Dealing With Undocumented Immigrants Just As Important As Border Security To American Public, Says New Poll

A new Gallup poll released on Monday indicates that Americans’ opinion on what their government’s top priority on immigration should be has continued to shift. In the poll carried out between Feb. 6-9, 44 percent of Americans said they thought government action on “dealing with illegal immigrants already in the US” was “extremely important,” compared to the 43 percent who said the same of “securing US borders.” A release by Gallup accompanying the poll said that “compared with 2011, Americans of all partisan orientations have come to view border security as less important. Meanwhile, their views on the importance of devising a plan to deal with illegal immigrants already in the United States have been largely stable.”

The poll is the second this month to show that Americans’ priorities on immigration may be shifting. A CNN/ORC International survey carried out from Jan. 31-Feb. 2 found that the majority of the public (54 percent) say the government’s top priority should be extending legal status to undocumented immigrants who have jobs instead of developing a plan for stopping the flow of undocumented immigrants into the country and deporting those who are already here (40 percent). CNN Polling Director Keating Holland told CNN upon that poll’s release that Republicans' “border-first” stance on immigration reform “may have been a popular stand in 2011, but not necessarily in 2014.”

"American attitudes toward undocumented immigrants have changed,” Holland said then. “Starting in 2012, most Americans have said that the government's focus should be on a plan that would allow those immigrants to become legal U.S. residents. A majority has consistently taken that position since that time -- 56 percent in 2012, 53 percent in 2013, and 54 percent in the current poll.”

The CNN poll did not give information on how responses broke down along party lines. But Gallup notes that their poll shows that the shift has occurred among respondents who self-identify both as Republicans and as Democrats. Where 67 percent of Republican voters in 2011 appeared to see border security as the dominant issue (and 32 percent as dealing with the undocumented), 55 percent (and 42 percent) said the same this year. Among Democrats, the breakdown was 59 percent to 40 percent.