Polls Show Continuing American Approval of Arizona's Immigration Enforcement Law, despite Media Campaign of Lies
04/28/2012
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On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments about the constitutionality of parts of Arizona’s SB1070.

Legality aside for the time being, one fascinating theme is how the legislation received two years of the most vicious attacks from the liberal media and other interested parties:

Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post wrote, “Arizona’s draconian new immigration law is an abomination — racist, arbitrary, oppressive, mean-spirited, unjust.”

The President said the legislation would “undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans” as he hinted a mega-amnesty was his choice rather than law and borders.

MSNBC pundit Joe Scarborough compared the law to Nazi guards asking to see your papers.

Liberal cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles voted to boycott Arizona.

Even Communist Cuba got its licks in, calling the law “xenophobic”. . . a “brutal violation of human rights.”

The level of vitriol has been odd, considering that SB 1070 was carefully written to mirror federal statutes. Legal immigrants are required to carry their “papers” at all times.

Arizona was desperate because it needed help from Washington to get the border under control but the Obama administration was not forthcoming for fear of angering hispanics. Meanwhile Mexican cartels had taken over a large swath of southern Arizona and were busy turning the place into northern Mexico.

Yet even with the tsunami of ferocious denunciations, the American people have remained strong in their support for the law despite the accusations that they were evil racists for doing so.

Shortly after the signing of the bill into law in April 2010, 70 percent of Arizona voters approved of the measure. National surveys the following month were also supportive, like the CBS/New York Times poll in which 60 percent of respondents thought the law was about right or they would have preferred tougher.

Two intervening years have not dimmed Americans’ fondness for Arizona’s courage and self-determination:

59% Favor Automatic Immigration Checks During All Traffic Stops, Rasmussen Reports, April 23, 2012

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday on the controversial immigration law first passed in Arizona two years ago, and a majority of voters nationwide still agree with one of the law’s chief provisions.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 59% believe police should automatically check the immigration status of individuals they pull over for a traffic violation. One-in-three (32%) opposes such a rule.

And. . .

Fox News poll: Majority of voters favor Arizona immigration law, Fox News, April 20, 2012

By a more than two-to-one margin, American voters favor the 2010 Arizona immigration law.

A Fox News poll released Friday shows 65 percent of voters favor the controversial law, while 31 percent oppose it.

Eighty-four percent of Republicans favor Arizona’s law, while 46 percent of Democrats do. A 51-percent majority of Democrats opposes the law.

Click here for the full poll results.

Independents favor the law by a 40 percentage-point margin (67-27 percent). That’s good news for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who has said he thinks Arizona’s law would be a good model for the rest of the country.

The Arizona law took effect in July 2010. It makes illegal immigration a state crime and allows local law enforcement to question the legal status of anyone stopped on suspicion of a crime and detain anyone who cannot prove his or her immigration status.

The Justice Department filed suit challenging it, and the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments next Wednesday on whether many of the law’s key provisions are constitutional.

Voters who live in the West (72 percent) and the Midwest (69 percent) are more likely than those living in other regions (61 percent) to approve of the Arizona law.

The Fox News poll is based on landline and cellphone interviews with 910 randomly-chosen registered voters nationwide and is conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from April 9-11. For the total sample, it has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

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