politics of immigration is tricky, particularly in a year when control of the House and Senate could be at stake in November.

Both Democrats and Republicans have powerful constituencies that favor the Senate deal, which provides for a program to expand the number of foreign temporary, or guest, workers and legal status for most illegal immigrants. They include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and businesses that rely on immigrant labor, some unions that would like to organize those workers and civil-rights groups. President Bush has called for bringing illegal immigrants “out of the shadows.”

Both parties also have powerful constituencies that oppose the Senate proposal, however. Cornyn has been inundated with calls and mail from constituents who oppose what they see as “amnesty” for lawbreakers, the senator's spokesman, Don Stewart, says. Some African-Americans worry that illegal immigrants will hold down wages or take jobs from American-born workers.

And neither party wants the other to get credit for passing a bill that has ignited passions among one of the nation's fastest growing and most prized voting blocs, the nation's 9.3 million Hispanic voters.

On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., issued dueling news releases blaming the other for the failure to pass a bill before Congress left town on a two-week break for Easter and Passover.

Tancredo, nationally known as a spokesman against illegal immigration, is considering a dark-horse run for the White House in 2008 as a way to highlight his concerns.

But many of the leading GOP presidential hopefuls are on the other side of the issue. Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Sam Brownback of Kansas and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska were architects of the Senate plan. After initially withholding his support, Frist also embraced the proposal.

Bush favors “comprehensive” reform, including tougher enforcement and a guest-worker program. In the USA TODAY poll, just 29% say they approve of his handling of immigration; 62% disapprove.

That dismal rating reflects the public's “frustration” with the lack of progress on immigration reform, says Rep. Henry Bonilla, a Republican whose Texas district borders Mexico. “I think the public wants to see results,” he says.

I found this one at www.washingtontimes.com:

United Press International
Front Page > UPI Page

advertisement
Long-term illegals deserve citizenship
Apr. 25, 2006 at 4:06PM
Seventy-seven percent of U.S. residents favor allowing long-term illegal immigrants to apply for U.S. citizenship, concludes a CNN poll released Tuesday.
An overwhelming majority of the 1,012 people in the weekend telephone poll support citizenship rights for illegal immigrants in the United States five years or longer if they have a job and pay a fine and back taxes.
However, 54 percent oppose such rights for illegal immigrants in the United States for two to five years.
Sixty-four percent favor deporting illegal immigrants in the United States for less than two years, but 56 percent oppose making illegal immigration a felony.
With Congress back in session, President George Bush Monday renewed his push to create a guest-worker program.
Bush blamed "needless politics" for bogging down "important compromise" legislation pending in the U.S. Senate.
Even if passed, the measure would have to be reconciled with a controversial House-passed bill that includes neither a guest-worker program nor a legalization process.

I found this one at www.time.com:




Friday, Mar. 31, 2006
Poll Analysis: Large Majority Favors “Guest Workers”
Here’s the full report from TIME’s pollsters
By MARK SCHULMAN AND TARA REGAN

With the immigration debate raging in Congress and immigration supporters spilling out into the streets, the latest Time Poll finds a lopsided majority of the American public, 72%, favor a "guest worker" program in a head-to-head match-up over a House bill that would criminalize illegal immigration.

Only 1 in 4 (25%) support the more drastic House version that would make illegals felons, allowing no illegals into the country, with no guest worker provisions.

The latest Time Poll of 1,004 adults, conducted March 29-30, finds that even a large majority of border state residents, 78%, favor the guest worker approach over expelling illegals. Large majorities of Republicans (66%), Democrats (75%), and Independents (73%) favor the guest worker approach.

Please Tell Me Which Comes Closest To Your Views
% Favor Total (%) Republican (%) Democrat (%) Independent (%)
Allow Illegal Immigrants To Get Temporary Work Visas 72 66 75 73
Make Illegal Immigration a Crime And Not Allow Anyone Who Entered The Country Illegaly to Work or Stay In the U.S. 25 32 22 24


Favor Tougher Border Security Too
As a fractured Congress debates immigration reform, two-thirds (68%) say that illegal immigration is an extremely/very serious problem in the United States. A large majority believe the U.S. is not doing enough to secure its borders (82%).

While Americans overwhelmingly favor the guest worker option, they also want a crackdown at the border and stiff penalties for employers who hire illegals.

82% say that the United States is not doing enough to keep illegals from entering this country.
62% favor taking whatever steps are necessary at the borders, including the use of the military, to cut the flow of illegals into this country.
56% favor building a security fence along the U.S.-Mexican border.
71% support major penalties for employers who hire illegals. Contradictions and Limits to Illegals' Access to Services
The debate has Americans voicing sometimes contradictory opinions. A small majority (51%) still think the U.S. would be "better off" by deporting all illegal immigrants compared to a little less than two-in-five (38%) who think the U.S. would be "worse off."

Americans would also limit illegals' access to government services, such as driver's licenses (69% not allow), health care/food stamps (75% not allow), and attending public schools (51% not allow). Support Beyond Guest Workers Most Americans would allow illegal immigrants to gain citizenship under certain circumstances.


About 7-in-10 (72%) favor granting temporary visas to immigrants not currently in the United States to do seasonal or temporary work here and then return to their own countries;
About 3-in-4 (78%) favor allowing illegal immigrants in the U.S. citizenship if they learn English, have a job and pay taxes;
A majority (55%) think illegal immigrants are taking jobs that U.S. citizens do not want or cannot do.

Demonstrations Backfire?
About 2 in 3 (67%) are aware of this week's demonstrations by immigrants and immigrant rights activists in a number of cities. The demonstrations likely had little effect currying support for their pro-immigrant position. Among the people who were aware of the demonstrations, only 14% reported that the protests made them more supportive of rights for illegal immigrants, while almost three times as many, 40%, said that the demonstrations make them less supportive. Almost half (44%) said that the demonstrations had no effect on their stance.

Partisanship and Geography Differences
Partisan differences complicate the issue further. However, these are mainly differences in degree:

Republicans more than Democrats believe illegal immigration is a very serious problem (79% - 64%), as do white, born-again Christians (76%).
Republicans are more in favor than Democrats of providing and enforcing major penalties for employers convicted of hiring illegals (77% - 66%), stopping illegals at the border from entering the U.S. by whatever steps necessary (71% - 54%) and deporting all illegals back to their home countries (58% - 42%).
Do You Favor or Oppose the Following to Deal with Illegal Immigration?
% Favor Total (%) Republican (%) Democrat (%)
Allowing illegal immigrants to register as guest workers 79 79 77
Allowing illegal immigrants in the US, citizenship if they learn English, have a job and pay taxes 78 73 82
Granting temporary visas to immigrants not in the US so they can do seasonal/temporary work and return to home countries 72 72 71
Providing and enforcing penalties for employers convicted of hiring illegal immigrants 71 77 66
Stopping illegal immigrants from entering the US by taking whatever steps necessary to guard the border 62 71 54
Deporting all illegal immigrants 47 58 45


Other Political Fallout
As President Bush meets in Cancun on immigration and trade issues with the leaders of Mexico and Canada, Bush's overall approval rating sits at 37%. A majority disapprove of his handling of illegal immigration (56% disapprove - 25% approve). His disapproval score on immigration is down five points from January's 61% disapprove – 24% approve.

Almost equal numbers of Americans are more likely to vote for (29%) or vote against (28%) a candidate who favors criminalizing illegal immigration. More than 1 in 3 (37%) say it wouldn't have much effect on their vote. Republicans in Congress are more likely to feel the heat on this issue. Republicans (37%) are more likely than Democrats (24%) to support a candidate for Congress who favors making illegal immigration a crime.

Half of Hispanics (50%) – a hotly contested group courted by both parties -- would punish candidates who favored criminalization of illegals. Concerns about Illegal Immigration

The biggest concern for Americans regarding illegal immigration is the drain on taxpayers' dollars to provide services such as health care and education to them (61% "very concerned"). Concern is higher among Republicans (67%) and Southerners (65%). Other major concerns about illegal immigrants are that they:


increase the likelihood of terrorism in the U.S. (44% very concerned).
American workers can't compete with low wages (43%).
increase the amount of crime (40%).
take jobs away from Americans (35%).
overcrowd the country, with too many people in the U.S. now (33%).
weaken American way of life (29%).
How Concerned Are You About Each Item Concerning Illegal Immigrants?
% Very Concerned Total (%) Republican (%) Democrat (%) Independent (%)
Costs taxpayers too much money to provide them with services 61 67 57 61
They increase the likelihood of terrorism in the U.S. 44 52 40 44
American workers can't afford to work for the same low wages as illegal immigrants 43 43 43 42
They increase the amount of crime 40 46 38 39
They take jobs away from Americans 35 36 37 30
There are too many people in the U.S. 33 30 34 33
Weaken American way of life 29 33 25 28


Methodology This Time Magazine poll was conducted by telephone between March 29-30, 2006 among a national random sample of 1,004 adults, age 18 and older throughout America.

The margin of error for the entire sample is approximately +/- 3 percentage points. The margin of error is higher for subgroups. Surveys are subject to other error sources as well, including sampling coverage error, recording error, and respondent error.

The Poll's partisan breakdown is as follows:
32% Democrat
28% Republican
25% Independent


Schulman, Ronca, & Bucuvalas (SRBI) Public Affairs designed the survey and conducted all interviewing. The full Time questionnaire and trend data may be found at: www.srbi.com.

I am just beginning to believe that we ARE fighting a losing battle. These polls just SHOCKED me and I don't understand what's happened that has caused this turnaround. I refuse to admit defeat but there's no question that we have reason for concern.

EagleEye your posts confirm my fears. People don't seem to get it.
Providing any kind of legalization -- even with fines or whatever -- still rewards those who have broken the law. There will be no incentive for people to try to enter legally. I would sneak in if I were them. What the heck, they know our recent history shows that eventually they will receive amnesty. I've said now for quite some time...if I were here as a naturalized citizen and always played by the rules, and saw this amnesty BS happening (again), I'd file a class action lawsuit against the government. I wouldn't do it for money because it would be the taxpayers who would pay and not the politicians, but I would sue and exact some type of punitive damages from the individual politicians themselves. Maybe losing THEIR citizenship for failing to obey their oaths.

And too many people must believe that the new laws would actually be enforced. The old ones weren't so I don't know why they would expect any so-called reformed laws would be enforced. It's unfathomable.

It seems like events are happening faster and faster. Seems like they are really trying to stam roll it over us as fast as they can.

Has me wondering if the reason is they do not want to give us enough time to fully organize. Like they want everything in place and done before everyone wakes.

That's the question, though, isn't it? Will people awake? What would it take to get the people to wake up? Something like 9/11? God forbid!!

Oh, that's right (said tongue in cheek), we had illegal aliens (their Visas had expired) and that's precisely why we got 9/11. So evidently even 9/11 didn't wake people up. It's the dumming down of America.

Both of you are right. It just seems like there is NOTHING ELSE WE CAN DO. I still wonder if all of those protests have HELPED their cause rather than hurt it???