The Daily Background

The Pew Research Center has released a detailed poll on American public opinion towards the issue of immigration. The results? Entirely mixed. There’s no consensus on most of the questions asked. However it was heartening to see that there was a consus on some of the more obvious questions posed.

For instance, take the notion that illegal immigrants are somehow stealing jobs from hard working Americans, because they are willing to work for lower pay. This argument makes no sense and 65% of Americans know it. Among the other interesting trend lines is that in both Republicans and Democrats, those who are more educated (i.e. college graduates) do not see immigrants (legal and illegal) as a burden on the country, whereas those who are less educated do. This is a stark division; by about 20 percentage points among Republicans and 30 points among Democrats. Depressing however how many people think that legal immigrants are a burden on America (more Republicans believe this than Democrats; who are barely over 50% however).

You can catch the full poll results here.

Filed under: Immigration, Polls, Z-TDB Blog