A supermajority of Americans want employers to comply with federal immigration law that bans the unfair workplace replacement of American citizens by illegal migrants, according to a new poll.
“It’s ridiculous that a business that breaks the law [by hiring cheap illegals] is better off than a business that follows the law,” Rosemary Jenks, a cofounder of the Immigration Accountability Project, said.
Many honest and productive American businesses get crushed when dishonest companies hire “disposable” migrants and pay them with off-the-books cash, she said.
The bad economic incentive “is insane, that just completely undermines the rule of law,” Jenks said. “By applying the [immigration] rules consistently across the board, you ensure that there is no unfair competitive advantage” for companies that breach the law, she added.
The poll showed that 77 percent of Americans agree that “Businesses that repeatedly violate immigration hiring laws should face escalating penalties.”
Eighty-two percent want the federal government to notify “employers when their employees’ Social Security numbers don’t match government records, so employers can take action to ensure they are not employing illegal migrants.”
The poll reflects strong public support for a national labor market in which Americans can bargain for jobs with employers on a level playing field. Most illegal migrants will work for lower wages than Americans, partly because they accept a far lower standard of living. Their back-home families also need less money to survive.
The poll is timely because GOP-aligned business groups are pressuring President Donald Trump to abandon his campaign promise of mass deportations, and instead deport only violent migrants. Business groups are also using polls to push the incoming homeland security chief, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), to stop the deportation of illegal migrants who hold jobs in hotels, farms, the food industry, landscaping, the retail sector, and much else.
“The only way to get to mass deportations is to encourage [migrants’] self-deportation,” Jenks, who is part of the new Mass Deportation Coalition and funded the poll, said.
She also told Breitbart News:
The more you can make illegal aliens unemployable, the more likely they are to leave on their own … Any you’ve got to actually apprehend and remove the illegal aliens who are found on the work sites — not just go through the [company] paperwork and tell the employers who hired them.
Jenks’ populist-minded poll was conducted by McLaughlin & Associates. It included 2,000 likely voters and was conducted in late February and early March. The poll showed:
Four in five (82% to 13%) agree that immigration policy should serve the interests of American citizens. Roughly half (47%) “strongly” agrees … 7 in 10 (70% to 24%) Hispanics agree.
…
Three-quarters (74% to 13%) believe big corporations should NOT be allowed to benefit from cheaper illegal migrant labor, when that labor is subsidized by American taxpayers, who pay for their education, health care, and other benefits …
Four in five (80% to 13%) consider it unfair for the wealthy to benefit from illegal migrant labor while the working class has to compete against illegal migrant labor.
Jenks’ poll also shows that 72 percent of likely voters support the federal government conducting “regular audits and enforcement actions at businesses that knowingly hire illegal migrants.”
Seventy-one percent want the government to penalize companies that hire illegal migrants.
Seventy percent support “strengthening workplace immigration enforcement to help raise wages for American workers.”
Sixty-nine percent support “allowing the IRS to fine employers that hire illegal migrants.”
Migration and Pocketbooks
There is growing evidence that Trump’s policies are pushing more wealth to ordinary Americans.
Federal and market data show that wages are up and housing costs are down. Inflation is declining, transport costs are shrinking, crime is dropping, and corporations are spending heavily to help Americans become more productive. The resulting prosperity will likely help to raise birth rates as husbands earn higher wages and wives gain greater confidence in the future.
The reduced use of migrants is forcing up wages for construction workers, including Hispanic Americans. “The construction industry is experiencing its most dramatic compensation transformation in decades,” a December 2025 report by The Birmingham Group said:
The current labor shortage is driving unprecedented wage increases [for Americans] across commercial projects. Construction firms report difficulty filling critical positions, with some markets experiencing job opening-to-candidate ratios exceeding 3:1. This imbalance has created a seller’s market for skilled workers, enabling significant salary negotiations and competitive pay packages.
Employers also minimize their investment in high-tech productivity gains when they can rely on cheap and “disposable” migrants.
“We’re going to need robots … to make our economy run because we do not have enough people,” President Donald Trump told Breitbart News, adding, “We have to get efficient … we’ll probably add to [the existing workforce] through robotically — it’s going to be robotically … It’s going to be big. Then, somebody is going to have to make the robots.”
More Republican politicians are recognizing the pocketbook damage done to Americans and their companies by illegal migration. In Georgia, for example, Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) is leading the GOP’s nomination race, partly because of his populist pitch.
The public is not enthusiastic about one alternative to the problem — pressuring companies to buy the high-tech machinery that allows Americans to do more of the labor now performed by migrants. The poll showed:
Eliminating migrant worker exploitation by increasing automation and mechanization of farms and factories is divisive (36% yes, 32% no and 32% don’t know).
The plurality of Trump voters (45% to 22%) and Republicans (45% to 21%) favor it, but it’s under 50%. The plurality of Democrats (43% to 31%) and Independents (34% to 29%) oppose it.
White voters, the poll found, are evenly divided at 33%, while Hispanics lean in favor of it (40% to 36%).
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