Americans oppose executive action on immigration, 48 percent to 38 percent: poll

As President Obama prepares to outline later this week his long-expected move to grant legal status to potentially millions of illegal immigrants in the country, a new poll says Americans aren’t necessarily with him on acting alone, though a majority does favor an eventual pathway to citizenship for people in the country illegally.

Forty-eight percent of Americans oppose the president’s taking executive action on the issue and 38 percent support it, according to the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll.

Nearly two-thirds of Democrats support Mr. Obama’s taking executive action, compared to 11 percent of Republicans and 37 percent of independents, according to the poll.

Mr. Obama has said a lack of action from House Republicans on a Senate-passed bill that would grant an eventual path to citizenship for most of the approximately 11 million illegal immigrants in the country has forced his hand on the issue.

According to the poll, 57 percent of Americans actually support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and that number swelled to 74 percent when respondents were told such a path requires paying fines and back taxes and passing a security check.

But Republicans have said that a unilateral move by Mr. Obama would poison any chance at a bipartisan accord on the issue on Capitol Hill, and would be a sour note on which to head into a new Congress to be completely controlled by the GOP come January.

The poll was conducted Nov. 14-17 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.