Elise Foley notes that a new Lake Research Partners poll commissioned by the pro-immigration reform group America's Voice Online shows a large majority of Americans, 68 percent, "strongly" supporting "comprehensive immigration reform" defined as:
Under this proposal the federal government would strengthen border security, and crack down on employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants currently living in the United States would be required to register with the federal government, undergo criminal background checks, pay taxes, learn English, and go to the back of the line for U.S. citizenship.
There's so much latitude here with how such a policy would be implemented that I suspect a more specific proposal would be significantly less popular, particularly if it were proposed by a Democrat. The DREAM Act, though, is much more straightforward, and the polling suggests it has broad support. The poll describes the DREAM Act, which the Migration Policy Institute estimates would grant a path to citizenship for around 800,000 undocumented immigrants, this way:
This bill provides illegal immigrant students who were brought here as young children with the opportunity to earn permanent legal resident status if they meet certain requirements. To earn legal status, students must have been brought to the U.S. when they were very young, lived here for at least five years, stayed out of trouble, earned a high school diploma or GED, and completed at least two years of college or military service.
The overall numbers here are lower than for "comprehensive immigration reform," which suggests to me that term remains a bit of a Rorschach test. Forty-eight percent "strongly favor," 19 percent favor, while only 7 percent oppose and 22 percent "strongly oppose." The DREAM Act is good policy, but since Republicans are filibustering everything, even policies like the DREAM Act that they once supported, public opinion is basically irrelevant.
