Immigration may be a hot button issue but you would not know it from the latest public opinion survey, which shows Americans sharply critical of government policy but still welcoming of legal immigrants.

Only 15 percent ranked immigration as one of the top two issues in the United States; concerns about the economy ran four times as high. While 58 percent said they worried about illegal immigration, only 18 percent called its legal counterpart a concern.

The annual survey, by the German Marshall Fund, compares the United States and five European countries. Concerns about immigration ran highest in Britain, where 30 percent called it a top two issue and nearly 40 percent said levels of legal immigration were too high. (Germans, by contrast, were surprisingly placid, with only 11 percent calling immigration a top issue.)

The American welcome mat was not unqualified. Slightly more than half of Americans called immigration more of a problem than an opportunity. Nearly half said there were too many immigrants in the country, and nearly two-thirds said that immigrants burdened social services. The survey showed a sharp partisan divide, with Republicans much more likely to call immigration a problem than Democrats or Independents.

Still, nearly two-thirds of Americans said the United States should admit immigrants who were fleeing poverty, and more people said immigrants fill jobs than take them away from citizens.

A slight majority favored retaining birthright citizenship — the provision under the 14th Amendment that grants citizenship to people born inside the United States, regardless of their parents legal status. And nearly two-thirds favored the Dream Act, which would offer legal status to some people brought to the United States illegally as children. That included more than half of Republicans, whose lawmakers in Congress blocked it last year.

“The public appears more moderate and nuanced in their views than extremists on either side,” said Susan Martin, at immigration expert at Georgetown University who served as an adviser on the project. “Frankly, there was more optimism than I was expecting.”

Nearly three-quarters of American said the government was doing a bad job of managing the issue. But a similar share said children of immigrants were integrating into the economy. A majority in all countries said they supported a preference for highly educated immigrants. But all countries also showed a preference for low-skilled immigrants with job offers, rather than high-skilled immigrants without them.

The report can be found online here.

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