Majority of US voters disagree with Trump immigration policy: Poll

A national opinion poll has shown that nearly two-thirds of Americans disagree with President Donald Trump’s immigration policies and would like to see a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants rather than deportations.

A CNN/ORC poll published on Friday indicated that 60 percent of the voters say a pathway for legal residency should be the US government’s immigration top priority, so that those who are in the US illegally and have jobs can become legal residents.

This is while 13 percent described as “priority number one,” the deportation of illegal immigrants and 26 percent said developing a plan to stop illegal border crossings should be prioritized.

The survey was conducted nationwide via cellphone and landline telephone interviews from 1,025 US adults between March 1 and 4. It has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

On January 25, the US president ordered executive actions to begin the construction of the border wall on the Mexican border to stop illegal immigrants from entering the US and increase the number of immigration enforcement officers who carry out deportations in the US.

Trump called for the construction of a wall along the 3,200-kilometer US-Mexico border as well as hiring 5,000 more border patrol agents and 10,000 more immigration agents in 2017.

During his 2016 election campaign, Trump had described illegal Mexican immigrants entering the US as “rapists” and “murderers” and insisted that Mexico would have to pay for his planned wall, generating diplomatic tensions with Mexico.

The businessman-turned-politician also signed an executive order on January 27 temporarily banning entry to the United States by travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries and all refugees. The order to stop entry of travelers from Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Libya was put on hold by federal courts.

The sudden implementation of the order plunged the immigration system into chaos, sparking a wave of criticism from targeted countries, Washington’s allies and some of America’s leading corporations, especially technology firms, which lean heavily on talented immigrants.

Earlier this month, Trump replaced his executive order with a new one, excluding Iraq from the ban order.