Georgia voters overwhelmingly want U.S.-citizens and legal immigrants to get jobs over illegal immigrants, are against driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, and favor reducing the country’s current immigration levels.
According to a poll conducted for the Dustin Inman Society, 80% of Georgia voters preferred that U.S. citizens and legal immigrants already in the United States be hired while 10% wanted illegal or new immigrants to get Georgia’s jobs. When asked if the country should increase its immigration levels, 59.2% wanted a decrease, 10.4% wanted an increase, and 30.4% wanted immigration levels “kept the same.”
The poll, which was conducted February 10-11 by Rosetta Stone Communications for the Dustin Inman Society, asked respondents, “there are currently 30 million legal immigrants living in the United States and the government brings in 1 million legal immigrants a year, do you think that number should be increased, decreased or kept the same?”
Sixty-two percent of Georgians also wanted current immigration laws enforced while only 20% wanted illegal immigrants to be legalized. In addition, a majority of Georgians think the federal government is doing “too little” to enforce the country’s immigration laws–65.1% believe the federal government is doing “too little” while 10.7% believe the federal government is doing “too much.”
The poll, which has a margin of error of +/- 3.5 percentage points, also found that 71% of Georgia voters believed the U.S. job market was “fair” or “poor” while nearly 50% of Republicans rated the job market as “poor.”
D.A. King, president of the Dustin Inman Society, said that “the majority of Georgians comprehend the connection of employment and wages to the importation of large numbers of foreign workers and incrementally deferring to legally dubious executive amnesty decrees from Barack Obama.” He said that while the poll’s results were “likely not surprising to most working Americans, the margins in the responses should be regarded as guidance to elected officials that most of the people can’t be fooled most of the time.”
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When asked about pending legislation in the Georgia Senate that would stop the state from issuing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, 64% supported it while 21% did not.
“While the state delegation in Washington is notably inaudible on the relationship of jobs to immigration, the Republican-controlled Georgia legislature is allowing driver’s licenses to go to illegal aliens – a practice that does not happen in Mexico,” King, who is one of the leading pro-enforcement voices, said.
On immigration, Georgians are not different from the rest of the country. A Paragon Insights poll recently found that an overwhelming majority of Americans, including a majority of Hispanics, want tougher laws against businesses illegally hiring illegal immigrants. A Gallup poll found that a majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the country’s immigration levels and just seven percent of Americans want more immigrants at this time. Last year, a Polling Company poll found that a majority of likely voters waned an immigration pause while 90% of likely voters felt that “U.S.- born workers and legal immigrants already here should get first preference for jobs.
