In this photo from July 2021, a person stands next to the U.S.-Mexico border barrier in Tijuana, Mexico, painted with a mural depicting people who arrived in the U.S. illegally as children and were deported as adults. (Mario Tama | Getty Images)

Swing state voters, including in Wisconsin, favor a number of immigration policy changes, according to a new survey. “Mass deportation” — promised by the Republican candidate for president, former President Donald Trump — isn’t one of them.

The survey isn’t aimed at simply taking the public’s immediate temperature on issues at the top of the political agenda, however.

Produced by  the Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland, it’s part of a project that asks people how they want to see various social and civic problems solved after they are informed about the details and pros and cons of various options.

The goal “is to give the public a greater voice, bring the public to the table, give them a meaningful understanding of the issues [and] widen the range of issues that they can engage with and articulate their views on,” program director Steven Kull said in an interview.

The process helps counteract public misinformation about subjects, at least among poll participants, Kull said. It also aims to open people’s minds to opposing arguments for policies. “People often can go inside silos and not hear arguments on both sides,” he  said.

Kull believes surveys that simply ask a person’s opinion on a policy proposal fall short unless they make room for people to fully consider context: the nature of the problem itself and the potential consequences of various options. Those surveys also don’t adequately engage the public in thinking about and helping to shape effective policy, he contends.

Simply asking the public’s opinion of “mass deportation” of immigrants who are in the U.S. without legal status is an example.

“What it exactly means is not very clear,” Kull said. “It’s just kind of a feeling statement.”

Letting the public assess options

Addressing the impending shortfall in the Social Security system offers another illustration.

Asked about raising the retirement age or raising the payroll tax that funds the program, most people are likely to give a thumbs-down to both options, Kull said — while at the same time affirming that they want Social Security to remain viable.

“And you put those together and you go, ‘Oh, the public’s a big baby. They don’t really understand these things. And it’s third rail, better stay away from it,’” Kull said.

By contrast, the Program for Public Consultation’s survey began with a presentation of alternatives for dealing with Social Security’s threatened insolvency. Survey participants were then asked about those alternatives — including combining several as part of an overall solution.

“We presented all the options and told them what the effects would be of each one, and evaluated arguments pro and con,” Kull said. “There were majorities that did address the Social Security shortfall effectively and made hard decisions.”

Going against stereotype, “Democrats cut benefits, Republicans raised taxes,” he added. “And there was actually a remarkable amount of convergence.”

The proposed benefit cuts in the survey were for the highest 20% of earners, and the tax increase consisted of gradually raising the payroll tax from 6.2% to 6.5% of income, as well as subjecting income over $400,000 to the payroll tax, currently capped at $169,000.

The Program for Public Consultation has been conducting surveys over the last several months on subjects that have been at the forefront of the 2024 election campaigns. The surveys have included national samples as well as samples from six battleground states in the presidential race.

Kull said the policy simulations at the heart of the program present issues in language comprehensible to someone with a high school education. Alternatives are also reviewed by proponents and opponents of each proposal.

A survey reported in early September examined public response on abortion rights. It showed majorities opposed criminalizing abortion, although Democrats and Republicans differed in the percentage taking that position.

Focusing on immigration

The immigration survey released Thursday asks participants to consider how to address the presence of 11 million immigrants in the U.S. without any legal status. Trump and other Republican candidates have sought to center undocumented immigrants, often with misleading or false claims about crime, and Trump has emphasized his intention to conduct a mass deportation of immigrants if he’s elected.

The survey reviewed various policy alternatives. Among them were provisions from the 2013 immigration reform legislation that passed the U.S. Senate on a bipartisan 68-32 vote but died in the House of Representatives.

“All the main elements are here, and they all get pretty robust majority support, and most of it bipartisan,” Kull said.

The survey’s proposed “path to legal citizenship” describes the creation of a new visa for undocumented immigrants already in the U.S. who meet certain conditions. The visa would allow them to apply for citizenship after several years.

The survey projects that removing 11 million immigrants without legal status from the U.S. would cost $100 billion or more.

Given those descriptions, 63% of Wisconsinites in the survey preferred the path to citizenship over deportation. That included 77% of Democrats and 41% of Republicans.

Overall 25% of Wisconsinites in the survey favored mass deportation, including 14% of Democrats and 36% of Republicans. The remaining 11% of Wisconsin participants (12% of Republicans and 9% of Democrats) favored neither alternative.

The survey’s Wisconsin sample consisted of 605 people.

Bipartisan agreement — sometimes

While the strength of support or opposition to those and other policy options varied from state to state, survey participants in five other swing states and the national survey sample all favored the path to citizenship over mass deportation, although support from Democrats was higher.

Similar bipartisan majorities favor hiring more Border Patrol agents, requiring employers to use E-Verify to confirm all hires are legally allowed to work in the U.S. and increasing the number of work visas that would allow migrant workers to enter the U.S. legally.

Some policies show a partisan division, at least in some states. A majority of Wisconsin Republicans — 54% — oppose hiring more immigration judges to reduce the backlog of applicants seeking asylum, while 76% of Democrats support that option. Overall, 61% of Wisconsinites in the survey were in favor. 

Building more walls on the border — which survey participants are told would cost about $25 billion — was favored by 55% of Wisconsinites overall, and by 76% of Wisconsin Republicans. It was opposed by 54% of Democrats

Members of the public can visit the program website and go through the policymaking simulation themselves. It is available in English and Spanish.

The program’s swing state survey findings might not be able to predict how people will vote on the issues in the coming election, but Kull said he doesn’t believe simpler surveys are able to do that reliably, either.

“The response to the question, ‘Do you favor or oppose mass deportation?’ doesn’t really give us anything,” he said. “It can just be people kind of reacting randomly.”

For Kull, the survey findings suggest a common theme in the concerns that participants have about immigration.

“The public is frustrated that the process is in this kind of chaos,” he said. In the survey, “there’s basically support for every step that assimilates the process into a legal framework.”