67% Favor Automatic Police Immigration Checks

Most voters continue to favor strong sanctions on employers who hire illegal immigrants and landlords who rent to them. Voters also feel strongly that police should check the immigration status of drivers during routine traffic stops.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 67% of Likely U.S. Voters believe that when a police officer pulls someone over for a traffic violation, he should automatically check to see if that person is in the country legally. That’s down slightly from 73% from November 2007 when Rasmussen Reports first asked the question.

Twenty-four percent (24%) say police officers should not make an automatic immigration check on drivers pulled over for traffic violations. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on March 8-9 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.