August 31, 2015
Shock Poll: 59% Back Trump On Deportation of Illegals
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump answers questions after speaking at the National Federation of Republican Assemblies in Nashville,... View Enlarged Image
Immigration: When Donald Trump proposed mandatory deportation of illegal aliens, pundits and politicians on both sides of the political aisle were appalled. But on this issue it looks like Trump has the public on his side.
The fire from the right was almost as fierce as that from the left. "It's not conservative and it's not realistic and it does not embrace American values," said Jeb Bush.
Sen. Lindsey Graham called it "absolute gibberish."
Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer called the idea "crackpot" and "morally obscene."
But the prize for overheated rhetoric goes to Hillary Clinton, who said Trump wants to "literally pull people out of their homes and their workplaces, round them up, put them, I don't know, in buses, boxcars, in order to take them across our border."
So what do these folks say about the fact that the majority of Americans back Trump on this?
The latest IBD/TIPP Poll asked 913 adults coast to coast if they "support or oppose mandatory deportation of illegal immigrants in the U.S." Not surprisingly, 87% of Trump supporters back the proposal.
What's surprising is that 59% of the overall public does as well. Mandatory deportation gets majority support in all age groups except 18-24, every income group, among both women and men, at every level of educational achievement, and in rural, urban and suburban regions.
More interesting still is the fact that 64% of independents and 55% of moderates support deportation.
Even among Hispanics, the poll found 40% backed mandatory deportation — although the sample size is too small to make much of that number.
Trump's other proposals don't do as well. Just under half the public favors building a wall along the southern border (48%) or an end to automatic citizenship for children born of illegals (46%). But a majority of independents (55%) back building the wall.
What's going on here?
Isn't it possible that the recent spate of murders by illegal immigrants has caused people to rethink their fuzzy notions about amnesty and "comprehensive immigration reform"?
The Obama administration itself has admitted that Immigration and Customs Enforcement released more than 30,000 convicted criminal aliens just last year, including 169 with murder convictions.
This is not to say we endorse Trump's mandatory deportation plan, details of which he hasn't released.
The cost and disruptions of such a plan, both economically and politically, could be enormous. The conservative American Action Forum, for example, figures it would take 20 years and $420 billion to deport the 12 million illegals here now.
But the widespread embrace of this drastic measure shows just how desperate the country has become in the face of the current de facto open border policy.
Politicians who ignore this sea change in attitudes on immigration do so at their own peril.
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