More than three-quarters of Americans have heard about the state of Arizona's new immigration law, and of these, 51% say they favor it and 39% oppose it.
The majority of Republicans favor it, a plurality of Independents favor it and only Democrats show a majority opposing it.
Another poll, by Angus Reid Public Opinion poll, using national adults as well, finds those in favor of Arizona's immigration law, higher in numbers than Gallup does.
Seventy-one percent of poll respondents said they'd support requiring their own police to determine people's U.S. status if there was "reasonable suspicion" the people were illegal immigrants, the poll found.
An equal percentage supported arresting those people if they couldn't prove they were legally in the United States.
Almost two-thirds, or 64 percent, said they believed immigration hurt the United States, with nearly six in 10, or 58 percent, saying illegal immigrants took jobs away from American workers, the poll found.
When asked about solving the status of illegal immigrants, 45 percent said undocumented workers should be required to leave their jobs and be deported, the poll found.
Democrats are already pushing amnesty in their new proposals, despite overwhelming opposition from across the country.
Seeking to woo Republicans, the 26-page framework, which has not yet been written into a formal bill, emphasizes first taking steps to limit illegal immigration before offering new rights for those here illegally. But the REPAIR (Real Enforcement with Practical Answers for Immigration Reform) proposal, as Democrats dubbed it, also would create a pathway to legal status for an estimated 10.8 million people who are already in the country illegally, an idea opposed by many conservatives.
Breitbart produces a flashback video of Barack Obama when he was for the rule of law, instead of against it.
One portion of the Democrats proposal would be ID cards, biometric ID cards, an idea many conservatives would actually get behind, but Democrats are running into opposition from their own party base as well as groups such as ACLU.
“The cardholder’s identity will be verified by matching the biometric identifier stored within the microprocessing chip on the card to the identifier provided by the cardholder that shall be read by the scanner used by the employer,” states the Democratic legislative proposal.From Talk Left (linked above)
The American Civil Liberties Union, a civil liberties defender often aligned with the Democratic Party, wasted no time in blasting the plan.
“Creating a biometric national ID will not only be astronomically expensive, it will usher government into the very center of our lives. Every worker in America will need a government permission slip in order to work. And all of this will come with a new federal bureaucracy — one that combines the worst elements of the DMV and the TSA,” said Christopher Calabrese, ACLU legislative counsel.
“America’s broken immigration system needs real, workable reform, but it cannot come at the expense of privacy and individual freedoms,” Calabrese added.
The ACLU said “if the biometric national ID card provision of the draft bill becomes law, every worker in America would have to be fingerprinted.”
8 years is no path to citizenship. The biometric cards will be used for all Americans after they gain traction with use for immigrants. We need to stop over-funding law enforcement and concentrate of funding domestic programs that will help everyone.
Just think.. how DARE a proposal have money to enforce the law, how freaking DARE them!!!!
Interestingly enough, while Democrats rant and Rave about Arizona's new immigration law which would require an ID be produced to prove being in the country legally, some admit producing ID (for the ID card) is a normal procedure.
“People understand that in this vulnerable world, we have to be able to present identification,” Durbin added. “We want it to be reliable, and I think that’s going to help us in this debate on immigration.”
Exactly what Arizona has been saying this whole time Mr. Durbin.
Reports are now coming out that show Barack Obama is encouraging Democrats to wait before dealing with the immigration issue. The toxic political atmosphere for Democrats going into November may just be the tipping point here.
Immigration reform has become the first of President Barack Obama's major priorities dropped from the agenda of an election-year Congress facing voter disillusionment. Sounding the death knell was Obama himself.
The president noted that lawmakers may lack the "appetite" to take on immigration while many of them are up for re-election and while another big legislative issue — climate change — is already on their plate.
"I don't want us to do something just for the sake of politics that doesn't solve the problem," Obama told reporters Wednesday night aboard Air Force One.
Immigration reform was an issue Obama promised Latino groups that he would take up in his first year in office. But several hard realities — a tanked economy, a crowded agenda, election-year politics and lack of political will — led to so much foot-dragging in Congress that, ultimately, Obama decided to set the issue aside.
With that move, the president calculated that an immigration bill would not prove as costly to his party two years from now, when he seeks re-election, than it would today, even though some immigration reformers warned that a delay could so discourage Democratic-leaning Latino voters that they would stay home from the polls in November.
I seriously doubt Obama will use his own election year to push this issue either, it could be devastating with the majority of Americans in favor of bills such as Arizona's which are the strictest in the country in enforcing the law regarding illegal immigration.
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