Poll: Majority of Americans back Arizona immigration law

This story is taken from Sacbee

Published Thursday, May. 13, 2010

WASHINGTON – A strong majority of Americans support Arizona's controversial new immigration law and would back similar laws in their own states, a new McClatchy-Ipsos poll found.

Sixty-one percent of Americans – and 64 percent of registered voters – said they favored the law in a survey of 1,016 adults conducted May 6-9.

Strikingly, nearly half of Democrats like the law, under which local law enforcement officers are tasked with verifying people's immigration status if they suspect them of being in the country illegally. While the Democratic Party generally is regarded as more sympathetic to illegal immigrants' plights, 46 percent of Democrats said they favored the law for Arizona and 49 percent said they would favor its passage in their own states.

More than eight in 10 Republicans and 54 percent of independents favor the law.

In addition, about 69 percent of Americans said they wouldn't mind if police officers stopped them to ask for proof of their citizenship or their legal right to be in the country; about 29 percent would mind, considering it a violation of their rights; and about 3 percent were unsure.

A separate Pew Research Center poll on the Arizona law released Wednesday found similar sentiments.

In the McClatchy-Ipsos poll, almost two-thirds of Americans said illegal immigration is a real problem that hurts the country; they were evenly split as to whether the jobs illegal immigrants take are ones that Americans don't want.

The McClatchy-Ipsos poll had an error margin of plus or minus three percentage points.

These results speak to the political land mines that immigration policy presents for President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats. Obama has called the Arizona law misguided.

The Justice Department is considering a lawsuit to block it, concerned about the implications for civil rights and for police, who might be diverted from basic public-safety tasks or find it harder to talk to potential witnesses in criminal investigations.

The poll results also illustrate the uphill battle that immigrant-rights activists face in pushing Congress to pass legislation that would pair tougher border enforcement – which is universally popular – with a path to citizenship for immigrants who are here now illegally.

While many Democratic politicians, including Obama, favor such so-called comprehensive legislation, they lack the bipartisan support needed to make it law.

Heading into this year's congressional elections, they also face an electorate that is sensitive to losing jobs or diverting services to undocumented laborers, because of the economic crisis.