… After nearly a year of breathless reports about how Latinos were going to trip over themselves to get to the polls and vote against Mitt Romney’s hard-line immigration stance — remember Time magazine’s Spanish-language cover “Yo Decido”? — the reality is less dramatic. … According to the Census Bureau, the [...] Read more »
One-Third of the Public Doesn’t Care about Immigration Reform
A new iMediaEthics poll suggests Americans are more laid back about immigration reform than what most polls show, with about a third of the public unengaged on the issue. The rest appear to be about evenly divided on whether to allow immigrants living illegally in the U.S. to remain or [...] Read more »
Love Thy Stranger as Thyself
… Some of the most enthusiastic endorsements of the new immigration bill have come from traditional evangelicals, who insist that reform “respects the God-given dignity of every person.” … Evangelicals’ growing support for immigration reform suggests an important shift in how conservative Protestants — who policed the boundaries of our [...] Read more »
Immigration Reform: The Foreign-Born Factor
On its face, the Senate’s immigration reform effort seems a bipartisan affair. Four Democratic and four Republican co-sponsors crafted a bill that would fundamentally change immigration policy and offer illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship. But the fault lines around the bill are numerous, particularly where the Republican Party is concerned. [...] Read more »
Most Say Immigration Policy Needs Big Changes
Americans overwhelmingly say the nation’s immigration policy is in need of sweeping changes. Overall, 75% say immigration policy needs at least major changes, with 35% saying it needs to be “completely rebuilt”—among the highest of seven policy areas tested. Yet the broad public agreement that immigration policy should be revamped [...] Read more »
Americans Give Guns, Immigration Reform Low Priority
Americans put reforming immigration and reducing gun violence — the focus of much of the attention on Capitol Hill in recent weeks — at the bottom of a list of 12 priorities for Congress and the president to address. Americans instead say leaders in Washington should give highest priority to [...] Read more »
Many Americans Express Bias against Mexican Immigrants
… This nationwide Chicago Council survey, released on May 6, 2013, reveals support for some variation of immigration reform, similar to other recent polls. But there is still a lot of grass-roots work to be done to break down stereotypes. Half of Americans overstate unauthorized immigration levels into the United [...] Read more »
Does immigration hurt support for the welfare state?
Here in the United States, opponents of immigration reform frequently talk about the dangers of rewarding people who came without authorization or the prospect that immigrants might take jobs from native-born Americans. But there is another concern about immigration that they don’t typically raise, one that you are more likely [...] Read more »
Immigration Reform: GOP’s big chance to deliver on Latino outreach
Recent elections demonstrate that immigration is a mobilizing issue for Latino voters. We can be sure that Congressional action, or inaction, on the current comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) bill will factor in to Latino voting decisions in 2014 and beyond. Our recent polling finds a majority of Latino voters, 58%, [...] Read more »
Americans’ Unity on Big Issues Doesn’t Bridge Partisan Gap
While the public overwhelmingly supports background checks for gun buyers and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, Americans largely retreat into their partisan camps when asked whether President Obama or Congressional Republicans will make the right decisions on those and other domestic issues facing the nation, according to the [...] Read more »