Seventy-three percent (73%) of likely voters agreed that hospitals should be allowed to inquire and collect data about the immigration status of those seeking Emergency Room care without affecting the legal requirement that they must provide emergency care. Just 18% said no. Seventy-seven percent (77%) of the respondents believed that providing health insurance to illegal immigrants will just encourage more illegal immigration. After receiving emergency medical care, if it is determined that an illegal immigrant will require long term follow-up medical care, 47% believed that the person should be deported to his/her home country. 38% believed care should be provided, but time and cost limits should Be established for eventual deportation. Only 8% believed long term care should be provided in the U.S. Eighty-three percent (83%) of likely voters were very or somewhat concerned that the United States will add 135 million people to its population in the next 40 years, 75% of which is due to immigration. Republicans (90%) were more concerned than Democrats (74%). Seventy-eight percent (78%) of likely voters were opposed to legalizing the status of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. with only 19% supporting it. 88% of African-Americans were opposed to legalization. Fifty-five percent (55%) were opposed to a government insurance option under any national health care plan with 28% in favor and 17% not sure. 73% of Republicans were opposed with 11% in favor. A plurality of Democrats (47%) supported a government option with 34% opposed and 19% unsure.

Roy Beck is founder and president of NumbersUSA. He recalls that Boehner and other Republicans had campaigned in 2010 to do a better job of tackling the illegal alien problem.

"In terms of immigration, there is not one ounce of difference between Republican Speaker Boehner and Democratic Speaker Pelosi at this point," he compares. "A mandatory 50-state E-verify bill, and the speaker continues to block it. Behind the scenes we hear that he thinks that being for immigration enforcement will hurt the Republicans in the elections this fall."

But Beck believes that political calculation is wrong in light of what Republican presidential candidates have been saying.

 "Isn't it interesting that Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich have all for months been campaigning in favor of national mandatory E-verify," the NumbersUSA founder notes. "So he's trying to protect these Republican candidates who themselves are running on the issue."

 The advocate thinks it reprehensible that Boehner continues to block legislation that would drive millions of illegal aliens out of payroll jobs that could then be filled by millions of Americans who are currently out of work.

 NumbersUSA is a public policy organization that describes itself as "pro-environment, pro-worker, pro-liberty, and pro-immigrant." It provides activists with opportunities to contact their elected officials on policy decisions that impact overall immigration numbers.

"The problems caused by population still make environmental news, but population is forgotten," said Roy Beck, a longtime environmental journalist who founded Numbers U.S.A., a leading group advocating immigration reforms.

But to focus only on reducing every individual's impact, while remaining silent on how many individuals are living here, strikes critics like Beck as "bewildering.

"How anyone can think it is not both - average environmental impact times the number of people...that's like one and one equals two."

Beck and colleagues have analyzed Smart Growth, a key environmentalist remedy for sprawl development. Pioneered around the Chesapeake, Smart Growth uses government incentives and disincentives to pattern growth around existing towns, significantly reducing the land each new home carves out of farms and wildlife habitat.

It hasn't worked well, and one reason, Beck concluded in his analysis of 100 metropolitan centers nationwide, is that population growth itself drives about half of open space consumption.

 Beck called it "a great system," that if expanded could go a long way to dry up jobs for those without documentation. Right now E Verify fails to catch people who have stolen whole new identities, but Smith's bill would fix that by letting it cross-reference Social Security data.

Beck said that the "jobs Americans won't do tactic" is often just code for offering cheaper pay and fewer benefits. Other immigration experts cite coal mining and trash collection as "dirty, hard jobs," that pay decently and seldom go wanting for takers.

Immigration activists have sharply criticized President Obama for a rising volume of deportations, labeling him the "deporter in chief" and staging large protests that have harmed his standing with some Latinos, a key group of voters for Democrats.

But the portrait of a steadily increasing number of deportations rests on statistics that conceal almost as much as they disclose. A closer examination shows that immigrants living illegally in most of the continental U.S. are less likely to be deported today than before Obama came to office, according to immigration data.

I wanted to see
firsthand what's involved, so with the help of a local business, I
"applied" for a job with Carson-Mitchell Engineers.

Office Manager Cheryl
Zielke took down my basic information -- full name, middle initial, date of
birth and then asked for two key identifiers.

My driver's license
and my Social Security card.

The E-Verify system came
back with an answer in about five seconds.

"Employment is
authorized," Zielke said.