Poll: More want immigration to slow
Expert says high numbers seen at border likely influenced Americans’ negative views
Republicans have expressed more displeasure with immigration than has ever been recorded, according to a new Gallup poll on Americans’ perception of immigration.
The percentages of Democrats, Republicans and independents desiring to curb immigration have increased since 2021, according to polling data, which goes back to 2001.
“Between 2021 and 2022 is when we saw both in reality and in optics the specter of an uncontrolled border, and the specter really has an impact on people,” said Muzaffar Chishti, analyst and director with the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.
He said the historic border encounters of more than 2 million in 2022 likely influenced the negative perceptions of immigration, despite the important role immigrants play in working critical jobs and offsetting declining birth rates.
“People’s attitude towards immigration is no longer driven by facts and data. It’s driven by emotion. It’s driven by culture and identity. So in that specter, the picture of an uncontrolled border just doesn’t make people feel good about immigrants,”
Chishti said, adding that the Gallup numbers explain President Joe Biden’s new hard-line approach to controlling the border, which prompted criticism from his own party. Early data shows border encounters have dropped 40 percent under Biden’s new plan.
Republicans being upset about immigration is not particularly surprising. But the percentage of Democrats who were dissatisfied with immigration and wanted the influx of immigrants curtailed rose from 2 percent in 2021 to 19 percent in 2023.
Chishti said he believes Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s busing of migrants contributed to this dissatisfaction, by passing on the costs associated with migration to liberal cities in different parts of the country. New York City, which has received thousands of migrants through Abbott’s busing scheme, has asked for emergency aid from the state of New York to pay for care of the migrants, which could cost the mayor’s office close to $2 billion,
according to Politico.
“People realize that there are costs associated with welcoming immigrants,” Chishti said.
Zenobia Lai, immigration advocate and director of the Houston Immigration Legal Services Collaborative, considers the polling data differently.
“For the independents and Democrats, the percentage of people who didn’t think that immigration needs to be decreased is actually very high,” Lai said.
The poll found that 64 percent of independents and 81 percent of Democrats want immigration to the U.S. to stay the same or increase, or they were ambivalent about the number of immigrants.
Lai pointed out that there’s a lot of misinformation about the border and that despite historic border encounters in 2022, many of those who entered the United States were repeat crossers. The Title 42 immigration policy makes it easier for people to cross multiple times without penalty.
While the exact number of people let into the country is not provided by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, some 880,000 new deportation cases were filed in immigration courts in 2022, which can help approximate how many border crossers were allowed in and now face deportation.
Lai also noted that despite some unfavorable views towards immigrants in the poll, in Harris County local officials created a program to provide deportation defense to some undocumented immigrants.
“I think that is a powerful testimony to recognize that immigrants are part of our community, and it is important to the local economy and also for the community stability to keep families together,” she said.
“Houston is a mecca for immigration and its successes, and I think people here recognize the value,” said University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus, who believes the polling data for Houston would likely show a more favorable view of immigration.
However, outside of the urban area, he said, many people share hard-line viewpoints on immigration that are reflected among many of the state’s Republican leaders.
“Republicans no longer fear being labeled as antiimmigrant because the perception of immigration has changed to more negative than it was,” Rottinghaus said.
The disparate beliefs about immigration, reflected in the polling data, make reform less likely to pass, making it more difficult to address the immigration system’s chronic problems, such as backlogs, border security and legal status for Dreamers, the undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children.
“The problem here is that if immigration is seen to be a net negative, it’s going to be hard for the parties to achieve some kind of agreeable consensus on what to do in this unfavorable climate,” Rottinghaus said.