Most residents favor citizenship for illegal immigrants

I am happy to see this type of attitude in Houston. I was very positive about results like these. My neighbors are not that mean, although those surveyed said that they do not support health and welfare services but they to favor a path to citizenship...
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Houston Chronicle
April 20th, 2009
Mizanur Rahman

We talk a lot here about the mood of the region and country onimmigration. It's rare, however, to actually quantify people's opinions on the matter. We can get a peek into residents' attitudes locally thanks to the 2009 Houston Area Survey, conducted by Stephen Klineberg, the Rice University sociology professor who has directed the annual surveysince 1982.

Klineberg says his survey, released this week, shows that the recent negative views of immigrants in general have begun to turn around. However, it's a bit more nuanced than that. The data does show that the majority of residents in the Houston area support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. However, half ofthe survey respondents said they support a law that would deny health and welfare services to illegal immigrants in Texas.

Here's a summary from Klineberg on the survey: The numbers of area residents who believe that the new immigration"mostly strengthens American culture" increased from 39 percent in1997 to 57 percent in 2005, and then dropped to 44 percent in 2007,before recovering to 49 percent in this year's survey.

The percentage of area residents who favor "granting illegal immigrants a path to legal citizenship if they speak English and have no criminal record" dropped from 68 percent in 2007 to 56 percent in2008, and then recovered to 61 percent in this year's survey.

The numbers saying that the increasing ethnic diversity broughtabout by immigration is a "good thing" dropped from 67 percent in 2005to 62 percent in 2007, and remained unchanged (at 61 percent) in 2009.

In the 2009 survey, 64 percent agreed that, "The children ofillegal immigrants should have the right to attend the publicschools," down from 71 percent in 2007.

68 percent today are in favor of "imposing fines and criminalcharges against employers in this community who hire illegalimmigrants," up from 56 percent two years ago.

In 2007, 44 percent were in favor of "a law that would deny healthand welfare services to il-legal immigrants in Texas." In 2009, 50percent were in support of that proposal.

This survey of 706 randomly selected Harris County adults was conducted Feb. 3 through Feb. 25 by the University of Houston Center for Public Policy.

The margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Posted by Mizanur Rahman at April 20, 2009 11:29 AM