'His advisers really are muppets!' Boris Johnson is mocked over Kermit the Frog reference in climate speech to the UN after he told delegates 'It IS easy to be green'

• Social media users mocked the PM for insisting the Muppet's character is wrong
• Mr Johnson said it was 'easy, lucrative and right' to be green during the address
• His bizarre comment came as he implored world to help to tackle climate change

By JAMES GANT FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED:  23 September 2021 

Boris Johnson has been savaged online for referencing Kermit The Frog during a speech about climate change.

Social media users mocked the Prime Minister for insisting the Muppet's character was wrong when he sang 'It's Not Easy Bein' Green'.

Mr Johnson said it was 'easy, lucrative and right' to be green during his address to the United Nations General Assembly.

His bizarre comment came as he implored the world to help tackle climate change ahead of the Cop26 summit, which he dubbed 'the turning point for humanity'.

He said Earth is not 'some indestructible toy' but conceded a rise in temperatures was inevitable as we try to 'restrain that growth'.

The address was the last stop on Mr Johnson's visit to the US which has seen discussions held on trade, the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change.

Boris tells UN: 'Kermit the Frog was wrong, it IS easy being green'

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He took Muppets favourite Kermit The Frog to task, insisting that it is in fact 'easy being green'

But it was his reference to Jim Henson's Muppet that was picked up on by social media users today.

He said Kermit was wrong when he sang It's Not Easy Bein' Green, adding it was 'easy, lucrative and right' to be green.

One social media user wrote: 'Did Boris Johnson really quote Kermit the Frog in his UN speech? I mean, seriously?'

Another put: 'It's official, Boris Johnson's advisers are muppets! Could someone break it to him gently - Kermit isn't real.'

A woman posted on her Twitter: 'Boris quoting Kermit the Frog in his speech, I just can't.'

Another asked: 'Did Boris Johnson really just mention Kermit the Frog at the UN General Assembly?'

And one more shared a picture of the fictional frog looking sad, with the caption: 'Kermit when he finds out Boris used him in a speech.'

Mr Johnson was speaking to the UN General Assembly where he is trying to push forward Britain's green credentials.

He said Earth is not 'some indestructible toy' as he spoke of the upcoming Glasgow COP26 summit as 'the turning point for humanity'.

Mr Johnson addressed the UN in the early hours of Thursday in a speech in which he conceded a rise in temperatures was inevitable but hopes to 'restrain that growth'.

Mr Johnson told the Assembly it was time for 'humanity to grow up' and look to the coronavirus pandemic as an example of 'gloomy scientists being proved right'.

He added: 'The world - this precious blue sphere with its eggshell crust and wisp of an atmosphere - is not some indestructible toy, some bouncy plastic romper room against which we can hurl ourselves to our heart's content.

'Daily, weekly, we are doing such irreversible damage that long before a million years are up, we will have made this beautiful planet effectively uninhabitable - not just for us but for many other species.

'And that is why the Glasgow COP26 summit is the turning point for humanity.'

Boris' colourful UN speech: Grow up in order to tackle climate change

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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson heads to the United Nations to give a speech on global warming

The UN summit is being held in Glasgow in November to 'accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement', a treaty aimed at keeping the rise in global temperatures to below 2C adopted in 2015.

The speech started with a look at how humanity has been around for around 200,000 years and the average mammalian species exists for about a million years before it evolves or dies out - suggesting we were, in relative terms, 'now sweet 16'.

He said: 'We have come to that fateful age when we know roughly how to drive and we know how to unlock the drinks cabinet and to engage in all sorts of activity that is not only potentially embarrassing but also terminal.

'In the words of the Oxford philosopher Toby Ord, 'we are just old enough to get ourselves into serious trouble'.'

Mr Johnson's eco focus is a far cry from his past climate-sceptic views.

He admitted on Monday 'if you were to excavate some of my articles from 20 years ago you might find comments I made, obiter dicta, about climate change that weren't entirely supportive of the current struggle, but the facts change and people change their minds and change their views and that's very important too'.

Addressing the assembly, he said he was not 'one of those environmentalists who takes a moral pleasure in excoriating humanity for its excess' or viewing the green movement as 'a pretext for a wholesale assault on capitalism'.

'My friends, the adolescence of humanity is coming to an end,' he said.

Hillary Clinton to be installed as first female chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast

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Hillary Clinton makes an address during a ceremony at Queen’s University Belfast where she is being awarded an honorary degree (PA)

FRI, 24 SEP, 2021 - 
DAVID YOUNG, PA

Hillary Clinton expressed hope she can inspire young people in Northern Ireland as she prepared to be formally installed as chancellor of Queen’s University.

The former US secretary of state, who is the first woman appointed as chancellor of the Belfast academic institution, will attend an installation ceremony in the city on Friday morning.

It marks the latest chapter in the Clinton family’s long association with Northern Ireland, with Mrs Clinton and her husband former US president Bill Clinton having been regular visitors to the region as enthusiastic supporters of the peace process.

Hillary Clinton received an honorary degree from Queen’s University in 2018 (PA)

“I am so pleased to be in Belfast to be formally installed as chancellor of Queen’s University,” the former presidential candidate said.

“Queen’s makes an enormous impact on the world around us in terms of research and innovation, and I hope to inspire and encourage the students of Queen’s to make their contribution to society to the best of their ability.

“I am proud of my longstanding connection with Northern Ireland and its people and look forward to continuing to make my contribution to the University over the next few years.”

Mrs Clinton was appointed to the role for a five-year term in early 2020 but her official installation was delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Friday’s ceremony in the university’s Whitla Hall will also see honorary degrees awarded to 14 leading figures in the worlds of business, politics, sport, the arts, policing and education in Northern Ireland.

Among recipients will be Derry Girls writer and creator Lisa McGee, former Police Service of Northern Ireland chief constable Sir George Hamilton and Ireland’s highest-capped female athlete, international hockey player Shirley McCay.

President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton arrive in Belfast in the 1990s (PA)

President and vice-chancellor of Queen’s, Professor Ian Greer, welcomed Mrs Clinton’s installation.

“We are delighted that Secretary Clinton has been able to travel to Belfast to be formally installed as the University’s 11th chancellor,” he said.

“Secretary Clinton is an internationally recognised public servant who has demonstrated a longstanding commitment to Northern Ireland.

“She has an enormous amount to offer the university and will continue to work as a key advocate for Queen’s on the international stage.

“It is also a pleasure today to award honorary degrees to 14 world-leading, highly distinguished individuals. We warmly welcome them to the Queen’s family.”

In 2018, Mrs Clinton was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws from Queen’s for exceptional public service in the US and globally, and for her contribution to peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland.

Trump administration gave at least 120 publicly traded companies PPP loans -- despite warning them not to apply

LONG READ

Lydia DePillis, ProPublica
September 23, 2021

Steve Mnuchin (Al Drago Pool:AFP)

As Congress launched a historic bailout to keep businesses afloat at the outset of the pandemic, government officials stressed that the loans were for mom-and-pop
operations that didn't have another easily available lifeline

"This was a program designed for small businesses," then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said, as companies like Shake Shack and Potbelly made headlines for grabbing millions from the newly created Paycheck Protection Program. "It was not a program that was designed for public companies that had liquidity."

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was even clearer. "We will go after those big companies that cheat the system," he told Fox News that spring.

But the tough talk hasn't translated into action. Instead, a ProPublica review has found, the government gave out generous loans to companies that may not have needed them. And it has often forgiven the loans, despite having said that publicly traded companies would be unlikely to merit such generous treatment.

Take Lazydays Holdings, a publicly traded collection of RV dealerships that got a nearly $9 million loan. The company had $31 million in cash on hand at the end of 2019, and then prospered as Americans turned to RVs for socially distanced vacations. Lazydays' stock price has shot up more than 500% during the pandemic. (Lazydays did not respond to requests for comment.) The government has forgiven nearly all of it, allowing Lazydays to keep the money.

The ProPublica analysis of Securities and Exchange Commission filings found at least 120 publicly traded companies that received loans of more than $500,000, grew their revenues last year and have been allowed to keep the money.

In addition, at least 30 companies announced plans to go public after receiving their loans, bringing in truckloads of investor cash that they often used to pay off other debts — but not the ones they owed to the federal government, all of which were forgiven.


Overall, ProPublica found at least $250 million that went to publicly traded companies with growing revenues and that has already been forgiven by the government. That's just a sliver of the $800 billion PPP program. But it's also almost certainly a significant undercount of the amount of taxpayer dollars that went to well-heeled companies. The count, for instance, doesn't include any of the billions of dollars that went to firms backed by giant private equity funds. Their finances are not publicly disclosed.

The government had no rules requiring companies to pay back loans if it turned out they didn't need the money.

Instead, the government had one modest requirement particularly relevant to publicly traded companies: It made all applicants for loans attest that pandemic-related uncertainty made the loan "necessary." And it warned in a follow-up advisory that having access to cash elsewhere — as public companies usually do via investors — would make it difficult to take that pledge in good faith.


But the government has rarely followed up. The Small Business Administration, which oversees the PPP, discarded a questionnaire it had begun sending companies to quiz them on their financial situations.

In response to questions from ProPublica, the SBA said that it is examining all forgiveness applications to make sure they comply with the rules. "We are continuously aware of our role in the stewardship of federal funds to ensure the integrity of our programs, and we have rigorous processes in place to ensure appropriate oversight of loans of all sizes," spokesperson Christalyn Solomon said.

But the SBA declined to provide evidence of how it is evaluating whether public applicants were honest when they said their loans were "necessary." Experts say that's because lawmakers offered no specifics on what they meant by "necessary" from the outset, leaving the program's administrators with no objective basis on which to demand repayment.


"Congress needed to say to the SBA, 'This is what constitutes need,'" said Liz Hempowicz, director of public policy at the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight. "If you have access to excess capital in any form, that absolutely should've been baked into the program from the beginning."

By many metrics, the federal government's response to the pandemic succeeded in alleviating the worst effects of the most abrupt pause in economic activity America has ever experienced. Unlike most safety net programs, it did so by erring on the side of generosity. The government's supplemental unemployment insurance and stimulus checks were enough to actually lower poverty last year.

The same philosophy applied to relief for businesses. The government kept the PPP application simple to encourage companies to participate, and banks were paid to move the loans along without asking many questions. While the program was built on the chassis of the SBA's standard loan program, it dispensed with many of its rules, such as a requirement that applicants demonstrate they couldn't obtain reasonably priced credit elsewhere.


In the first round of the bailout, which was quickly depleted, companies did not have to prove that they had actually been impacted by COVID-19.

Instead, the application required them to certify that "current economic uncertainty makes this loan request necessary to support the ongoing operations of the applicant." Facing confusion from corporate lawyers who said the language was vague, the SBA released further guidance in late April 2020.

The clarification specifically warned public companies that they probably wouldn't meet the threshold. "Borrowers must make this certification in good faith, taking into account their current business activity and their ability to access other sources of liquidity," the agency wrote. "It is unlikely that a public company with substantial market value and access to capital markets will be able to make the required certification in good faith."


That admonition had some effect. According to a study forthcoming in the Review of Corporate Finance Studies, half of all public companies qualified for the loans, but only 42% of those eligible chose to take them. That compared to 87% of all eligible private companies. (The PPP generally excluded companies with more than 500 employees.) On average, the 812 public firms that took loans had less cash and more debt than those that didn't borrow. The public companies collectively borrowed $2.2 billion, but 13.5% of them repaid their loans, mostly soon after the SBA's April guidance.

But because Congress didn't impose any actual requirements to return the money, many companies didn't. Some even shrugged off congressional pressure to do so.

In May 2020, a House oversight subcommittee sent letters asking five large public companies to return their $10 million loans. One of them did. The other four refused, and they eventually all received forgiveness (with one asking for slightly less than the whole amount).


They included a contractor for the U.S. Postal Service called EVO Transportation and Energy Services, which hasn't filed financial reports for all of 2020 after discovering problems with its 2019 disclosures.

The company didn't respond to a request for comment.

The SBA began processing forgiveness applications after the first round of PPP loans was exhausted in August 2020. It decided that all borrowers of less than $2 million would automatically be "deemed" truthful in their pledges that their loans were necessary.


For those who borrowed more, it issued a nine-page "loan necessity questionnaire" that asked about the recipient's ownership structure, cash on hand pre-pandemic, revenues during the time when the loan was supposed to be used and access to other capital.

That didn't go over well.

Last December, a construction industry trade group sued, saying the SBA questionnaire violated the original guidance that implied forgiveness would be determined by what companies knew at the time they applied, without regard to what happened later. In July, the agency stopped using the questionnaire, saying that the form was burdensome for borrowers and a drain on auditing resources.


Without companies' answers, the SBA has developed a machine-learning algorithm that flags loans for signs of potential fraud, such as payroll numbers that don't add up. As of last month, agency data showed, investigators had reviewed 65,000 loans, 8,000 of which, totaling $2.7 billion, were referred for further analysis. Of those, only 300 loans were for more than $2 million.

The agency declined to say how many forgiveness applications have been rejected after going through this process, or how, without using the discontinued questionnaire, it has evaluated whether the loans were necessary.

The Securities and Exchange Commission also issued inquiries to some companies about their representations to investors, but a spokesperson declined to say whether any enforcement actions had been taken as a result.

A former finance manager at one company that received millions in PPP money and hasn't paid it back said that he'd hoped the government would more closely examine his employer's finances.

"I remember that questionnaire coming out, and we were thinking, 'This might not get forgiven,' because our cash position was a lot better at the end of the year," the employee said. Since the questionnaire has been thrown out, he figures, companies that didn't need the cash will end up keeping it. "The only reason to give it back is public sentiment. At that point, it's free money."

Waste is inevitable in any economic rescue mission. But some of it is avoidable. Experts say Congress could have created a threshold of financial health at which PPP loans would have to be repaid — without denying the lifeline many firms needed.

"We're talking about a ridiculously low interest rate," Hempowicz said. "There is a benefit either way, especially for bigger companies, to have received these loans, even if they aren't then converted into grants."

All PPP loans were forgivable if the cash was mostly spent on payroll. If a company was still seeing steady business, it could use that freed-up income for other priorities, like paying off debt and buying other companies.

That's the happy outcome for many companies that performed well in 2020, often profiting from the very pandemic that they said put them in the position of needing a taxpayer bailout.

A chain of powersports dealers called RideNow collectively received $19 million, despite nearly tripling its net income from 2019 to 2020 as interest in motorbikes and all-terrain vehicles skyrocketed. In March 2021, the publicly traded online motorcycle sales platform RumbleOn announced it would acquire RideNow to create what it called the "only omnichannel customer experience in powersports and the largest publicly traded powersports dealership platform." RideNow's loans were fully forgiven in June, and RumbleOn's forgiveness application for its original $5.1 million loan is pending.

Other examples abound. Acme United Corporation saw its sales increase 15% in 2020 because of strong demand for first-aid supplies. Its $3.5 million loan was fully forgiven. So was the $2.7 million borrowed by Conifer Holdings, an insurance company that attributed revenue growth to lower claims by businesses that were temporarily shuttered but maintained their policies — which explicitly did not cover business interruption due to infectious diseases. And the ammunition manufacturer Ammo Inc. kept $1 million after seeing its revenues triple to $62.5 million in 2020, fueled by increased consumer demand for bullets. None of those companies returned requests for comment.

Public companies aren't the only borrowers that took more than they likely needed. Securities and Exchange Commission filings are also a window into privately held companies that have raised money in the public markets or later listed themselves on an exchange.

The venture-capital-backed person-to-person lending marketplace Prosper files earnings statements because it sells its loans to investors. The company had $64 million in unrestricted cash on hand at the end of 2019, but it still suspended its 401(k) match and cut salaries above $100,000 across the board in early 2020 — a collective reduction in compensation almost equal to the $8.4 million PPP loan it received. The pay cut also applied to the C-suite, but they had already received up to 10% base salary bumps in March 2020, so it hurt less.

In November, the company instituted a retroactive two-year bonus plan for executives — potentially totaling $3 million for five people.

Prosper did not respond to a request for comment, and its forgiveness request is still pending.

Some companies did pay the money back. At least 27 companies decided to do so while in the process of going public, since the sale of stock often generates large amounts of cash.

Luminar Technologies, an autonomous driving technology startup, gave back its $7.8 million before its Nasdaq debut.

"We decided to return the PPP loan as soon as we realized we didn't need it anymore," said Anthony Cooke, Luminar's vice president for policy and regulation. "We decided to apply for a PPP loan because it gave us the flexibility to withstand uncertain times while protecting our employees. We were able to protect employees, grow our business and take it public in 2020, and we repaid our PPP loan as soon as it was feasible."

Other companies kept the taxpayer money, even while paying off other debts.

That's what another company in the autonomous driving business did. A Ford-backed designer of sensors called Velodyne Lidar got $10 million in government money, which a spokesperson said was "used to support our employees during a time of uncertainty."

The company went public in September of last year, giving it $222 million in cash. The government forgave Velodyne's loan this June.

Battery-powered bus maker Proterra got $10 million. Its revenues increased last year, and it went public this year. The company decided to keep the money, which spokesperson Shane Levy said "supported our ability to maintain a full workforce as we've navigated the uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic." A Volkswagen- and UPS-backed self-driving truck company called TuSimple kept its $4.1 million after going public in a deal that generated about $1 billion; a spokesperson didn't respond to a request for comment.

Several companies hadn't yet had any income at all — they had been funded by investors through their entire existence, suggesting that they probably had access to other credit.

A pre-revenue electric vehicle maker called Faraday Future got $9.2 million. This past July, it launched a public offering that generated $1 billion; its loan forgiveness request is still pending. A spokesperson told ProPublica that the investor proceeds will be "budgeted to produce vehicles," not to pay back taxpayers. Space launch services company Astra took $4.9 million in government money. As it applied for forgiveness in June, it told investors that COVID-19 "has not materially affected our future growth outlook" and that it had seen "some signs of positive effects for its long-term business prospects and partnerships as a result of the pandemic." Astra's Nasdaq debut in July generated $463 million, and its PPP loan was forgiven last month. A spokesperson didn't respond to a request for comment.

Another category of large PPP recipients consisted of clinical and early commercial-stage medical device and pharmaceutical companies, which are heavily investor-backed and which sometimes profited from COVID-related activity. A biotech company called PolarityTE, which makes regenerative tissue products, cut staff by 47% in 2020 and raised revenues by 79% by serving as a COVID-19 testing lab. It received $3.6 million, which was forgiven; the company didn't respond to a request for comment.

Anything having to do with residential real estate also did well.

Fast-growing homebuilder Dream Finders Homes saw 52% earnings growth in 2020, which it attributed in part to pandemic-induced migration to suburban developments. It went public in January 2021, generating $134 million, and was granted full forgiveness on its $7.2 million loan. The company didn't respond to a request for comment.

The home improvement services platform Porch told investors that spiking home sales in late 2020 helped it rebound from a spring business dip. It applied for forgiveness for its $8.1 million PPP loan in December, the same month it debuted on Nasdaq. With $122 million of the proceeds from its IPO, it bought four other companies; it hasn't paid back the PPP loan, which was forgiven in June. A spokesperson declined to comment.

Finally, the type of companies that arranged the capital for all these public offerings and funding rounds — investment advisory firms — also dipped into the PPP.

Cohen & Company, a financial services firm with $2.8 billion under management, got $2.2 million. The firm saw dramatically higher income last year. Nearly all of its loan was forgiven. Another asset manager and investment banking firm, JMP Group, had $3.8 million forgiven despite having $50 million in cash at the end of 2019 and 15% revenue growth in 2020. Neither firm responded to a request for comment.

Some investment advisory firms may have used inflated claims. One study found that at least 6% of the $590 million granted to those firms was more than they could have justified given their payroll, which has to be reported to the SEC.

Writing laws is often a balancing act. One approach draws bright lines that lay out exactly what's required, which companies often figure out a way to game. The other leaves rules more vague, relying on the regulated party to abide by the program's intent. That eases the process for beneficiaries who really need help, but runs the risk the others will also benefit.

The PPP leaned toward the latter approach. It told companies that they probably shouldn't apply if they had other resources at their disposal, but gave them a window to do so if they wanted. In order to make that work, there would need to be a credible threat of enforcement, or at least public shaming if they took advantage of funds meant for the truly disadvantaged.

Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, said the SBA should have held public companies to a higher standard of need and then audited them to ensure they'd been truthful.

"If I ran the SBA, I would say, 'You certified that this loan request was necessary — walk us through that. You had this much cash, or you had this much loan facility open or you had no trouble raising this money,'" Gordon said.

Of course, if you don't want public companies to apply, you could just bar them from applying. That's what Congress did when it created a second round of the PPP in December 2020. That time around, companies were also required to demonstrate that their revenues had declined substantially in at least one quarter in order to qualify.

Sam Rosen, a finance professor at Temple University who co-authored the study on public firm participation in the PPP, said it isn't that complicated. "If we were in a similar situation in the future, do we want public firms to have access to this?" he said. "I think it's just about being clear up front."

'Like a mob': Report finds Public health workers are quitting ‘in droves’ over the public's mistreatment

Alex Henderson, AlterNet
September 23, 2021

Frustrated nurse (Shutterstock)

Much has been written about the enormous stress that frontline health workers have been coping with during the COVID-19 pandemic. But journalist Abdullah Shihipar, this week in The Guardian, reports on another group that is feeling overwhelmed during the pandemic: those who work behind the scenes in public health departments.

"The results of a nationwide (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) survey of public health workers, released this July, were revealing," Shihipar explains. "Of the more than 26,000 surveyed individuals working in public health departments across the United States, more than half reported recent symptoms of at least one major mental health condition. Their reported prevalence of PTSD was 10 to 20% higher than in frontline medical workers and the general public."

According to Shihipar, public health workers in the U.S. are "are at the receiving end of mounting resentment."

"Since last March," Shihipar notes, "threats against public health officials have increased. In a high-profile incident this past July, an angry crowd targeted Dr. Faisal Khan — the acting director of the St. Louis Department of Health — at a meeting on mask mandates. The disgruntled attendees lobbed racial epithets and surrounded Khan after the meeting like a mob."

Shihipar cites Dr. Morgan Philbin, an assistant professor at the Columbia University School of Public Health, as an example of someone who has suffered "her share of vitriol" during the pandemic.

Philbin told The Guardian, "It's been so hard to watch people disparage our field and argue that we're not doing enough, or that we don't know what we're doing, when nothing could be further from the truth. We know exactly what to do. It's just that people are refusing to listen."

"Rey," a public health data analyst based in New York City, notes that public health workers have been leaving their jobs "in droves" during the pandemic.


"Rey," who was interviewed on the condition that her real name not be used in the article, told The Guardian, "I worry that the field is going to (keep losing) a lot of people — people who are nearing retirement age, but also, the people around my age…. They are already burned out and are leaving the workforce in droves."

New poll finds broad support -- even among Trump voters -- for a pathway to citizenship for millions of immigrants
Laura Gómez, Arizona Mirror
September 23, 2021

A young boy holds U.S. flags as immigrants and community leaders rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court to mark the one-year anniversary of President Barack Obama's executive orders on immigration in Washington, on Nov. 20, 2015. 

Photo by Kevin Lamarque for Reuters.

Arizona voters overwhelmingly support a pathway to citizenship for some immigrants who meet some conditions for eligibility, according to a poll released Wednesday.

The survey of 323 Arizona voters between Sept. 10 and 18 found broad support, even among Trump voters, for “earned citizenship" for undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children (often called dreamers), farmworkers, essential workers and those with Temporary Protected Status. Earned citizenship is a term that broadly means naturalization that is granted after immigrants pay a fine, pass language tests or other meet requirements to comply with eligibility.

It comes as Democrats in Congress struggle to pass a pathway for citizenship for millions, but not all, undocumented immigrants through the budget reconciliation process.

The poll was commissioned by the American Business Immigration Coalition and FWD.us, an immigration and criminal justice reform advocacy group, and released during a press call. The survey was conducted by Democratic polling firm BSP Research and Republican firm Shaw & Company Research. Arizona was one of 11 battleground states polled.

Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., spoke at the press event. He said Arizona is home to an estimated 170,000 undocumented residents who are dreamers, farmworkers and TPS holders.

“No state stands to benefit more from immigration modernization than my home state of Arizona," Stanton said. “It's clear to me that Americans, regardless of political affiliation, are demanding immigration reform. It's up to us to deliver."

Stanton, who supported the House version of the reconciliation package that includes a pathway to citizenship for some immigrants, called on other Democrats in Congress and the White House to end the paralysis in the Senate.

GOP pollster Daron Shaw, of Shaw & Company Research, said conservatives have supported a pathway to citizenship for certain kinds of undocumented immigrants for a long time.

The poll also showed that, when considering the economic contributions of some immigrants with no permanent status in Arizona, the majority of voters support a path to citizenship for dreamers, farmworkers, and essential workers.

Majorities of Trump supporters and self-described conservatives backed a pathway to citizenship. Among Trump voters, 61% support a pathway to citizenship for dreamers, 58% for farmworkers and 50% for essential workers who are undocumented. Those polled who identified as conservatives support citizenship by 66% for dreamers, 59% for farmworkers and 56% for essential workers. Overall, nearly 4 out of 5 Arizona voters supported this pathway.

Democratic pollster Matt Barreto, a principal at BSP Research, said Arizona voters have changed significantly from the late 2000s, when anti-immigrant sentiment was at its height in the state. Barreto said the poll showed a majority of Arizona voters don't want to see the removal of undocumented immigrants and they understand that undocumented immigrants contribute to the economy.

“They can relate to the immigrants they work with in their communities," he said.

The poll also showed most Arizona voters polled support Democrats taking action now even without Republican votes of support, Barreto said.

“Simply put, Arizona voters are tired of inaction and are ready for reforms they believe will benefit small businesses and the economy as a whole," the pollsters concluded in their analysis of the results.

The poll found over 60% of Arizona voters say immigrant laws and regulations are not working.

“Voters don't believe the system is working well, (and) it's been a 20-30 year issue," Barreto said. “Now we have an opportunity here."

Alejandra Gomez, co-executive director of Living United for Change Arizona, said the poll also signals what community members who talk with voters have known for years: that “being anti-immigrant no longer provides a viable path to victory."

“(The poll) further validates the fact that immigration is no longer an issue among conservatives because most are in support of a pathway to citizenship," she said.

Gomez said the poll should send a message to U.S. Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly that their constituents want them to pass a pathway to citizenship.

“This poll perfectly illustrates that, at the end of the day, Arizonans are not worried about Senate rules and procedures, they grow weary of the centrists in Congress conducting performative and self-defeating theatre," she said. “Positioning yourselves a few steps closer to the center no matter the cost despite the reality of public opinion to prove a point is not a winning strategy."

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com

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