College-age Americans strongly favor the idea of the DREAM Act, a proposal that would allow undocumented immigrants who entered the country as children to have a legal pathway to residency if they served in the military or went to college.
According to a new national survey by Public Religion Research Institute and Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, of more than 2,000 Americans between 18-24 years of age surveyed, 61 percent support the DREAM Act.
Based on religious affiliation, 68 percent of Catholic millennials favor the DREAM Act, compared to 61percent of black Protestant millennials and 55 percent of white mainline Protestant millennials.
College-aged white evangelical Protestants oppose the DREAM Act – 54 percent to 43 percent.
Seventy-two percent of those surveyed favor the so-called Buffet Rule, a proposal that would increase the rate of taxation on those making more than $1 million a year.
“Majorities of all religious groups favor increasing the tax rate on Americans earning more than $1 million a year,” read the report.
Fifty-six percent of Republican millennials support the “Buffet Rule,” while 70 percent of Independents and 84 percent of Democratic millennials do.
Seventy-three percent of millennials think the nation’s economic system “unfairly favors the wealthy,” compared to 24 percent who disagree with that perspective.
Almost 70 percent want the government to close the gap between the rich and the poor, compared to 28 percent who oppose such involvement.
In terms of self-identification along racial and ethnic lines, 57 percent of college-age millennials identify themselves as white, compared to 21 percent as Hispanic, 14 percent as African-American and 6 percent as another race.
The survey found that college-age millennials are divided on “whether discrimination against whites has become as big a problem today as discrimination against blacks” with 48 percent agreeing and 47 percent disagreeing.
Millennials are also divided over same-gender sex with 48 percent saying it is morally acceptable and 44 percent saying it is morally wrong.
Fifty-nine percent do favor the legal right for same-sex couples to marry. Thirty-seven percent oppose same-sex marriage.
Unlike the larger population, millennials are “more likely … to be religiously unaffiliated.”
Twenty-five percent identify themselves as unaffiliated with a religious body.
Twenty-three percent hold that the Bible “is the word of God and should be taken literally, word for word, compared to 26 percent who believe the Bible “is the word of God, but that not everything in the Bible should be taken literally.”
Thirty-seven percent say the “Bible is a book written by men and is not the word of God.”
