Deliberative Polling on Immigration
Alice Siu
Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University
Immigration
Overall Sample�
No. | Question Text | Pre | Post | Post-Pre | Sig. |
Q2A | [Reduce the number of refuges allowed to resettle the US.] | 0.499 | 0.345 | -0.154 | 0.000 |
Q2B | [Increase personnel to process asylum seekers' claims faster.] | 0.750 | 0.871 | 0.121 | 0.000 |
Q2C | [Provide aid to reduce poverty and violence in Central America.] | 0.577 | 0.611 | 0.034 | 0.000 |
Q2D | [Increase the number of visas for skilled workers to move to the US.] | 0.639 | 0.759 | 0.120 | 0.000 |
Q2E | [Increase the number of visas for low-skilled workers to move to the US for industries that need them, like agriculture and service.] | 0.593 | 0.730 | 0.137 | 0.000 |
Q2F | [Require employers to use the E-verify computer system to confirm workers' eligibility.] | 0.743 | 0.750 | 0.007 | 0.269 |
Q2G | [First-time violators of immigration laws should only be expelled, not subject to criminal punishment.] | 0.667 | 0.691 | 0.024 | 0.156 |
Q2H | [Continue DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects people who were brought to the US as children when their parents entered the country illegally.] | 0.686 | 0.791 | 0.105 | 0.000 |
Q2I | [Undocumented immigrants should be forced to return to their home countries before applying to legally come to the US to live and work permanently.] | 0.536 | 0.369 | -0.167 | 0.000 |
Immigration�Reducing the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the US
Increase the # of visas for low skilled workers to move to the US for industries that need them
Undocumented immigrants should be forced to return to their home countries before applying to legally come to the US to live and work permanently
Knowledge: Percent Correct
| T1% | T2% | Change |
About how many undocumented immigrants are in the US? [10 million] | 20.5 (107) | 74.0 (387) | 53.5*** |
Which of the following countries is NOT part of the Paris Agreement on the environment? [All of the above] | 32.1 (168) | 48.6 (254) | 16.5*** |
The Affordable Care Act allows which of the following? [All of the above] | 57.0 (298) | 60.0 (314) | 3.0 |
What percentage is the highest tax rate for capital gains taxes? [20%] | 24.5 (97) | 46.8 (93) | 21.8*** |
Which of the following organizations dealing with trade has the most countries? [WTO] | 40.5 (212) | 49.7 (260) | 9.2*** |
Deliberation Anecdotes
We share that we both had green cards—so I’m an immigrant, and I was also an illegal immigrant, because I let my green card lapse. So I was here, without a green card, and I got in trouble. And I flew to Mexico and I came back from Mexico. I couldn’t show my green card because it had lapsed, and they said, “Well, that’s—well, you’re here in America. You’re here in the U.S.” I was treated very well. I went to a different hierarchy, and I had to go downtown, but I was treated very well. And so my point I want to make is—we have a lot of laws, we have a border, right—we need to enforce the laws, but we need to do it with compassion. I’m a big person for compassion.
Deliberation Anecdotes
“I mean no disrespect because we’re all Americans, but we’re failing to realize we’re also immigrants. All of us. The people that were here originally were indigenous, and we took over. So really, we’re immigrants too. So we kind of do need to put it in perspective in terms of the immigrant and not so much the—“well, we’re American and we belong here but the immigrants don’t”. We gotta realize that we were immigrants too. My family comes from England. We came over on one of the ships. And where did we land? We landed in New York.”