A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows a majority of American support the "path to citizenship" outlined in the bipartisan immigration reform bill presented in the Senate today.
The bill allows the 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the country to apply for citizenship if they can pass a background check, pay back taxes and meet other requirements which will likely be hashed out in detail over the coming weeks or months.
According to the WSJ/NBC poll, 76 percent of Americans support a path to citizenship with those requirements. Included in that total is a full 39 percent who say they "strongly favor" the plan. Only 23 percent of respondents say they oppose the plan.
In general, providing a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants is a popular idea. Even without mentioning the requirements outlined in the Senate bill, 64 percent of Americans say they favor it, while the percentage opposing increases to 35.
The Senate bill allows undocumented immigrants in good standing to remain in the country, but they still need to wait 10 years before they are eligible for a green card. President Obama had wanted to trim that to eight years.
But most Americans think that even Obama's more lenient timeline is too harsh. More than half of respondents, 51 percent, said undocumented immigrants should only have to wait five years before receiving a green card. Only 12 percent said the ten-year wait was about right, and a full 18 percent said undocumented immigrants shouldn't have to wait at all and should be allowed to get green cards immediately.
A small but vocal minority, 14 percent, said undocumented immigrants should never be allowed to get green cards, but judging from the content of the Senate bill, that position is unpalatable even to congressional Republicans these days.
Of course, the Senate's path to citizenship is dependent on provisions to secure the border, though the criteria for determining when the border is secure have not been fully established.
A full 63 percent of Americans believe the border is either "mostly not secure" or "totally not secure," and Congress agrees, which means there is still plenty of debate ahead.
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