Protesters supporting DACA take to the streets following Attorney Gen. Sessions announcement that the Obama-era program has been rescinded. | M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO Poll: Majority wants Congress to establish path to citizenship for DACA recipients

A majority of voters want Congress to pass legislation that allows undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children to become citizens if they meet certain requirements, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll conducted following the Trump administration’s decision to wind down the program protecting these so-called Dreamers from deportation.

The poll — conducted in the days after Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the administration was ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which Sessions described as “unilateral executive amnesty” that “contributed to a surge of unaccompanied minors on the southern border” and “denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans” — shows that 54 percent of voters want Congress to establish a path to citizenship for DACA recipients, and another 19 percent want Congress to allow them to stay without establishing citizenship.


“Not only do a majority, 73 percent, of voters want legislation protecting Dreamers from deportation, a majority want Congress to make that a priority,” said Kyle Dropp, Morning Consult’s co-founder and chief research officer. “Overall, 65 percent of voters say protecting Dreamers should be either an important or top priority for Congress.”

Just 35 percent say ending the DACA program was the right thing to do — fewer than the 45 percent who say it was the wrong thing to do. Two-in-10 voters are not sure.

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The polling data largely stand in contrast to Sessions’ statement last week but are perhaps more in line with President Donald Trump’s comments about DACA recipients. “I have a lot of love for these people, and hopefully now Congress will be able to help them and do it properly,” Trump said the same day Sessions made the announcement.

Only 12 percent of voters want Congress to pass legislation that removes or deports Dreamers — though failing to act within the administration’s six-month window may have the same effect.

Last week’s POLITICO/Morning Consult poll , which was conducted before the administration’s decision, also found little support for deporting undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. But Trump’s decision to wind down the DACA program has done little to alter public opinion.

In last week’s poll, 24 percent of Republicans thought DACA recipients should be deported; this week, 20 percent think Congress should codify that policy. Two-thirds of self-identified Trump voters wanted these immigrants to be allowed to stay in last week’s survey, and 68 percent of Trump voters want Congress to pass legislation that lets them remain in the U.S. in the new poll.

Even if voters, on the whole, want Congress to protect these immigrants from deportation, they don’t have much faith in the legislative branch to act. Only 17 percent say they are very confident Congress will pass such a measure in the next six months, with another 23 percent saying they are somewhat confident. But more voters are either not too confident (29 percent) or not confident at all (14 percent) Congress will be able to act in the next six months to protect them from deportation.

More voters now trust Democrats in Congress to handle immigration, 40 percent, than the 38 percent who trust Republicans. That is within the poll’s margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points, though it’s the first time since the POLITICO/Morning Consult poll began asking the question earlier this year that Democrats have led on it.

While DACA was a political storm for the administration last week, the poll also asked voters about recent extreme weather and whether they think climate change played a role in Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

More than a third, 34 percent, say climate change has contributed a lot to these storms, and another 27 percent say climate change has made some contribution. Only a combined 22 percent say climate change hasn’t had much of an impact or any impact at all.

Moreover, a 52 percent majority says climate change is making natural disasters more frequent — the same percentage that say it is making these disasters more powerful. Just a quarter of voters say climate change is not making natural disasters more frequent or more powerful.

Overall, 66 percent of voters say they are either very or somewhat concerned about climate change and the impact it is having on the environment — though that is mostly unchanged from the last time the question was asked, in April.

The poll of 1,976 registered voters was conducted September 7-11.

Morning Consult is a nonpartisan media and technology company that provides data-driven research and insights on politics, policy and business strategy.

More details on the poll and its methodology can be found in these two documents — Toplines: http://politi.co/2eTzd6p | Crosstabs: http://politi.co/2wYCCZP

