Borderland

With elections coming this fall, you can be sure that both political parties are strategizing the best way to use the current immigration situation to their favor. The right wants to secure the borders before immigration itself is even talked about. The republicans are taking the national security road when it comes to letting people in. The left, on the other hand, view immigration as a civil liberty and think that others should enjoy the rights and advantages of the American Society. But how do the American people, the legal U.S. Citizens, feel about immigration? Is it as big of an issue for the Jones, the Smiths, and the Hernandez’s or is it just for the Donkeys and Elephants? Do the American people have the answer to the immigration issue?

A recent poll by New York Times/CBS News answers quite a few of these questions, and more. The majority of Americans think the country’s immigration policies need to be seriously overhauled. And despite protests against Arizona’s new immigration law, a majority of Americans support it. Most Americans feel immigration is a federal issue though, yet support AZ because the federal government hasn’t done enough for the states. The public broadly agrees, across party lines, that the United States could be doing more along its border to keep illegal immigrants out. Americans differ on the question of what to do with illegal immigrants who are already here and the role of states in enforcing immigration law, normally a federal responsibility. The Arizona law has revitalized the national debate over securing the border and what to do about the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already in the U.S.

Under a torrent of criticism, the Arizona Legislature and Gov. Jan Brewer made changes to the law on Friday that they say explicitly ban the police from racial profiling and allow officers to inquire about immigration status only of people they stop, detain or arrest in enforcing existing state law. But the new immigration law also now includes civil violations of municipal codes as grounds to check papers, and opponents were not appeased by the changes.

Although most agreed that the Arizona law would result in racial profiling, overstrained local and state law enforcement agencies and decrease the willingness of illegal immigrants to report crimes for fear of deportation, large majorities said it would reduce the number of illegal immigrants in the state, deter illegal border crossings and, to a lesser extent, reduce crime.

At immigration rallies in several cities on Saturday, demonstrators pressed the case for overhauling immigration law. So far no bill has been introduced in Congress. President Obama, while supportive of the idea of immigration reform, has questioned whether lawmakers have the appetite for a divisive battle over it after a year of other political fights and in the middle of a campaign.