Registered voters in Georgia overwhelmingly oppose amnesty when asked about immigration’s impact on American jobs, according to a new poll.

Ninety percent of Republicans and 70 percent of Democrats said that Americans “should get the future jobs in Georgia” prior to the hiring of foreign workers.

Only 5.3 percent of Republicans say jobs should go to the cheapest workers, either Americans or foreign. This compares to 12.8 percent of Democrats and 16.2 percent of independents who say the same.

Those answers contradict the conventional media portrayal of GOP voters as anti-worker, and highlight the growing GOP focus on the lower-income workers who strongly oppose wage-cutting immigration. That populist trend helped businessman David Purdue win his Senate seat in 2014, despite his conflict with the state’s Chamber of Commerce.

The poll of 743 registered voters in Georgia was conducted Feb. 10 and 11 by Rosetta Stone Communications for the Atlanta-based Dustin Inman Society, which favors reduced immigration.

“We asked clear, straightforward questions on the topic of jobs, immigration and enforcement,” said D.A. King, founder of the society, in a statement.

The answers showed “the majority of Georgians comprehend the connection of employment and wages to the importation of large numbers of foreign workers and incrementally deferring to legally dubious [November] executive amnesty decrees from Barack Obama,” King said.

The poll also showed lopsided support for a pending state bill that prevent illegals in Georgia from getting drivers’ licenses.

Several recent polls on immigration and jobs have shown strong public support for the pro-American demand that companies hire Americans before hiring new immigrants.

But progressive and business pollsters showcase rival pro-immigration responses in polls that highlight America’s tradition of immigration. Most of those polls, however, also show strong opposition to illegal immigration among white, black and Latino voters.

The new Georgia poll was released as Democrats and the media pressure GOP legislators to accept Obama’s unpopular decision to change immigration enforcement.

Under his November amnesty, Obama’s deputies would end enforcement of immigration law for nearly all 12 million illegal immigrants, and also give work permits, tax bonuses, Social Security numbers, plus a quick path to citizenship, to four million of the illegals.

The GOP-drafted 2015 budget for the Department of Homeland Security bars any spending to implement Obama’s amnesty.

So far, all 46 Democratic senators have blocked any debate on the budget bill

Democrats and the media are trying to blame the standoff on the GOP’s opposition to the unpopular and arguably illegal amnesty, which may be blocked this week by a pending lawsuit in Texas. For example, a New York Times Feb. 16 article said the GOP bill would “revoke legal protections for millions of unauthorized immigrants, including children, and put them at risk of deportation.”

Partly because of pro-business priorities, GOP leaders in the Senate have been reluctant to push back against the Democratic effort to import more foreign workers.

Since 2009, Democratic immigration policies have flooded the U.S. labor market with roughly 11 million extra foreign workers, despite high U.S unemployment. Since 2000, the federal government has added two foreign workers for every new job in the economy.

That’s had a huge impact on the labor market and on Americans’ middle-class wages.

In November 2014, one in every five U.S. jobs was held by a foreign-born worker, up from one-in-six jobs in January 2010, according to federal data highlighted by the Center for Immigration Studies.

Each year, four million young Americans begin competing for jobs against at least 10 million unemployed Americans, against roughly 2 million annual new immigrants and against a resident pool of roughly two million guest-workers.

However, GOP leaders and 2016 presidential candidates are reluctant to engage in the battle over immigration and work.

That’s partly because major business donors strongly support increased immigration of of government-subsidized foreign customers and workers.

The Georgia poll showed that Americans overwhelmingly favor tougher enforcement of immigration laws.

Only 20 percent of respondents favored legalization of illegals, while 62 percent favored their repatriation.

The poll showed 65 percent of respondents believe the government is not doing enough to enforce immigration laws. Only 10 percent of respondents said the federal government is doing too much, while 12 percent said the government is enforcing the laws “just right.”

The Georgia poll was partly intended to show public support for a bill that would end the practice of giving drivers’ licenses to illegals.

This practice has the support of business groups, because they allow the lower-wage illegals to compete for jobs sought by Americans, and progressive groups, because they help increase the illegal immigration of government-dependent clients into American communities.

The pending bill is being pushed by Republican state Sen. Joshua McKoon.

The poll showed that 63.6 percent of voters, including 80 percent of Republicans and 68.5 percent of independents — but only 37.4 percent of Democrats – support legislation that would stop the state’s practice of giving drivers’ licenses to illegals.

The drivers’ license reform is opposed by only 15 percent of Republicans and independents apiece, as well as 33.7 percent of Democrats.

A similar push was successful in Oregon last November, when 66 percent of voters in the Democratic-leaning state passed an amendment reversing a state law granting licenses to illegals. “All you have to look at is what happened in Oregon… I think that’s the sentiment of the American people,” Sen. Johnny Isakson said Nov. 18, according to the Marietta Daily Journal.

But “many GOP state senators are doing almost comical verbal contortions trying to excuse their refusal to co-sponsor the [license] legislation,” King told The Daily Caller.

The poll can help bypass the local media’s ideological alliance with local business interests, King said. The established media “in Republican-ruled Georgia is treating the entire mess with a cone of silence… No one here will be surprised if this poll goes unreported,” he said.

“The Georgia Chamber of Commerce, the Atlanta Metro Area Chamber of Commerce, Big Ag and the ACLU coalition are pretty sure they can prevent a floor vote by silently smothering the bill in the committee process,” he told TheDC.

The state GOP is also trying to ignore the issue, he said. “Georgia has more illegal aliens than Arizona,and ranks number seven in the nation in that population… [and] we are watching the Republican leadership defer to Obama on amnesty,” he said.

‘We have taken to calling them the Obama wing of the Georgia Republican Party,” he added.

However, new media are helping the public recognize the costs of large-scale illegal immigration, he said.

Georgians are “learning that illegal aliens are getting drivers licenses and other public benefits,” King said.

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Tags: amnesty, Barack Obama, Immigration