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Quinnipiac Poll Latest Reminder that 3-of-4 Americans Back Immigrant Legalization and Reject Trump’s Deportation Vision

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As the Trump Administration moves forward on its mass deportation immigration vision, new polling from Quinnipiac shows that the vast majority of Americans back immigrant legalization, and is the latest reminder that Trump’s extremism on immigration is at odds with the wishes of most Americans.

63% of Americans support citizenship; 74% of Americans back immigrant legalization (or citizenship)

While President Trump and the Jeff Sessions/Steve Bannon/Stephen Miller contingent get to advance their radical ideology and pander to the the small minority of nativists who make up Trump’s base in the process, the new Quinnipiac poll finds that a combined 74% of Americans support either citizenship (63%) or legalization without citizenship (11%) for undocumented immigrants, while only 23% support the deportation option. The poll found that 92% of Democrats, 74% of Independents, and even 51% of Republicans support either citizenship or legalization. Both Americans’ 63% support for citizenship and combined 74% support for “stay” represent the high-water mark for support in the twelve occasions Quinnipiac has asked this poll question since 2012.

Americans don’t support Trump’s mass deportation agenda

The overwhelming unpopularity of what the Trump Administration is actually proposing and implementing on immigration explains the administration’s ongoing attempts to deny, confuse, and spin away from the true scope and intentions of their immigration policy radicalism.

According to Lynn Tramonte, Deputy Director of America’s Voice Education Fund, “Trump has laid out a blueprint and ‘unshackled’ ICE and CBP to round up and deport the very same immigrants that the American public wants to see legalized.”

The Quinnipiac polling echoes a host of other polls – public opinion in support of allowing undocumented immigrants to stay instead of go is remarkably durable and consistent. In addition to Quinnipiac, recent polls from Pew Research, New York Times/CBS,  Washington Post/ABC News, CNN, Gallup, and even Fox News each found that between 72% and 88% of Americans back either citizenship or legalization for undocumented immigrants over deportation.

And in a recent piece in The Atlantic, titled “Not Even the Reddest States Support Deportation,” Dr. Robert P. Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) highlighted how PRRI’s massive-sample polling research found that Americans back immigrant legalization over deportation by 79% – 16% and that even only 28% of Republicans favor deportation.