83 percent of voters, 65 percent of Trump fans, back legalizing illegal immigrants, Fox News poll finds

Granting undocumented immigrants legal residency and offering citizenship to DREAMers has never been more popular, with sizable bipartisan majorities favoring both propositions, according to a Fox New poll released Thursday evening. A hefty 86 percent of respondents favored giving work permits and 79 percent backed U.S. citizenship for immigrants under 30 brought here as children — the DREAMers — so long as they passed a background check. More voters said it was extremely or very important for Congress to pass a law to legalize the DREAMers, 62 percent, than to pass a health-care (58 percent) or tax reform bill (52 percent).

A record-high 83 percent favored setting up a process by which all illegal immigrants currently working in the U.S. could get legal residency, including 95 percent of Democrats, 69 percent of Republicans, 82 percent of independents, and 65 percent of people who voted for President Trump, Fox News found.

Trump voters — 85 percent of whom said the president is doing a good job on immigration, versus 39 percent of all voters — also favored citizenship (63 percent) and work permits (75 percent) for DREAMers, and 60 percent said it's important for Congress to work on DREAMer legislation. The poll, conducted by Anderson Robbins Research and Shaw & Co. Research, spoke with 1,017 registered voters nationwide Sept. 24-26 on landlines and cellphones, and has a margin of sampling error of ±3 percentage points.

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