Hispanics in the U.S. say the immigration debate itself has been unhealthy for them, charging that it has made life difficult even for legal immigrants.

And according to a new survey for the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan think tank, most U.S. Hispanics oppose the new enforcement measures federal and state authorities are pursuing.

It's a stark report showing the depth of the divide over this issue. Among voters overall, support for enforcement is sky-high, and Americans resoundingly say they want an end to illegal immigration.

But the Pew survey found that Hispanics have a different attitude about illegal immigration.

Three quarters of Hispanics oppose raiding businesses to catch illegal workers, nearly 80 percent don't want police to check to see if someone is in the country legally, and 55 percent say states shouldn't care about legal status when they issue driver's licenses.

This goes a long way to explaining why Congress has failed to pass an immigration bill the last two years.

Congress was being tugged from both sides: Hispanic groups were insisting that even the modest security measures included in this year's bill were too much, while hundreds of thousands of voters were telling their senators the security measures weren't enough.

The immigration bill was simply too precariously balanced to have a chance of passage. So far, nobody has shown how to break through that stalemate.

— Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times