The Supreme Court will soon rule on Arizona’s immigration law, which requires police to determine the immigration status of people they have stopped whom they suspect might be in the country illegally.

Most Americans continue to support the law: 58% approve, while just 38% disapprove. This is slightly less support than the 64% who approved of the law when it was first passed in 2010.

But opinion is divided along racial and ethnic lines. Three-quarters (75%) of Hispanics oppose the law, as do 56% of blacks, while whites support the law by greater than two-to-one (69% to 28%).

Fully 84% of Republicans approve of the immigration law, unchanged since 2010. But support has dropped among both Democrats and independents. In June 2010, 65% of independents approved of the recently passed legislation. That has slipped to 59% today. And in 2010, Democrats were split over the new law – 50% approved while 46% disapproved. Today, a majority of Democrats disapprove (55%), while 41% approve. Read More

Russell Heimlich  is a former web developer at Pew Research Center.