Opinion polls show broad support for tough Arizona immigration law

Public opinion polls released this week found overwhelming support for measures like Arizona's immigration law. But protests, lawsuits, and calls for boycotts would say otherwise.

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“That's already against the law,” he says. “The deeper questions are whether people are OK with citizens and legal residents being stopped by police and asked to prove their status, and how far police can go to creating the reasonable suspicion.”

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Immigrant rights groups say that what is “legal” and what is “right” are often at odds in ways that public opinion surveys and news reports tend to overlook. “A law being popular or supported by the majority does not mean that is morally correct,” says Randy Ertll, executive director of El Centro de Accion Social in Pasadena, Calif.

The current economic climate could also be tilting poll responses, say political scientists.

“These polls are correct but seem to reflect the downturn in the economy,” says Barbara O’Connor, director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and Media at California State University, Sacramento. “History has a way of showing that when times are tough, people lash out more strongly against what they feel is beyond their control – in this case, immigrants.”

Government attitudes also come into play, says Joe Nevins, a political scientist and immigration specialist at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. "A combination of an economic recession, and, more important, a long-term campaign by the federal government to teach the public that unauthorized immigration is a crime has made a law-and-order approach to matters of unauthorized migration a no-brainer for most," he says.

But the results of these polls miss the point, says Lara Brown, a political scientist at Villanova University. "There is more consensus on this topic among Americans than most politicians seem to believe."

“The majority of Americans are not anti-immigrant, pro-illegals, or in favor of a police state,” Brown says. “Instead, they want government to uphold the rule of law, and they want America to continue to be a country that stands by its long heritage of welcoming those, as the inscription on the Statute of Liberty reads, who are 'yearning to breathe free.' The real story is that.“

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