Poll Shows Greater Tolerance Of Immigrants

Most Americans have regular contact with new immigrants and are more accepting of them than they were just a few years ago, a poll released Sunday suggests.

And most of those polled said immigration has had little effect on them or their communities, according to the survey.

The poll of 1,314 whites, blacks and Hispanics, all citizens or residents of the United States since at least 1980, was conducted for Knight-Ridder Newspapers by Princeton Survey Research Associates.

Forty-five percent of those polled said recent immigrants have had a positive impact on the nation, 42 percent said immigrants harm the nation as a whole and 10 percent said the effects are mixed - a statistical tossup.

That is a drop in anti-immigration sentiment from 1993-1995 when 60 percent of Americans told pollsters that the influx of foreigners was bad for the country.