Someone mentioned opinions of the general public concerning immigration issues, and after nine pages no one has posted any stats thereof. Yesterday NPR featured a story on the Pew Reserch Center's report on US public opinions concerning immigration. The bottom line is that there is no consesus on the issue, and there is a lot of ambivalece concerning compasion and law enforcement.
Illegal Immigration Divides Americans, Poll Says
All Things Considered, March 30, 2006 ยท Americans are split three ways over illegal immigration, with about one-third saying undocumented immigrants should be allowed to stay in the United States permanently and about one-third saying such immigrants should be granted only temporary worker status, according to a new poll. Another 27 percent say illegal immigrants should be required to return to their native countries.
"So the public is really very divided on this issue," says Andrew Kohut, director of the the Pew Research Center, which conducted the survey. "The ambivalence is remarkable."
A 70 percent majority of those polled said illegal immigrants should be denied local social services, but 71 percent favored allowing the children of illegal immigrants to attend school. "It's not all one way with respect to the problem of immigration, and certainly with respect to immigrants themselves," Kohut tells Melissa Block.
About half of Americans (49 percent) say increasing the penalties for employers who hire illegal immigrants would be most effective in stemming the flow of illegal immigration from Mexico. One-third prefer boosting the number of border patrol agents, and 9 percent say more fences should be built along the Mexican border.
From the Pew Reserch Center's website itself:
This is the introduction to their report,
America's Immigration Quandary No Consensus on Immigration Problem or Proposed Fixes
The introduction discusses a facinating exploration on the basis of the ambivalence in opinion:
The Bases of Ambivalence
The survey finds a number of opinions about immigrants that may well contribute to ambivalent attitudes toward immigration, especially in areas where immigrants are most numerous. First, attitudes toward both Latin American and Asian immigrants are more positive now than in the 1990s, even as concern over the problems associated with immigration has increased. Both groups are overwhelmingly seen as very hard working and having strong family values. Impressions of Latin American immigrants, in particular, have grown much more positive, with 80% describing them as very hard working compared with 63% nearly a decade ago.
Moreover, native-born Americans who live in areas with the highest concentration of immigrants hold more positive opinions of them. Analysis of the survey indicates that their more favorable views do not merely reflect their demographics or political composition, but suggests that exposure to and experience with immigrants results in a better impression of them. However, Americans living in areas with more immigrants rank immigration as a bigger community problem.
And while there is concern about the impact of immigration on the availability of jobs, nearly two-thirds (65%) say that immigrants coming to the country mostly take jobs that Americans do not want, rather than take jobs away from Americans. In this regard, the recent influx of immigrants into such metropolitan areas as Phoenix, Las Vegas and Raleigh-Durham has not undermined the generally positive perceptions residents have of the local job market.
Yet at the same time, a sizable minority (16%) says they or a family member have lost a job to an immigrant worker. And the perception of being passed over - more common among those with less education and lower incomes - is strongly associated with negative views of immigrants and high levels of support for strong measures to deal with the problem. For example, 75% of those who say they or a family member has lost a job to an immigrant view them as a burden compared with 47% of those who do not think this has happened.
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