A group of recently deported immigrants stand near the double steel fence that separates San Diego and Tijuana at the border in Tijuana December 10, 2011. 
 
 WASHINGTONMore than half of U.S. citizens believe that most or all of the country's 11 million illegal immigrants should be deported, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday that highlights the difficulties facing lawmakers trying to reform the U.S. immigration system. 
 
 The online survey shows resistance to easing immigration laws despite the biggest push for reform in Congress since 2007. 
 
 Thirty percent of those polled think that most illegal immigrants, with some exceptions, should be deported, while 23 percent believe all illegal immigrants should be deported. 
 
 Only 5 percent believe all illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay in the United States legally, and 31 percent want most illegal immigrants to stay. 
 
 These results are in line with other polls in recent years, suggesting that people's views on immigration have not changed dramatically since the immigration debate reignited in Congress last month, according to Ipsos pollster Julia Clark. 
 
 "It's not Americans' views that are shifting. It is that the political climate is ripe for this discussion," after the November election when Hispanics voted overwhelmingly in favor of Democratic President Barack Obama, she said. 
 
 "Democrats feel that the time is right to capitalize on their wins and Republicans feel that they had a bad blow and are eager to reach out to Hispanics," she added. 
 
 Polls show that most Americans back immigration reform, although they often have different ideas of what that means, with some people favoring looser immigration laws while others want to see greater border security. 
 
 A group of eight U.S. senators are working on a bipartisan deal to enact immigration reform, the first major attempt since a similar overhaul died in Congress six years ago. 
 
 The senators' proposal calls for a full path to citizenship for illegal immigrants once they pay back taxes and a fine and wait in line behind others applying to become Americans. 
 
 A plan by Obama has similar provisions, but the senators want any move to relax immigration laws dependant on boosting security on the southern border. 
 
 ISSUE POLARIZES POLICYMAKERS 
 
 Attitudes toward immigration are polarized by party, according to another the Reuters/Ipsos poll. Seventy-five percent of Republicans think all or most immigrants should be deported, compared to 40 percent of Democrats who think the same. 
 
 Republican Senator John McCain, one of the eight senators in the group, had his own encounter with citizens angered by illegal immigration on Tuesday when residents of his state of Arizona complained bitterly at a town hall meeting about the lack of security on the border with Mexico. 
 
 One man asked why troops had not been deployed to the border. 
 
 "Why didn't the army go down there and stop them? Because the only thing that stops them I'm afraid to say, and it's too damn bad, is a gun," the man said, 
 
 Another resident, Keith Smith, got into a testy exchange with McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate whose views on immigration have fluctuated over the years. 
 
 "Cut off their welfare and all their stuff and they'll go back," Smith said, referring to undocumented workers. 
 
 McCain had been trying to explain his position: "You're not telling these people the truth. They mow our lawns, they care for our babies, they clean . . . that's what those people do," he said. 
 
 The Arizona lawmaker, whose position on immigration hardened during the 2010 midterm elections before softening again, is a key part of the Republican side of the senators' bipartisan immigration effort. 
 
 Wednesday's Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted Friday through Tuesday and surveyed 1,443 Americans over the age of 18. 
 
 The precision of the Reuters/Ipsos online poll is measured using a credibility interval. In this survey, the poll has a credibility interval of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points. 
 
 (Reporting by Rachelle Younglai in Washington and Tim Gaynor in Phoenix, Editing by Alistair Bell and Philip Barbara) ||||| Bloomberg News A worker harvests bok choy at a California farm earlier this month. 
 
 Key senators are exploring an immigration bill that would force every U.S. worker—citizen or not—to carry a high-tech identity card that could use fingerprints or other personal markers to prove a person's legal eligibility to work. 
 
 Key senators are exploring an immigration bill that would force every U.S. worker-citizen or not-to carry a high-tech ID card that could use fingerprints or other personal markers to prove legal eligibility to work. Danny Yadron reports. Photo: Getty. 
 
 The idea, signaled only in vaguely worded language from senators crafting a bipartisan immigration bill, has privacy advocates and others concerned that the law would create a national identity card that, in time, could track Americans at airports, hospitals and through other facets of their lives. 
 
 Vote 
 
 The lawmakers haven't committed to the "biometric" ID card, and are wary of any element that might split the fragile coalition of Democrats, Republicans and outside organizations working toward agreement on a broad overhaul of immigration laws. 
 
 But at least five of the eight senators writing the bill have backed biometric ID cards in the past. At least three of them—Sens. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), John McCain (R., Ariz.) and Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.)—have said they support requiring the cards under the new law but are open to other options, aides say. 
 
 The goal is to ensure that employers can learn the legal status of all new hires quickly, part of the effort to dissuade illegal immigrants from entering the country or seeking jobs. A system now in place, called E-Verify, matches prospective hires to a database of Social Security numbers and other data, but it can be foiled at times when illegal immigrants give stolen names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers. 
 
 The Senate group, in a statement guiding their work on a new law, called for workers to prove their legal status and identities through "non-forgeable electronic means." Senate aides said the language was intentionally broad because of the sensitivity of the issue. It leaves open several possibilities for how new hires would be required to prove they can legally work. 
 
 Mr. Graham, in an interview, said that in his mind the language refers to a requirement for biometric ID cards. "This is the public's way of contributing to solving the problem" of illegal immigration, Mr. Graham said. 
 
 A second senator working on the bill, Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.), said in an interview he is open to the idea of biometric ID cards but that the issue remained unsettled. "You've got to give employers the tools" to screen new workers, Mr. Flake said, noting he had signed on to legislation in past years that employed biometric data. 
 
 Mr. McCain's spokesman declined to discuss Senate talks on the current bill. Two other senators who have backed the ID card in the past, Mr. Schumer and Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois, said through spokesmen that the new Senate legislation wouldn't necessarily call for a biometric card. 
 
 In 2010, Messrs. Graham and Schumer offered an immigration plan that included the requirement for an ID card featuring either fingerprints or a scan of the veins in the top of a person's hand. 
 
 Like the senators, President Barack Obama is calling for an improved worker-verification system, but he doesn't specifically call for a biometric card for all workers. In principles for an immigration overhaul released this year, Mr. Obama called for a "fraud-resistant, tamper-resistant Social Security card." Draft legislation prepared by the White House refers to collecting biometric information from those in the country illegally as part of qualifying for legal status. A senior administration official said the White House wants to deal with "fraud in a way that works and is cost effective." 
 
 The other senators writing the immigration bill are Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), Michael Bennet (D., Colo.) and Robert Menendez (D., N.J.). Spokesmen for Messrs. Rubio and Bennet declined to comment on the ID cards, while a spokeswoman for Mr. Menendez said the lawmaker has supported employee verification with antifraud measures. 
 
 As an alternative to a biometric card, senators may move to strengthen the E-Verify system by, for example, requiring new hires to answer questions about previous addresses or other details, a person familiar with the Senate group's thinking said. 
 
 Aides to several senators in the group said that a biometric card would be used only for employment verification and that it wouldn't become a mechanism for linking other personal data or replacing drivers' licenses. Still, privacy advocates fear that governments and companies would in time require people to use the biometric card in other spheres of daily life. 
 
 "I subscribe to the 'if you build it, they will come' school of regulation," said Chris Calabrese of the American Civil Liberties Union, who said he worried that the card would be required to board airplanes, to vote or perhaps purchase a firearm. "It becomes in essence a permission slip to do all of the ordinary things that are your rights as an American," he said. 
 
 Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration-policy expert at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said: "It's not only a gross violation of individual privacy, it's an enormously high-cost policy that will have an incredibly low to negligible benefit." 
 
 "Every time I've heard someone say 'non-forgeable,' it's code for biometric," Mr. Nowrasteh added. 
 
 The U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports expanding the E-Verify system, which is now used by a fraction of companies, though some states require all businesses to use it to clear new hires. The chamber hasn't taken a position on biometric IDs, a spokeswoman said. 
 
 Some businesses support a move to biometric cards. If Congress expanded E-Verify nationally, it could widen identity theft and create new paperwork for small businesses, some businesses said. A 2009 study by Westat Inc. for the Department of Homeland Security found that 54% of unauthorized workers who submitted E-Verify paperwork were able to trick the system, though unauthorized workers account for only 6.2% of E-Verify queries. 
 
 A high-tech ID card that could be scanned could solve that problem, said Manuel Cunha Jr., president of the Nisei Farmers League in Fresno, Calif. The scan would check the employee against a federal database to confirm eligibility to work. "I don't want on the biometric card when I went to the hospital or whether I am married," Mr. Cunha said. "I just want to know Manuel F. Cunha Jr. can work." 
 
 Julie Pace, an immigration lawyer from Phoenix, said she previously opposed a biometric card but would now support it as part of a broader immigration overhaul, arguing it would make worker verification more accurate. "Undocumented workers today would be so happy to come out from the underground," she said. 
 
 It isn't clear how much such a card would cost businesses and taxpayers. When Mr. Schumer proposed biometric identification in 2010, he estimated card scanners could cost businesses as much as $800. 
 
 A 2012 study by the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, law school concluded that a national ID system would cost the government $22.6 billion to create and $2.1 billion each year to operate. 
 
 Most European countries require their citizens to carry some form of ID. The U.K. recently attempted to offer voluntary national ID cards. Citing concerns over cost and civil liberties, it scrapped the plan in 2010. 
 
 —Janet Hook contributed to this article. 
 
 Write to Danny Yadron at danny.yadron@wsj.com 
 
 A version of this article appeared February 21, 2013, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Senators in Immigration Talks Mull Federal IDs for All Workers.
– Some 53% of American citizens broadly support deportation for illegal immigrants, a Reuters/Ipsos poll finds, with 30% saying most should be deported and 23% saying all should be sent away. Meanwhile, 31% of citizens say the US should let most illegal immigrants stay, and just 5% say all illegal immigrants should be allowed to remain, Reuters reports. The figures mirror similar polls in the past, despite talk of immigration reform in Washington. Still, most Americans back immigration reform, polls have revealed. "It's not Americans' views that are shifting. It is that the political climate is ripe for this discussion" following the election, says a pollster. Meanwhile, senators working on an immigration bill are floating the idea of a "biometric" ID card for federal workers, containing personal information like a fingerprint. All workers in the US, regardless of their citizenship, would have to carry one, the Wall Street Journal reports. But privacy groups are already up in arms about the notion—which hasn't yet made it past the idea stage.