Hard Line on Immigration Resonates Less with Young Republicans, Surveysays

Protesters at a Donald J. Trump campaign event at the Flynn Theater in Burlington, Vt., on Jan. 7.Credit Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The New York Times

Article: http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/03/29/hard-line-on-immigration-resonates-less-with-young-republicans-survey-shows/
Survey: http://publicreligion.org/research/2016/03/survey-how-americans-view-immigrants-and-what-they-want-from-immigration-reform-findings-from-the-2015-american-values-atlas/#.VvwzNxJlBJ9

A survey by the Public Religion Research Institute has yeilded interesting results. The survey data shows that a significant number of Americans from the age of 18-29 believe that the impact of immigrants strengthens American society rather than threatens it with a ratio of 68% believing positively and 19% believing negatively and 13% undecided or no preference. It's no shock that younger Americans would seem more accepting and liberal that their elders, it's in fact fairly typical of society for the younger generation to be more liberal.

The fact still remains that even as the survey polled older Americans a significant number still believe that immigrants had a positive impact on society. 30-49 years: 53% positive, 31% negative, 15% neutral; 50-64 year: 42% positive, 43% negative, 15% neutral; 65 and older: 36% positive, 44% negative, 20% neutral. Although the percentage of individuals that believe the presence of immigrants is a positive does indeed decrease, it still remains a significant percentage. At the age range of 50 and above, approximately a third of the individuals still believe in the positive.

Another interesting statistic originates from another graph by the PRRI. 

This graph indicates that the individuals polled ranged in beliefs and yet again even with those who most oppose the positives of the presence of immigrants, white evangelical Protestants, still retain a  percentage that acknowledges the positives.

 And the percentage of all Americans believing in the positives is concurrent with the previous graph. 50% of all Americans acknowlege and believe that immigrants have an impact that strengthens American culture.

There's an interesting spin from the NY Times article, it seems that the author blended the information from two graphs to support their consensus that the younger republicans were more likely to support the the idea of allowing immigrants to attain citizenship as opposed to deporting them.

I understand being content to pull information from the NY Times article can be satisfying enough for someone, I encourage taking a look at the RPPI list of graphs and statistics. It much more satisfying comparing the differing values yourself than reading about someone else forming an argument from them.