What do Americans think of the new Arizona immigration law, which gives police the power to question someone they have already stopped about their legal status in the country? In June and July polls from Quinnipiac, PSRA/Pew, and Fox News, between 50 percent and 64 percent of respondents said they favored the Arizona law, while between 27 percent and 32 percent said they opposed it. When asked in a recent CBS poll if the law had gone too far, was about right, or had not gone far enough, over half of the respondents said that it was about right, with about a quarter saying the new law went too far.
In a July Fox/Opinion Dynamics poll, a majority of respondents outside of Arizona said that they would be in favor of their state passing an immigration law like Arizona’s. In that same poll, more than half said they would favor such a law, while around a third said they would oppose it. Similarly, 28 percent of respondents in the July Quinnipiac poll said the Obama administration’s lawsuit to strike down the law was a good idea, while 60 percent said it was a bad idea. Almost identical numbers appear in the July Fox/Opinion Dynamics poll, where 29 percent of respondents favored the lawsuit and 59 percent opposed it.
To see the full questions and trends, see the latest issue of AEI’s Political Report.
Andrew Rugg is a research assistant at AEI, where Jane Makin is an intern.
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