A poll released Tuesday finds 22 percent of likely voters want immigration reduced to zero, while 32 percent want to see it halved to 500,000 per year. Only 11 percent want to see one million or more foreigners arrive in the U.S. every year.
Broken down by party, 68 percent of Republicans, along with 45 percent of Democrats, want immigration reduced to zero or halved to 500,000 annually.
Allowing illegal aliens to stay in the U.S. is strongly frowned upon: 58 percent said that illegal aliens should not be permitted to stay in the country, even if they do not commit a “serious crime.” Thirty-one percent said they should be allowed to stay.
A majority, 59 percent, said that the first thing that should be done about illegal immigration is requiring all U.S. employers to verify the legality of their workers.
Asked if they supported encouraging illegal aliens to return home by penalizing employers who hire them, cutting them off from welfare benefits, and having federal agents cooperating with local law enforcement to get them off the streets, 56 percent said they supported such policies. Thirty percent said they did not, while 14 percent were not sure.
Notably, the poll did not present respondents with the false choice of either mass deportations or amnesty for illegal aliens.
Only 12 percent believe that the U.S. government has done “too much” to enforce immigration law, while 54 percent say it has not done enough.
Amnesty and ongoing mass immigration is particularly unpopular amongst Republicans: 76 percent say the government does too little to enforce immigration law; 76 percent want U.S. employers to verify the legal status of their workers; 79 percent disagree that illegal aliens should be allowed to stay in the U.S. if they do not commit a “serious crime.”
Hispanics are just as likely as other Americans to be affected by historically extreme immigration levels and in large numbers support enforcement and reducing overall immigration:
One interesting finding is that a large share of Hispanics support enforcing immigration laws. Of likely Hispanic voters, 51 percent responded that efforts to enforce the law have been “too little,” compared to 38 percent who indicated that it was “too much” or “just right.”
Among Hispanics, 49 percent indicated that they would support a policy of causing illegal immigrants to return home by enforcing the law, compared to 36 percent who opposed such a strategy.
However, Hispanics were almost evenly split on whether we should require employers to verify legal status first (48 percent) or first give illegal immigrants work permits and a path to citizenship first (50 percent).
On legal immigrants, 52 percent of Hispanic voters indicated that they wanted to allow 500,000 or fewer legal immigrants in to the country each year, about half the current level. Just 9 percent wanted to allow in one million legal immigrants a year, which is the current level; and just 13 percent wanted it increased above the current level of one million a year. Like other voters, about one-quarter of Hispanics said they were unsure about this question.
As Breitbart News has reported, 75 percent believe Americans should get U.S. jobs, compared to three percent who think more workers should be imported to fill those positions: “There are roughly 94 million Americans operating outside the labor market today. Yet every year the U.S. admits one million plus foreign nationals on green cards, one million guest workers, dependents, and refugees, and half a million foreign students.”
Pulse Opinion Research for the Center for Immigration Studies questioned 1,000 likely voters from November 1 to November 3.