Gallup=- A clear majority of Americans (84%) favored a pathway to citizenship for immigrants living in the U.S. illegally the last time Gallup asked about the issue in 2016. Support for a pathway to citizenship was strong among Americans affiliated with both major political parties, with 76% of Republicans and 91% of Democrats saying they supported such a proposal.
Support for a wall along the border between the U.S. and Mexico is low among Americans. Slightly over a third (36%) of Americans said they favored the construction of a wall in a March 2017 Gallup poll.
When asked about immigration more broadly, not illegal immigration per se, Americans were split in 2017, with 38% saying immigration should remain at its current level and 35% favoring a decrease. Another 24% said they want immigration to the U.S. increased.
The percentage of Republicans endorsing a decrease in immigration fell to 48% in 2017, down from 60% the previous year.
Americans have a generally positive view of the effect that immigration has on the U.S economy. About half of Americans (49%) said immigrants have a positive impact on the country's economy in a June 2017 Gallup poll, the highest level since the question was first asked in 1993. Alternatively, 40% thought immigrants hurt the economy, by virtue of providing low-cost labor.
In the same poll, employed Americans were likelier to say immigration has had a positive than negative effect on their own job, as well as on the company they work for. However, the vast majority said it has had no effect on either facet of their work.
3 comments:
And there we see the effect of the relentless propaganda in favor of expanding the pool of desperate workers. The propagandists naturally don't frame it as increasing the number of people competing for each job, they frame it in humanitarian terms. But the net effect is a reduction in the ability of the citizen working class to get by.
6:39
You are laying the blame at the wrong door. There would not be so many people looking to immigrate if the US had chosen better and more humane foreign policies toward the rest of the world over the past 200+ years. How many immigrants would stay in their country of origin, if not for US meddling in foreign governments, and the social and economic havoc such meddling causes. Seen that way, immigrants are the chickens of bad foreign policy coming home to roost.
Immigrants are also vibrant populations that bring benefits such as diversity, new skills, new perspectives, and prosperity to the US, but you were focusing on the negatives, so I framed it that way for you.
That's the claim that's made, but if you look more closely it's a myth.
In Latin America, the land has been consumed for centuries by a few very wealthy families who have arrogated gigantic rancheros to themselves, leaving little for the peasantry. If the peasants go out into the jungle and clear some land, pretty soon there's enough cleared out that the nearest Don Psicópata can take it from them, rinse and repeat.
The US simply doesn't interfere in the "internal governance" of those countries, and that's sufficient because the peasants either don't organise at all or have no way even to defend themselves, never mind take the fight to the enemy, if they do organise.
The myth that we, here, have no right to complain because it's somehow our fault is very serviceable to the owner class in the US, however.
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