Thursday, December 12, 2024

Californians Support Immigrants and Oppose Deportation

A new poll found that about half of all likely voters in California said immigrants are a benefit to the state and overall hold a positive view of them.

In the Los Angeles Times/USC poll 59% of respondents also said that undocumented immigrants who have held a job for two years in the U.S. should be allowed to stay.

The survey posed the question whether immigrants represented a benefit or a burden to the state.  Forty-eight percent of voters likely to cast ballots in November said they were a benefit compared to 36% who said they strongly held that view.

The percentage of the respondents who said immigrants overall were a burden to California because of their impact on public services was less at 36%, and smaller even still for those that strongly held this view at 22%.

In the situation of an undocumented worker who might be discovered, over half of the respondents at 59% said that person should be allowed to stay if they have lived and worked in country for two years.  Less than half, 30%, said undocumented workers should be deported with only 19% strongly adhering to that view.

Latinos were by far the demographic most supportive of immigrants.  Sixty-eight percent said immigrants were a benefit and 76% said workers should be allowed to keep their jobs.

The poll was conducted for The Los Angeles Times and the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences from Oct. 13 to 20 by the Democratic polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner and the Republican firm American Viewpoint. It included a random sample of 1,501 California voters, including 922 likely voters. Results for likely voters have a margin of sampling error of 3.2 points in either direction, with a larger margin for subgroups.

LA Times