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Tuesday,
November 8, 2005
INVASION
USA
Poll:
Most Americans favor border fence
3/4
say a candidate's stance on immigration will influence vote
Posted:
November 8, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
� 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
Nearly
two-thirds of Americans would favor the construction of a
fence along the entire U.S.-Mexico border, while three out of
four say a politician's stance on immigration will influence
the way they vote in coming elections.
According
to a new survey by Rasmussen
Reports, 60 percent of those surveyed like the idea of a
barrier along the U.S. Southwest border as a means of
dramatically reducing illegal immigration from
Mexico
and elsewhere in
Latin America
.
The poll also found that 75 percent of Americans say the issue
of immigration is "somewhat important" or "very
important" in terms of how they plan to vote for
president and members of Congress. That compares with just 21
percent who said a candidate's stance on immigration was
"not very important" or "not at all
important" to them.
In
addition, a plurality of those surveyed � 49 percent �
said they favored legislation that would end a concept known
as "birthright citizenship," which is the automatic
granting of
U.S.
citizenship to anyone born in the
United States
. Forty-one percent were opposed to such legislation.
Birthright
citizenship comes from
U.S.
courts' repeated reliance on the opening sentence of the 14th
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says, "All
persons born or naturalized in the
United States
, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the
United States
and of the state wherein they reside."
Critics
say the law is being abused by illegal aliens who break into
the
United States
just to have children, who then automatically become
U.S.
citizens entitled to generous government-provided benefits.
They
also say the amendment was never supposed to be interpreted as
granting automatic citizenship to the offspring of illegal
aliens. They say the authors of the Civil War-era amendment
included the citizenship provision so newly freed black slaves
would be legally considered citizens of the
United States
, whereas they were not before slavery was abolished.
They
point to the words of Sen. Jacob Howard, co-author of the
citizenship clause of the amendment, who declared in 1866:
"Every person born within the limits of the United
States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of
natural law and national law a citizen of the United States
This will not, of course, include persons born in the United
States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families
of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the
Government of the United States, but will include every other
class of persons."
Currently,
some congressional Republicans are considering legislation
that would end birthright citizenship and accompanying
provisions calling for the construction of a border fence.
WND
reported in October that, according to companies that
build fences along
U.S.
highways to muffle traffic noise for nearby residents, a
barrier along the entire 2,000-plus miles of U.S.-Mexican
border would cost about $1.4 billion, or about half of what
the Pentagon spends in
Iraq
a month.
A
separate congressional estimate by Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.,
for a two-tiered fence along the entire border was estimated
at about $8 billion.
The
Rasmussen telephone survey of 1,500 adults was conducted Nov.
4-6. The margin of sampling error for the survey is plus or
minus 4 percentage points with a 95 percent level of
confidence. In all, 37 percent of survey respondents were
Republican, 37 percent Democrat and 26 percent unaffiliated.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47279
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stories:
Highway
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Is
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