The Immigration Debate -- Saliency

The Center for Immigration Studies, which favors immigration restriction, reports:

A new poll examines the views of likely voters nationally and in 14 contested Senate and House races. The findings show strong majorities of Americans want immigration laws enforced and illegal immigrants to go home. One of the strongest findings is that the public overwhelmingly opposes increases in legal immigration of the kind found in the bill passed earlier this year by the Senate.

The results are surprisingly consistent across the country, both in terms of how voters see the problem, and what they want done about it. Unlike many other polls, the survey uses neutral language and avoids terms like “amnesty” and “illegal alien.” The survey was done by the polling company inc. for the Center for Immigration Studies.

Read it here.

This conforms with what I've noticed in a number of races. Republican candidates who are running behind their opponents or are in close contests have been emphasizing their support for immigration restriction.

I personally am in favor of open borders with registration and feel that restriction is a bad deal all around, but the public does seem to be speaking clearly and persistently on the issue and in a democracy the government ignores public opinion at its own peril.