Supporters of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) say a new poll shows widespread support for SCHIP renewal and for covering legal immigrant children.

The poll, commissioned by the child advocacy group First Focus, found public support for a renewal of SCHIP — which expires March, 31 2009 — at 82 percent. The poll also found 67 percent favored eliminating the five-year waiting period for legal immigrant children, while 19 percent were opposed. SCHIP is not available to legal immigrants during their first five years in the country, except for those residing in states that use state funds to cover legal immigrants who qualify.

“The findings announced today confirmed what we knew over a year ago,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid , D-Nev., said in a statement. “Americans support providing children with health care coverage and they understand the importance of removing the five-year waiting period.”

In 2007, House Democrats dropped provisions that included eliminating the five-year waiting period from a compromise bill to renew and expand SCHIP after House Republicans charged the provisions would provide insurance coverage to illegal immigrants.

Dennis Smith, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and former director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Center for Medicaid and State Operations, said the five-year waiting period was established to stop “outrageous and egregious manipulations of public benefits.”

“It was Congress with the support of President Clinton that enacted the five-year ban,” Smith said. “All this will do will invite, once again, those kind of abuses that outraged the American public.”

Smith questioned the credibility of the poll and suggested it may be incomplete if it did not explain that legal immigrants have sponsors that pledge to cover their needs, including health care.

But First Focus is planning to highlight the poll’s findings as cause to reinstate those provisions.

“In the debate of 2007, Republicans used the coverage of legal immigrant children against expanding the children’s health insurance program,” said Christopher Spina, spokesperson for First Focus. “We clearly now see a mandate among the American people.”

Spina called the poll, with 1,200 respondents conducted on the eve of the November national election, “credibly accurate.” Lake Research Partners, a national research firm, conducted the poll. Forty-nine percent of respondents identified themselves as Democrats, 39 percent as Republicans and 11 as independents.

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV , D-W.Va., chairman of the Senate Finance Health Subcommittee, said in a statement he hoped to work with President-elect Barack Obama and Congress to quickly reauthorize SCHIP and ensure coverage of uninsured children, including legal immigrant children.

In August, the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., to restore the provisions to eliminate the five-year waiting period and reverse requiring proof of citizenship. The groups, which compose an alliance known as the TriCaucus, maintained that the proof of citizenship requirement led to many eligible children to be denied coverage because parents could not recover the needed documentation. Republicans largely opposed the provision.

Other key findings of the poll: