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Boston Globe
3 days ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
More Americans support path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants with no criminal background, UMass poll finds
But a strong majority, 69 percent, support deporting undocumented immigrants who have criminal records, according to the release. This is down from an Advertisement 'These results suggest that the Trump administration, if it desires to be in step with the public that they represent, should emphasize the detention and removal of undocumented immigrants with criminal records,' Tatishe Nteta, provost professor of political science at UMASS and the poll's director, said in the release. The Trump Administration has vowed to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants, and has authorized aggressive enforcement tactics, such as raiding schools, churches and other venues that have long been safe havens for immigrants. The poll also found that only 30 percent supported deporting undocumented immigrants who work full time and pay taxes. Around 37 percent of poll respondents supported deporting undocumented immigrants who had no criminal record outside of their immigration status and 33 percent of respondents supported deporting those whose children were born in the U.S. Advertisement The poll found that Americans support protections for legal immigrants as well. A majority of respondents said that immigrants on valid visas should be entitled to constitutional rights that citizens enjoy like freedom of speech. A minority of respondents thought legal immigrants, like international students involved in protests, should be deported for expressing opposition to American foreign policy. The poll also found bipartisan opposition to reducing federal spending on scientific research at universities and requiring colleges to consider ideological diversity in hiring and admissions, according to the release. The poll of 1000 national respondents was conducted by the website YouGov between July 25 and July 30 and the margin of error for the poll was 3.5 percent. A little over 50 percent of respondents oppose immigration enforcement in churches, schools and hospitals but public opinion is split when it comes to enforcement elsewhere. For example, around 43 percent of respondents supported immigration enforcement at home and 40 percent at workplaces, according to the results. There was a big partisan gap on the question of where immigration enforcement was acceptable with 65 percent of Republicans supporting immigration enforcement at churches and hospitals while support for enforcement at these venues among Democrats was in the single digits. Around 70 percent of poll respondents said that immigrants in the country on valid visas should be entitled to the constitutional rights that citizens have such as freedom of speech, the right to an attorney when accused of a crime and the right to a hearing before a judge before deportation, among others. Advertisement Around 22 percent of respondents opposed deporting legal immigrants on the basis of their opposition to American foreign policy, an objective the Trump administration has been pursuing when it comes to international students like Tufts University PhD candidate, Rümeysa Öztürk who expressed opposition to the war in Gaza. Support for these deportations was higher among Republicans, conservatives and Trump voters, but did not exceed 50 percent in those groups. Angela Mathew can be reached at
Boston Globe
19-03-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
White supremacists are trying to reconquer the United States
A lot of folks would find those numbers embarrassingly low, but Trump and the other zealots who now run this country have decided they've lost too much ground to people who don't look like them, that every gain other people make is necessarily a loss for themselves. Advertisement Every day, our new overlords make it clear they believe white people, especially white men, are the only ones they can be sure truly deserve their jobs. They can tell the others are unqualified just by looking at them. So the only possible explanation for the presence of people of color and members of other marginalized groups in desirable positions is that they're getting unfair advantages. Those of us who live in real reality call that being white supremacists. These racist throwbacks have always been with us, rearing their heads higher after big civil rights advances they find appalling. But now it's the government leading the revanchism. 'What is shocking for many is, the perpetrator of these efforts is so clearly the federal government,' said Tatishe Nteta, provost professor of political science at UMass Amherst. 'That has not occurred since before the civil rights era.' Advertisement The message now is that the only way to stop white men's suffering is to put everyone else back in their places. Which means shutting down every impulse to make ours a more equal society – purging those who seek to make schools and workplaces look more like the actual world, erasing from government websites the excellence and achievements of nonwhite people – Black veterans buried in Arlington cemetery. At the Defense department, this came courtesy of Secretary Pete Hegseth, a veteran with a Trump and his henchmen are turning back the hard-won gains of the civil rights movement, targeting the very people that movement rose up to protect. Now, we are told, it is white people who need the protection of the federal government against employment discrimination. It is they who are persecuted, they who are harmed when books and history lessons teach kids that slavery was a horror and Rosa Parks was a hero. And so these two Boston law firms, both of them committed to diversifying their ranks, got their threatening letters from EEOC. Many other firms did, too. 'This administration doesn't seem to be bothered by wasting taxpayer dollars engaging in frivolous legal action,' said Sophia Hall, deputy litigation director at Lawyers for Civil Rights. But even if their demands are frivolous, or found to be legally dubious, a weaponized EEOC can still make life miserable for a company, Hall said. They can issue subpoenas and demand reams of documentation, sucking up resources. Advertisement The letters alone could even be enough to chill diversity efforts at big law firms – or discourage them from representing clients who challenge Trump directives. We've certainly seen The law firms did not respond to emails seeking comment. They have until April 15 to respond to Trump's demands, but they can also resist them. Nteta's If a bunch of high-priced lawyers won't stand up to Trump, who will? Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham can be reached at
