By Greg Campbell
TPNN Contributor
Despite much discussion in Washington over immigration reform and what should be done about the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants already residing in the country, a majority of Americans are still standing firm on wanting to see the illegals deported.
A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that 53% of Americans are in favor of some form of deportation policy. 30% were in favor of most illegals being deported with some exceptions while 23% wanted to see all illegals deported.
The same poll found only 5% wanted all illegals to stay and only 31% want most illegals to stay.
The immigration issue has become a hot issue as the Hispanic voting bloc has come up for grabs. President Obama’s executive order that halted the deportation of illegals is widely considered to have been a political move to curry favor with Hispanic voters prior to his re-election.
“Attitudes toward immigration are polarized by party, according to another the Reuters/Ipsos poll. Seventy-five percent of Republicans think all or most immigrants should be deported, compared to 40 percent of Democrats who think the same.
Republican Senator John McCain, one of the eight senators in the group, had his own encounter with citizens angered by illegal immigration on Tuesday when residents of his state of Arizona complained bitterly at a town hall meeting about the lack of security on the border with Mexico…
[A] resident, Keith Smith, got into a testy exchange with McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate whose views on immigration have fluctuated over the years.‘Cut off their welfare and all their stuff and they’ll go back,’ Smith said, referring to undocumented workers.”
Republicans have been working on finding a suitable policy that would be able to pass and not alienate the formidable voting bloc.
A bi-partisan group of Senators known as the “Gang of Eight” have worked to formulate legislation that would help establish some form of consistently-applied immigration policy, but even the talks have encountered push-back from the Obama Administration who has been unwilling to assent to improved border security, but has favored a more-broad amnesty policy.
Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican member of the group of Senators dedicated to immigration reform, has called President Obama’s plan “dead on arrival” in Congress and Tea Party Senator Rand Paul called the plan “not serious.”
