US News

70% back immig reform

WASHINGTON — Nearly seven in 10 Americans favor legislation that lets immigrants become permanent residents, according to a new poll.

And nearly as many people — a 65 percent majority — favor an immigration law that would let immigrants become US citizens “if they meet certain requirements,” the Gallup survey found.

When asked how they would vote on Election Day on the questions of residency and citizenship, 57 percent of Republicans backed both propositions.

That’s a dramatic reversal from 2007, when grass-roots GOP opposition scuttled the last attempt at immigration reform.

The support emboldened backers of a bipartisan immigration bill set for release in the Senate next week.

“We send people away who we want to stay here, who are job creators, and we let people who take away jobs from Americans cross the border illegally. And we aim to fix both,” said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), one of the lawmakers negotiating the immigration deal.

Schumer said the law would “prevent future waves of future illegal immigration and at the same time Americans will be generous to the 11 million living here in the shadows” by clamping down “once and for all on illegal immigration.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), another lawmaker in on the negotiations, is hitting the airwaves this weekend in an all-out effort to promote the immigration-reform bill that would provide legal status to up to 11 million illegal aliens.

But one provision of the deal could leave out hundreds of thousands of people. The bill sets the cutoff date for having entered the country as Dec. 31, 2011 — meaning people who came after that time wouldn’t be eligible to apply for work permits or citizenship.

Additional reporting by Antonio Antenucci and S.A. Miller