WASHINGTON, March 29, 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – With protests continuing unabated against the controversial US anti-immigration bill, opinion polls showed that most Americans were in favor of a clampdown on illegal immigrants and booting out undocumented workers as Asian immigrants said they see "discriminatory" US moves to regulate immigration into the country.

"Asians were historically discriminated against emigrating to the United States for about 200 years, so we are very wary," said Traci Hong, director of the immigration program at the Asia America Justice Center, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

The US Senate was expected to start a divisive debate Wednesday, March 29, on a contested immigration law, that sparked controversy in the country.

The proposed bill, passed by the House of Representatives last year, would make it a felony to be in the United States without proper papers, and a federal crime to aid illegal immigrants.

It also allows the construction of a 700-mile (1,126-kilometer) wall along much of the US-Mexico border.

The proposed law has sparked massive protests across the United States by immigrants' rights supporters.

Protesting the bill, thousands of high school students across the country boycotted classes for the third straight day Tuesday, March 28, in a bid to derail the law.

Nearly 5,000 protesters also marched through the streets of Los Angeles Sunday to protest the legislation, one day after a record of half-a-million people demanded amnesty for the undocumented immigrants.

Also Saturday, some 100,000 people marched in Chicago, 30,000 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and 15,000 in Phoenix, Arizona, against the bill.

Asian groups argued the US regulations and policies have been used to "systematically exclude Asians from the United States".

"This bill is the latest and the most egregious in a long line of increasingly harsh, anti-immigrant enforcement-only legislations that has not and will not fix our broken immigration system," they said.

They noted that the US Senate could adopt key provisions from the bill, including one which basically allows the police to detain suspects first and verify citizenship status later.

"Now how would an officer come to such a presumption: would it be because the person 'did not look American? Would it be because the person had an accent?' It would disproportionately impact the Asian American community," Hong said.

There are one million illegal immigrants among the 14 million Asians in the United States.

Some 1.5 million Asians are in the backlog of applications for permanent residency status or citizenship.

There are more than 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States, 78 percent of whom are from Mexico or other Latin American countries, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

Many have children and other relatives who are US citizens and are banking on citizenship as a license for their future.

A man carries a sign to protest moves to toughen US immigration laws. (Reuters)

Opinion polls, however, showed that most Americans were in favor of restricting new immigration and booting out undocumented workers already in the country.

Surveys conducted by the NBC News and The Wall Street Journal showed that 56 percent of Americans opposed granting temporary worker status to illegal immigrants.

Another poll by Connecticut's Quinnipiac University Polling Institute also found that 62 percent of Americans opposed easing the path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, against only 32 percent who supported the idea.

Several other polls over the past year confirmed those results.

The growing US support for a clampdown on immigration was blamed for the diminishing tolerance for foreign things and fears over terrorism.

"Nine-eleven (the September 11, 2001 terror attacks) changed a lot of people's feelings about laissez-faire entry into the country," said John Keeley, a spokesman for the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, which describes itself as having a "pro-immigrant, low-immigration vision."

"You just can't have unfettered access to the country anymore."