By Mark Murray
Nearly half of Americans disapprove of President Barack Obama’s expected plan to take executive action that would potentially allow millions of undocumented immigrants to stay legally in the United States, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
Forty-eight percent oppose Obama taking executive action on immigration -- which could come as soon as later this week -- while 38 percent support it; another 14 percent have no opinion or are unsure.
Not surprisingly, these numbers largely break along partisan lines: 63 percent of Democrats approve of Obama taking executive action here, versus just 11 percent of Republicans and 37 percent of independents.
Latinos are divided, with 43 percent supporting the action and 37 percent opposing it. But the sample size here is small (just 110 Latino respondents), so the numbers have a high margin of error.
As NBC News has previously reported, the Obama White House is finalizing a set of proposals to allow as many as five million undocumented immigrants to stay in the country legally, including the parents of children who are American citizens and those with high-tech skills.
The new NBC/WSJ poll also finds a majority of Americans (57 percent) favoring a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, and that increases to 74 percent when respondents are told that such a pathway requires paying fines and back taxes, as well as passing a security background check.
In June 2013, the U.S. Senate -- by a bipartisan 68-32 vote -- passed legislation creating this pathway for undocumented immigrants, plus bolstering security of the U.S.-Mexico border.
But the GOP-controlled House of Representatives declined to take up the legislation -- or even to pass its own bill.
And that is what has spurred President Obama's decision to take executive action.
The rest of the NBC/WSJ poll -- which was conducted Nov. 14-17 and has an overall margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points -- will be released at 6:30 pm ET.
First published November 19 2014, 9:00 AM
Mark Murray
Mark Murray is the Senior Political Editor at NBC News, where he covers politics for the network, writes and edits its popular “First Read†blog, and appears daily on MSNBC and Washington DC’s NBC affiliate to discuss the latest political news.
He also serves as a key manager of NBC’s political coverage, giving direction to the network’s reporters and producers.
Before joining NBC News in 2003, Murray spent five years as a reporter at National Journal. And he has written freelance articles published in the New York Times (Sunday op-ed page), the Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Monthly, Washingtonian magazine, and Washington City Paper.
Murray is a 1996 graduate of the University of Texas at Austin (B.A.), and he resides in Washington DC.
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