With former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris proposing to crack down on illegal immigration, a majority of Nevadans support opening more pathways to legal citizenship for undocumented people, according to new polling. 

The survey, conducted in Spanish and English by the Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy, found that the majority of Nevadans  prefer creating legal pathways for undocumented immigrants (65 percent) rather than mass deportations (24 percent). Most Nevadans favor strengthening the border (71 percent) and making it harder for immigrants in the country illegally to get employment by requiring employers to use the E-verify system (72 percent).

In Nevada, 55 percent of Republicans and 77 percent of Democrats said they supported a proposal outlined in the poll that would create a new type of visa that would allow undocumented immigrants who have been living in the U.S. for years to apply for citizenship, barring that they have not committed a serious crime. They would also pay a penalty and any taxes they owe, while those who didn’t qualify for the visa would be subject to deportation. Currently, no such path exists. 

One in 5 Nevadans are immigrants. Nevada has nearly 170,000 undocumented residents, one of the highest per-capita rates in the country.

Nevada’s proximity to the southern border makes immigration issues and the reality of a mass deportation campaign more salient than in more northern states, said Steven Kull, a political psychologist at the University of Maryland and director of the Program for Public Consultation. 

“There are more people living here who have been here for a while, who may not be documented,” said Kull. “It's not just a vague concept. They know a lot of people, and all those people would be gone, and that could be disruptive.” 

The University of Maryland poll is one of many issue-focused polls the group is conducting in swing states ahead of the 2024 general election. Across all six swing states surveyed (except Pennsylvania), Republicans and Democrats favored expanding legal pathways for immigrants, while also increasing the number of Border Patrol agents.

In Nevada, 599 adults were polled in online opt-in surveys from Sept. 23 to Oct. 1. The survey had a margin of error of 4.6 percent.

In open-ended answers, many respondents expressed the belief that creating more legal pathways would minimize exploitation of workers and improve economic competitiveness. 

“I’m from Puerto Rico, so I’m an American citizen, and my family came to the U.S. in search of a better life,” wrote one respondent. “The only difference between me and a person from Mexico or Honduras is the piece of dirt I was born on. If someone has been in the U.S. for years, worked honestly, paid taxes, and has become part of their community, they deserve clemency.” 

At the same time, a majority of Nevadans said that although they’d like to increase the availability of work visas, they believe it should be more difficult for undocumented immigrants to get employment. 

In Nevada, 74 percent of Republicans and 71 percent of Democrats surveyed said they are in favor of a proposal to require employers to check all new hires through E-Verify, a web-based system that confirms the eligibility of employees to work in the United States. A majority (69 percent) also said they supported a proposal to create work visas for immigrants to fill roles that haven’t been taken by American workers. 

Earlier this year, the Senate rejected a proposal to hire thousands more federal immigration and border personnel, but the PPC poll found that a majority of Nevadans across both parties support upping the number of Border Patrol agents from about 20,000 to 22,000. A plan to improve and expand walls along the southern border, estimated to cost about $25 billion, was favored by 79 percent of Nevada’s Republicans, but only 49 percent of the state’s Democrats. 

Vice President Kamala Harris has said that she would hire thousands more agents if elected as president. 

When informed about the record-breaking backlog of asylum cases, 67 percent of Nevadans said they’d favor hiring several hundred more immigration judges to help deal with the issue. Nevada was one of only three states surveyed where a majority of Republicans (59 percent) also supported the measure. 

“There's an overarching theme that goes through the whole survey, that Americans want the process to be more legal, ” Kull said. “For the 11 million or so people who've been here for a while, the desire is to integrate them into the legal system.”