Supporters and advocates for immigration reform are pushing hard for Congress to pass it into law this year, but according to a new poll, most Americans are doubtful that the bill on the table that would reform immigration laws will be approved.
According to a new poll released by the Quinnipiac University, most American voters are in favor of immigration reform, with 54 percent of those polled supporting a pathway to citizenship for immigrants living illegally in the U.S., while 29 percent saying those immigrants should be deported; another 12 percent saying that said immigrants could stay but not become citizens.
Yet their outlook on the chances of Congress passing immigration reform into law is much bleaker. The poll projects that 71 percent of U.S. voters don't believe that Democrats and Republicans will be able to work together to pass a comprehensive immigration reform package into law, while only 24 percent believe it will happen.
"There isn't a lot of confidence outside the Beltway in the ability of those in Congress to play nice and be productive," said A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
The poll was conducted via land lines and cell phones between May 22 to May 28 through a survey of 1,419 registered voters with a margin of error of +/- 2.6 percentage points, the report states.
Among white U.S. citizens, 64 percent of them felt that undocumented immigrants should be allowed a pathway to citizenship while 42 percent of whites--46 percent of them men and 53 percent of them women--said they should not be allowed to become citizens. Roughly 13 percent of whites polled felt that immigrants living illegally in the U.S. should be allowed to stay, but not given citizenship. Of those who felt undocumented immigrants should not be allowed to stay, 20 percent of whites felt such immigrants should leave the country, while 41 percent of those felt they should not be forced to leave.
The issue of immigration has been a hot topic in Washington, especially with the recent approval of the current immigration proposal by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Under the bill, border security measures would be bolstered while a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants is also on the table as the centerpiece of the deal.
However, despite bipartisan efforts to pass the bill and Republican party leaders calling for members of their party to support immigration reform, hardliners in both the Senate and House have been sticking to their guns, criticizing the bill as offering "amnesty" to people living in the country illegally and unconvinced that the GOP would be able to make inroads with the Latino voters that helped defeat the party in the presidential polls in November.
U.S. Sen. Jess Sessions, R-Ala., the lead Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, has recently expressed concerns regarding the costs of implementing the proposed immigration bill over the next decade.
"Given the long time period over which the key elements of this bill are implemented, I cannot imagine a circumstance in which a 10-year scoring of S. 744 would be deemed adequate for guiding the policy decisions that Congress will confront," he wrote in a letter to Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf, as reported by The Hill.com.
Even U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., one of the key members of the Gang of Eight and a leading Republican voice in support of the bill, has been skeptical that the bill can pass as it stands and may have to be modified somewhat, according to Alex Burgos, a spokesman for Sen. Rubio's office, as reported by ABC News.
Burgos wrote in an email that the bill will have to "earn the support of Democrat and Republican senators who do not support the bill as it stands today."
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