Not only do more than 6 in 10 immigrants say the economy is the most important problem for the country but financial concerns seem to be playing a much greater role in their attitudes. Almost all still say that the United States is a better place than their birth country for earning a living, but more also cite finding a job and securing government assistance as major reasons to pursue citizenship. No wonder, then, that their overall happiness has diminished.
So as the debate renews on immigration reform, what do immigrants want? What path do they believe the nation should take? For immigrants, there are several overarching themes for reform. Perhaps not surprisingly, immigrants support new measures to bring illegal or undocumented immigrants more firmly into the mainstream. As a whole, however, immigrants back some method of bringing illegal immigrants into society.
This report was based on six focus groups and a national telephone survey of 1, foreign-born adults. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percent, although the margin is higher when comparing subgroups.
A Place to Call Home: What immigrants say now about life in America
There are plenty of methodological hurdles intrinsic to interviewing this population. As in our prior study , we limited our definition of immigrants to people born outside the United States and, in order to capture their recollections of coming to America, we excluded anyone who emigrated under 5 years of age. And as before, we conducted the telephone survey in English and Spanish. This time, we wanted to take a closer look at particular ethnic groups that are often overlooked because of their relatively small size in the United States, including Middle Easterners, South and East Asians, as well as Central and South Americans.
In order to do so, we supplemented our random digital dialed RDD sample with a list of phone numbers of those likely to identify with one of these ethnicities. The list was provided by Ethnic Technologies, ,a leading provider of multicultural lists. Within each household, an adult member was chosen randomly and screened to ensure that they match our immigrant criteria.
Economic and Cultural Tensions
Since we conducted our last survey on immigrants in , the number of people in the United States who use a cell phone has increased significantly, and this number is even greater for immigrant populations. Thus we included a dual-frame, cell phone sample alongside our landline sample to capture immigrants who do not have access to a landline. In addition, our stratified random dialing design ensured that no matter where an immigrant lived in the United States, whether in a location that has a high density of immigrants or one where immigrants are fewer or farther between, all immigrants had a chance to be included in our survey.
One final difference from our last immigrant study: In this survey, we chose to ask respondents about their legal status in the United States. Before weighting, eight percent of our sample say that they are undocumented, and 57 percent say that they are United States citizens.
A Place to Call Home: What Immigrants Say Now About Life in America - PDF
Of those who say they are not citizens, 20 percent say they are in the process of becoming a citizen and 76 percent are not in the process. But 64 percent of the noncitizens say they plan to seek citizenship in the future. Immigrants are holding fast to their belief that America remains the land of opportunity, according to a new Public Agenda study. Public Agenda knows what it takes to fuel progress on critical issues. We need your support to keep things moving! Some 84 percent support a guest worker program, and 61 percent strongly favor it.
Mexicans are more likely to support a path to citizenship 84 percent , compared to only 62 percent of Middle Easterners, 54 percent of East Asians, and 48 percent of South Asians in favor. Support also declines as people grow older: AuntB "If we fail this time around, no politician is going to take this up in a generation. AuntB Is our immigration policy supposed to be to the benefit of immigrants, or for America?
I want Joe as Senator in SC. Let Lindsay Graham go to Argentina with Sanford. Sanford goes to his girl and Lindsay can find a gaucho. A gaucho is a plum ahh The answer is it benefits neither The immigrants, especially illegal ones are just pawns. IMO The silver lining to this recession.
I think we have enough for now. What it really is is blather used by immigrant advocates to create the general assumption that we must have high immigration on and on. And, if all human life originated in Africa, then what we actually are is a world of immigrants. Agree with your comments and it is total BS, Will The old adage that immigrants learn English by second generation is no longer true. My opinion is that it should benefit America.
Unless someone has something to contribute, he should not be allowed to immigrate. A place of freedom, refuge and opportunity beyond what their birth country offered, especially if you work hard. An ATM, a cow to be milked and a bunch of hateful, but stupid natives from which to extract tax financed goodies.
Our challenge is to continue to attract those in the first category while keeping those in the second category out. How many fakes can you fit in one Zer0? They ought to try being a white USA citizen! We print everything in spanish for them, hire them lawyers and translators, give them free education and healthcare and THEY feel discriminated against Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management.
All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works. Is our immigration policy supposed to be to the benefit of immigrants, or for America?
I thought that line by little lindsey would get some excited. If the economy doesn't start growing in the next 6 months we're gonna see many newcomers, legal and illegal, returning to the homeland in droves.
A Place to Call Home
The real truth about the health care is there is no problem without illegals, but the doctors, who oppose health care reform want you to keep paying then to treat illegals. Chuck De Vore in I missed tha part where they said they had learned or were learning English. My question concerned how we go about remaking immigration policy.
As long as the moronic Obama voters show up in droves, Graham is safe.