The latest New York Times/CBS News poll conducted May 18 to 23 found a broad support among Americans for the new immigration bill, no matter Democrats, Republicans, or independents.
As reflected by the poll, the large majority of Americans support to change the current immigration system to allow illegal immigrants to gain legal status. They also support a guest worker program to bring more labor to the US upon demand. 51% Americans said the new immigration system should give priority to work skills and education levels over family connections to the United States. The latter has been the foundation of the immigration system for four decades. This is going to stop chain-immigration and facilitate more merit-based immigration.
More than sixty percent of people surveyed said the new system should allow illegal immigrants to obtain legal status, if they had good employment history and no criminal record and pay at least $5,000 in fines and fees. In addition, the poll showed that differences are not as big as claimed by some Republican legislators between Republicans and Democrats on this issue.
Most of those polled said that illegal immigrants should eventually be allowed to apply for green card and citizenship, but 59 percent agreed that priority should be given to legal immigrants who have followed the rules. In other words, backlogs should be removed before illegal immigrants can be legalized.
Two-thirds of Americans polled favored a guest-worker program to bring necessary labor to the US. More than half of them said the workers should be allowed to apply for green card and eventually citizenship, if they have a strong work record and have no criminal activities.

Here are some questions and results in the poll:

Would you favor or oppose a guest worker program?
Oppose: 30%
Favor: 66%

How should priority be given when admitting immigrants?
Education, job skills and work experience: 51%
Family in the US: 34%

Should illegal immigrants get a renewable visa if they pay a fine, have a clean record and pass a background check?
Yes: 67%
No: 27%.

What should happen to illegal immigrants who have been in the U.S. for at least two years?
Should be deported: 33%
Should be allowed to apply for legal status: 62%

Date Source: New York Times

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