Should Idaho’s Dreamers have a path to legal status? Here’s what our statewide poll shows
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Idaho Statesman/SurveyUSA poll series
We commissioned a statewide poll through SurveyUSA on abortion access, LGBTQ rights, medical marijuana, education spending, DACA and election fraud. Read the results here.
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Half of the Idahoans surveyed in a poll commissioned by the Idaho Statesman believe there should be a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.
Children who were brought to the U.S. before their 16th birthday, and who meet other federal requirements, qualify for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The program known as DACA was announced by then-President Barack Obama in 2012, to protect undocumented immigrants from deportation and to make them eligible to work in the U.S.
The program is in jeopardy after a federal judge declared it illegal last year. U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen last month ruled that DACA recipients can continue in the program, but new applications cannot be approved. People who have DACA status can renew their applications, The Associated Press reported. The AP reported that the question over DACA’s legality is expected to go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
There were an estimated 2,760 DACA recipients in Idaho as of March 2020, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, with more than 1,100 in the Boise area.
With DACA’s future uncertain, many “Dreamers,” another term for immigrants with DACA status, are calling on Congress to pass permanent protections for DACA recipients. Congress has failed multiple times to pass the DREAM Act, which would provide a path to citizenship for these immigrants.
The DACA polling results were part of a statewide poll on several contentious issues in Idaho. Results on questions related to the 2020 election, abortion, marijuana and other topics are being released throughout the week at IdahoStatesman.com. The poll was conducted Oct. 17-20 online and by phone, with the pool of 550 adults surveyed weighted to U.S. Census targets for gender, age, race, education and home ownership.
The Statesman’s poll results show that 50% of Idaho adults surveyed supported a path to legal status, while 36% said there should not be such a path and 13% were not sure.
Democrats were far more likely to support a path to citizenship than Republicans — with support at 86% for Democrats and 38% for Republicans.
Most striking to Bri Gillis, vice president of political strategy with the National Immigration Law Center’s Immigrant Justice Fund, was the number of moderates who supported a path to citizenship in the poll, 61%, and the number of independents who supported a path, 51%. The National Immigration Law Center is a national organization dedicated to supporting immigrants and noncitizens.
“Those are really strong numbers,” Gillis said by phone. “That combination plus the almost full support from Democrats in the state shows that there’s a real significant broad support.”
In 2017, when then-President Donald Trump decided to phase out the DACA program, Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden, then-U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador and then-Gov. Butch Otter all released statements that supported the program’s end.
The Statesman’s polling data shows a disconnect between elected officials’ push to end DACA and how their constituents feel, Gillis said.
“Idaho being as conservative as it is, and this issue still polling this well, is a really clear signal that elected officials need to be taking this issue seriously,” Gillis said. “They need to be responding to the concerns of their constituents.”
Dalia Pedro Trujillo, an attorney with Immigrant Justice Idaho and a DACA recipient herself, said that in her work she sees broad support for a path to citizenship for Dreamers and for other undocumented people in Idaho.
“Idahoans engage with our undocumented and noncitizen communities in all aspects of our lives and all of our different industries,” Trujillo said by phone. “People are generally supportive of immigration reform in a way that I think our political leaders aren’t advocating for.”
This story was originally published November 3, 2022 at 2:48 PM.
