PROVIDENCE — Several years ago, Terry Gorman, of Lincoln, began to think there was an opinion gap on the volatile issue of illegal immigration.

Leaders in the business and political communities, Gorman says, did not appreciate the anger among average citizens over the issue of people entering the U.S illegally, working illegally and having children who automatically become U.S. citizens.

“I think there is a huge disconnect between how average people feel about this and the politicians and leaders of many groups,” says Gorman, a retired U.S. postal worker. “You go to the State House hearings and testify and it seems all the [media] coverage comes down on the side of … the ACLU, the Urban League, and the Latino organizations.

“I’m not against immigrants, we need immigrants,” Gorman says. “But you have to come here legally.”

In February 2006, Gorman started a lobbying and research group, Rhode Island Immigration Law Enforcement, or RIILE, with six members. Roughly a year later, the group has more than 250 members, a Web site and a presence at the State House lobbying for legislation that would crack down on employers who hire illegal immigrants.

On the other side is Bill Shuey, executive director of the International Institute of Rhode Island, in Providence, an organization that helps immigrants and teaches them English.

“Obviously you can’t let everybody in here who wants to come,” Shuey said. “But I think we want to deal with people who have been here a long time in a humane manner. We need to have a policy in which there is some … path to citizenship.”

Immigration has been with Americans longer than there has been a United States. Rhode Island was founded by an immigrant of conscience, Baptist preacher Roger Williams, the father of the doctrine of separation of church and state, who was booted from Massachusetts by the Puritan theocrats who ran that colony. Williams founded Providence in 1636.

But the modern controversy over immigration probably dates to 1994, when California voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot question called Proposition 187, a measure that would have denied most public services, including health care and education, to illegal immigrants.

The courts stuck down most of Proposition 187, but it kicked off a debate in the western and southwestern states — which share porous borders with Mexico — that has since rippled across the nation, reaching into state houses and the halls of Congress.

The volume has been turned up on the argument in Southeastern New England since the March 6 raid by federal authorities on a New Bedford textile factory that employed 300 or more illegal immigrants. A probable-cause hearing against officers of the company, Michael Bianco Inc., had been scheduled to be held today in federal court in Boston, but the hearing has been moved to April 6.

At the Rhode Island General Assembly, a number of measures have been introduced to crack down on employers who hire undocumented workers. This, too, is part of a national movement. Frustrated by what they view as a lack of aggressiveness by the federal government, legislators in states around the country want states to get into a sphere of law enforcement that has long been Washington’s job — punishing employers who hire illegal immigrant workers.

In the absence of scientific public opinion polling, it is impossible to know how Rhode Island residents view the situation. But since the March 6 raid, more than 1,600 people have sent messages to projo.com, the Journal’s Web site, giving their opinions on the raid and the issue of illegal immigrants.

Overwhelmingly, the responses have been on the side of vigorous enforcement of laws barring employers from hiring illegal immigrants.

“I’d love to see some good poll numbers on the issue,” says Joseph Fleming, pollster and political analyst for Channel 12, WPRI-TV. “I haven’t seen anything yet, but I think it would be very interesting, especially in light of the New Bedford situation.”

While some immigrant advocates, such as Shuey, see an element of racism in the anti-immigrant campaign — current illegal immigrants are largely Hispanic — others, including some academics who have studied the issue, believe opposition to illegal workers is based on economics.

Businesses that use illegal workers have an unfair advantage over businesses that play by the rules, Gorman says. If two landscaping companies are competing for the same job, it stands to reason that the one who pays workers under the table or violates minimum wage laws has an advantage.

“We need to enforce the law to level the playing field for all businesses,” he says.

The widespread hiring of illegal immigrants at lower-than-legal wages acts to depress wages for American workers, particularly those with low skills, says Paul Tarullo, of Providence, an activist in pushing for legislation that would crack down on employers of illegals.

“We are creating a huge underclass here of people who flip burgers and cut lawns,” Tarullo says. “These are jobs kids in high school should be doing part time, not 40-year-old men from other nations.”

Peter Skerry, a Boston College political science professor and expert on immigration, says it is too easy to argue that racism is behind most of the recent anti-immigrant fervor.

Skerry and other researchers see an economy that has not created jobs for low-skilled Americans and where stagnant wages have been the norm for 25 years for lower-income workers. “Anxieties about immigration are not easily dismissed as irrational or racist,” he says.

“Economists agree that the owners of capital, business entrepreneurs, and well-educated professionals benefit overwhelmingly from immigration,” Skerry says. “While many ordinary Americans see immigrants as potential competitors for jobs, neighborhood turf, or public resources, the wealthy and merely affluent see them as employees — the nannies, gardeners, dishwashers, maids and laborers who help to get things done.”

Rhode Island’s U.S. senators, Democrats Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, said in separate interviews that they agree on a need to aggressively enforce the laws barring illegally crossing the U.S. borders.

“Our first obligation is to secure the border,” Reed says. “And we need to enforce vigorously responsibility of employers to hire legal workers.”

But the issue is complicated, especially when it comes to guest-worker programs — which would allow immigrants into the country for short periods — and even more pointedly, how to deal with the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States.

For instance, large agricultural interests argue that they need short-term seasonal workers. “The agricultural interests claim they can’t put food on American tables without access to foreign workers,” Reed says.

Reed says he appreciates the “issue of fairness” — that illegal immigrants should not be able to cut in the citizenship line — but also says that most illegal immigrants are here to work.

Both Whitehouse and Reed say they support, in concept, some version of legislation proposed last year by Senators Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and John McCain, R-Ariz., that would create a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who meet certain criteria, such as learning English, paying fines and any back taxes, passing a law-enforcement background check and going to the end of the legal citizenship line.

While some Republicans in the U.S. House would make all 12 million illegal immigrants felons, Whitehouse says that is not a realistic path. Besides being inhumane and “a little creepy,” he says, it would cost too much federal money to build jails, hire prosecutors and public defenders and hold jury trials for all such immigrants.

“Even in a very immigrant-friendly state such as Rhode Island … where generations of people have direct ties to immigrants and almost every family has an immigrant story, this issue generates a lot of heat and passion,” Whitehouse says.

smackay@projo.com