Poll: Majority of Americans sympathetic to illegal immigrants

[AlphaCentauri]

Source: USA Today

Americans worry that illegal immigrants are putting a strain on schools, hospitals and the depressed job market but still are sympathetic to their plight.
Eight in 10 Americans, 84%, are very or somewhat concerned that illegal immigrants are burdening government services, and 77% worry that they are driving down wages, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds.

Yet 77% are concerned that stricter immigration laws would mean illegal immigrants and their families who have lived productively in the United States for years would be forced to leave

"People seem to be more concerned about that than the hypothetical things like civil rights," Gallup pollster Jeffrey Jones said.

The seemingly contradictory sentiments reflect the difficulty in grappling with the immigration issue, said Tomas Jimenez, a fellow at the New America Foundation think tank and a sociology professor at Stanford University.



Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-05-03-immigration-poll_N.htm

[BlooInBloo]

1. Demographic breakdown?

[gratuitous]

2. Uh oh

Get me re-write, stat! We're not supposed to talk about amnesty or any of that other socialistic stuff. And for sure we're not supposed to talk about streamlining the naturalization system so that applicants for citizenship can be processed before their temporary visas expire. I mean, what if we naturalized 1,000 immigrants, and three or four of them then committed a crime? Think of the children!

[Unvanguard]

3. That's a surprisingly good poll result. Maybe we'll get comprehensive reform after all. n/t

[dipsydoodle]

5. And why shouldn't you

The government are afterall your servants and you are their masters. They may not look upon quite that way but it happens to be true.

[EFerrari]

6. I wonder if it was ever true. n/t

[hedgehog]

4. I suspect very few people would want to send any particular

undocumented immigrant home, but that many worry about the effect of uncontrolled immigration. We like individuals, it's people that worry us. IMHO, the real problem is that talking about illegal immigration is a smoke screen for real problems. For example, why can't we pay agricultural workers a decent wage and ensure decent working conditions? What happens should the day come when no young Mexicans, Jamaicans, Salvadoreans, etc want to work on our farms, in our dairies and packing houses?

Again, as long as we are focused on "illegals", we don't look at a Marshall Plan for Mexico or ask why our economy needs a base of low wage workers.

[SocialistLez]

7. Exactly

SOOO many issues (illegal immigration, same-sex marriage, abortion, etc) are SMOKE SCREENS!

[Peace Patriot]

8. A majority of Americans oppose unjust war...

A majority of Americans oppose unjust war...(nearly 60% of Americans opposed the invasion of Iraq, Feb. '03, all polls).

A majority of Americans oppose torture "under any circumstances" (63%, NYT poll, May 2004).

A majority of Americans have ALWAYS supported STRONG environmental protection (many polls over many years--big numbers, 80% and more).

What good does it do us?

And why and how is our will overruled?

Well, I'll tell you one way that it was overruled in 2004, and that is by means of 'TRADE SECRET,' corporate-run, electronic vote 'counting' with virtually no audit/recount controls, which was fast-tracked all over the country during the 2002 to 2004 period, via a $3.9 billion electronic voting boondoggle from the Anthrax Congress. The situation is actually worse now. New York, the last hold-out, just caved to 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting. And ES&S just bought out Diebold, to gain an 80% monopoly of the U.S. vote counting 'market.' ES&S is worse than Diebold as to far rightwing connections.

How do we have unjust war, with the U.S. slaughtering a million people to steal their oil, torture dungeons all over the world and gigantic oil spills and other vast pollution of air, water, soil and food, is by STOLEN ELECTIONS. With the power of 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting, and of course the corpo-fascist 'news' monopolies aiding and abetting, our corporate rulers can play out various scenarios such as the one playing out now--a false narrative of Democratic failure and impending loss of Congress due to financial and foreign policy horrors inflicted upon us by the Bush Junta, and can then make their scenario come true. It wasn't enough that they packed the Congress with Pukes and 'Blue Dogs," shaved Obama's mandate for change, and fill the airwaves with a nutball fascist minority called 'tea baggers.' They want Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld back in power, to loot and plunder us some more, and destroy our democracy some more, and smash our great progressive American majority one more time. The combined power of 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting and controlled media make this not just easy, they make it VERY easy. And we will be without recourse when and if it happens.

We can't do much about the corpo-fascist media, but it is still possible to restore transparent vote counting--the bottom line of democracy--because the power over voting systems still resides at the state/local level., where ordinary people still have some potential influence. It will take a massive and widespread citizen movement--a REAL "Boston Tea Party"--but it is doable. And it is something we must do--or our democracy is over.

I did not mention draconian, unconstitutional, fascist laws against brown-skinned people because that is just one "divide and conquer" tactic of those who rule over us. They can pass referendums denying equal rights to gays in a progressive state like California, and put the matter on the ballot there and elsewhere to pit us against each other. They can do the same to women's rights, and have done it. They can "fix" any office in the U.S., from state legislators to governors to Congress and the presidency. They set the "agenda." It has nothing to do with what most Americans want. And we must--we MUST--find the way to deny them this power over the very counting of our votes.

[Svafa]

9. meh...just sounds like people bitching and moaning about

how horrible illegal immigrants are, but afraid that if the illegal immigrants are forced to leave, they'll have to actually pay someone a living wage to cut their lawns for them. Notice the wording: 77% are concerned that stricter laws would mean that illegal immigrants and their families who have lived PRODUCTIVELY in the United States...would be forced to leave." Wonder what the numbers would be like if that one little word was left out. As long as you are productive and provide cheap labor, we want you around. If not, screw you and go back where you came from: That's what I see when I read this poll. Maybe I'm just being cynical but it seems that Americans are as racist and bigoted as ever, I don't see this poll showing anything different.