Texas Lyceum poll on immigration

Our state has more nuanced views than you might think.

The pollsters found that 62 percent of Texans said immigration helps the United States more than it hurts the country. That’s an increase from 2016, when 54 percent of the respondents said they viewed immigration was more beneficial than harmful.

The pollsters defined “sanctuary” entities as those in which “local police or city government employees learn that someone is in the country illegally, they do not automatically turn that person over to federal immigration enforcement officers.”

Forty-five percent of the respondents supported sanctuary policies while 49 percent opposed them. That came as 93 percent of all respondents said local police should be able to inquire into a person’s immigration status when arrested for a crime.

The results suggest most Texans would likely support “sanctuary” legislation currently moving through the Texas House, which would limits inquiries into immigration status from local law enforcement to people who have already been arrested.

Proposed legislation that passed the Senate earlier this year permits local police ask about immigration status if a person is either arrested or detained by law enforcement for other reasons.

The Lyceum poll found deeper divisions among Texans when asked if inquiries by law enforcement into immigration status should be allowed for people who aren’t arrested. Only 44 percent agree that police should check a person’s status during a traffic stop, while 41 percent agreed that immigration status should be checked when a person is reporting a crime. Only 39 percent said that status should be checked when the police believe that a person is a witness to a crime or could provide information.

[…]

Half of the respondents were asked if the state should stay the current course with President Trump in the White House, while the other half was asked about state expenditures with Republicans in charge of the U.S. Congress. Under both conditions, most of the respondents with an opinion on the issue – 45 percent of those questioned about Trump and 41 percent questioned about Congress – agreed the state should keep spending largely on the border.

“This indicates that, overall, Texans are expressing a greater expectation that the President will deliver on border security and/or immigration enforcement than Republicans in Congress, but there is no outcry to decrease the amount of money Texas spends securing its borders,” poll supervisors wrote in their summary.

When asked about President Trump’s plan to build a wall on the southern border, only about a third, or 35 percent, favored a barrier separating Texas from Mexico. Sixty-one percent opposed the project. The numbers are almost identical to the poll’s results from 2016 when 35 percent favored building the wall and 59 percent opposed such a project. This year, however the percentage of respondents who identified as Hispanic that supported construction of the wall rose from 18 percent in 2016 to 25 percent.

The survey also found that nearly two-thirds of respondents, or 63 percent, strongly supported a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants after a long waiting period if the applicants paid taxes and a penalty, passed a criminal background check and learned English. Twenty-seven of the respondents somewhat supported that idea while 4% somewhat opposed and 5% strongly opposed.

Here are the Day One press release – it’s “Day One” because the Lyceum has a second round of polling numbers coming out today – and Executive Summary. I want to quibble with the pollsters’ interpretation of the border spending question, for which the wording was “With [Donald Trump in the White House] / [Republicans in control of Congress], should the Texas Legislature continue funding border security operations in Texas at the same levels as before, increase funding for border security operations, or decrease funding for border security operations?” For one thing, it would be perfectly rational for someone who thinks Trump and Congress will shower the state in border money to want the state to spend less, and by the same token someone who thinks that Trump and Congress won’t come through might want the Lege to keep their spending up just in case. I agree that the result shows a greater preference for a continued high level of state spending, I just don’t see a connection to the federal level. There wasn’t a similar question asked in the 2016 or 2015 Lyceum polls, so there’s no basis for a direct comparison.

The bottom line here is that there’s at best modest support for “sanctuary cities”, with majority opposition to police asking about people’s immigration status in situations other than making a criminal arrest, there’s majority opposition to the Trump wall, majority support for in-state tuition for DREAMers, majority opposition to widespread deportations, and near-unanimous support for giving immigrants a pathway to citizenship. It’s not all good news for the progressive side of the debate, but it’s a lot closer to that than to the maximalist anti-immigration position. It’s up to all of us who support better immigration policies to advocate for them, because there’s more support out there for them than you might think. Tomorrow I’ll post about the second part of the Lyceum poll, which among other things will have your first glance at Senate 2018 numbers. The Chron has more.

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