Americans want Arabs restricted

STAR Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON – Three of every four Americans believe US immigration policies should be tightened to restrict the number of immigrants from Arab or Muslim countries, a joint survey of two international affairs organizations said.

The results of the survey conducted by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations (CCFR) and the German Marshal Fund of the United States (GMF), show 61 percent of Americans see Islamic fundamentalism as a critical threat to vital US interests.

Terrorism was mentioned most often as one of the two or three biggest problems facing the United States and cited even more frequently than the economy.

A majority vote of more than 9,000 Americans and Europeans questioned in the most comprehensive survey ever of US and European foreign policy attitudes one year after the Sept. 11 (9/11) attacks on New York and Washington support the use of military force to combat terrorism.

US and European respondents to the survey rated terrorism as the number one foreign policy threat.

The US survey consists of 3,262 interviews comprising a representative national sample of American men and women, 18 years of age or older. Seventy-six percent of Americans questioned said that because of 9/11 the number of immigrants entering the United States from Arab or Muslim countries should be restricted.

The European survey consists of telephone interviews (except in Poland, where the face-to-face method was used) with representative national samples of 1,000 men and women, 18 years of age or older, in each of six countries –Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Poland.