More Tennesseans say they would support a path to legal employment and residency for illegal immigrants, a Middle Tennessee State University poll released this month revealed.

Nearly half polled — 47 percent — supported and 42 percent opposed the idea of a "guest worker" program. That's compared to the 50 percent who opposed such a program in last year's polling. This year, 63 percent polled said they would support a path to legal residency for guest workers, up from 54 percent.

One analyst said the numbers spotlight a chasm between lawmakers pushing anti-immigrant legislation and the public. They also could reflect a pattern in American history: a softening of opinion that follows waves of immigration.

"I think what we see in this poll is hugely significant," said Gary Gerstle, a Vanderbilt historian who testified last year before a congressional subcommittee on immigration. "What this poll suggests to me more than anything is that the sentiments of the American people, of Tennesseans, are out of sync with what we might call the political class."

The poll's lack of definition for "guest worker" troubled Theresa Harmon, president of Tennesseans for Responsible Immigration. Harmon said she sees little evidence of shifting public opinion on the subject, and there's a burst of interest in her 15,000-member group every time an illegal immigrant is involved in an accident or commits a crime.

"These are good old boys," Harmon said. "So they don't care a lot about being politically correct They tell you they can't find work or can't find work that pays in the construction industry and sometimes can't communicate on the job because of the number of Mexicans, illegals working at your construction sites."

Bush plan defeated

Businesses have employed guest workers for decades, but most Americans heard the term in 2004 from President Bush. He advanced a proposal that would have allowed illegal immigrants already living in the U.S. to become guest workers, pay fines and possibly get on the path to citizenship. It wasn't successful.

Conducted in February, the MTSU poll is a random sample of 577 Tennessee adults with home telephone numbers weighted to reflect the state's demographics. The margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The relationship between feelings about immigration and economic standing — a factor Harmon mentioned — did surface in the poll, said Robert Wyatt, MTSU's director of communication research. He analyzed the poll's immigration-related results.

Those at the bottom of the income scale and those with the most education are less likely to see their own economic standing change because of immigration. And they share something else: They are more likely to employ, work with, live near or themselves be immigrants, Wyatt said.

"The saying goes something like, 'Familiarity breeds contempt,' " Wyatt said. "But social science, and certainly this poll, would indicate that it should be something more like familiarity breeds content."

Bloggers seem more civil

The MTSU poll has included various questions related to immigration since fall 2002 but only has asked the "guest worker" question for two years. In the poll's first year, 74 percent of Tennesseans said the U.S. is too open to immigrants, 5 percent said the nation is too closed, and only 16 percent endorsed the nation's immigration policy.

One Middle Tennessee blogger said he charts attitudes on immigration in a less scientific way — from comments on The Coyote Chronicles. Rick Caceres, a Robertson County rancher, muses in The Chronicles about everything from immigration to politics to personal debt.

When Caceres began, he said it wasn't uncommon for anything he wrote about immigration to garner a lot of calls for mass deportation. In the past year, the conversation on his blog seems to have grown more civil, he said.

"At the risk of sounding new-agey, it's almost like there has been some kind of collective consciousness that has kicked in," he said. "I really don't believe that the majority of people like to see other people dehumanized, and that's what was going on."

It is harder to say what the poll's findings will mean for politics and policy in Tennessee, Vanderbilt's Gerstle said.

"We assume that laws follow attitudes, but with immigration, there is often a great diverge between the two," Gerstle said. "We often live though a period where the attitudes are often at odds with the law."