The measure, which has the support of the White House, would provide a path for the estimated 12 million illegal aliens in the United States to citizenship and would create a guest worker program.

Some 56.4 percent of U.S. participants in a June 15-18 Zogby interactive poll view the bill either very unfavorably (39.9 percent) or somewhat unfavorably (16.5 percent). Another 29.6 percent said they were somewhat favorable about it and 8 percent gave very favorable as an answer.

A clear majority (57.5 percent) of Republican respondents and a plurality (45.6 percent) of those asked who said they were politically independent viewed the bill very unfavorably while a plurality (44.8 percent) of Democrats said they felt somewhat favorable to the measure.

Asked if the bill represented "amnesty" for illegal immigrants, 43.4 percent of the overall sample strongly agreed and 21.8 percent somewhat agreed. Less than 30 percent either somewhat (15.5 percent) or strongly (14 percent) disagreed with the amnesty claim.

There were a total of 8,300 participants in the poll, which has a margin-of-error of 1.1 percentage points.