Americans, regardless of their political affiliation, broadly prefer low levels of new residents flowing into the country, shows a new Cato Institute poll, suggesting Joe Biden’s policies, which critics say encourage increased immigration, are out of step with public opinion.
According to the poll results released on Monday, 68% of Americans – including 79% of Republicans, 58% of Democrats, 68% of independents and 58% of immigrants themselves- prefer a low level of immigration, compared with 23% who would tolerate a high level and an additional 9% who want immigration to be stopped entirely.
However, many Americans remain conflicted, perceiving immigration to present both immense benefits but also challenges, the survey reports.
The low-immigration sentiment may be even stronger than the survey responses indicate considering that 27% of those who said they’d tolerate a high level of immigration would prefer lower inflows than they are currently with an additional 22% who wanted the total to be kept at a million.
Recent public opinion polls show that only 33% of Americans approve of how Biden has handled the US-Mexico border issue since taking office in January with Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll released in mid-June, showing that 74% of registered voters consider the surge in illegal border crossings since Biden took office to be a “crisis.”
This is particularly significant considering 84 percent of them underestimated the number of illegal crossings with only 7 percent aware of the fact that there are between 150,000 and 200,000 illegal crossings a month.
That opinion is not far from the truth considering apprehensions of illegal aliens near the southern US border jumped tenfold from a year earlier to more than 180,000 in May while Texas state police reported an 800% surge in fentanyl seizures in the first four months of 2021.
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