Politico reports:

Donald Trump’s immigration raids may be backfiring in California, even among Republicans and independents who otherwise support tougher border security, according to a new poll from POLITICO and its partners.

Nearly three-quarters of registered voters in the state — including roughly half of Republicans — said removing millions of undocumented immigrants from the workforce would hurt California’s economy, the latest POLITICO-Citrin Center-Possibility Lab poll found. And roughly 80 percent of voters, including a majority of Republicans, said undocumented immigrants already in the U.S. illegally should remain in some fashion.

That’s despite a sizable majority of California voters, 62 percent, saying it’s important for the U.S. to secure its borders and curb illegal immigration, including 46 percent of Democrats.

About half of California voters favor a pathway to citizenship, while smaller proportions favor eligibility for permanent residency and temporary work permits.

There’s “an impulse of empathy and humanity, and realism about the difficulty and the unfairness of all of a sudden, out of the blue, coming from people who might have been here for 10 years, have families here, et cetera,” said Jack Citrin, a political science professor at UC Berkeley and partner on the poll. [Continue reading…]