The immigration fight that led to a government shutdown might give the impression that Americans are split right down the middle on this contentious issue, but a new poll indicates that there is broad room for a bipartisan compromise. Specifically, many more Americans agree with President Trump on matters of immigration than the Democrats – or the mainstream media – would like us to believe. If both parties take a long, hard look at this poll, we don’t doubt that they can come together on a solution that satisfied the majority of voters.
The only question is: Are Democrats willing to stand up to their hard-left flank?
The answer may be surprising, given Chuck Schumer’s willingness to cave on the shutdown after only three days. He’s taking an extraordinary amount of heat from progressives in his party for the surrender, but he seems to see the writing on the wall. Americans are in favor of some sort of legalization for Dreamers, but they are not in favor of shutting the government down over it. Democrats are trying their best to blur the line between “citizen” and “undocumented,” but the majority of the public isn’t buying into their nonsense. Americans have sympathy, but we aren’t stupid.
According to the poll, conducted by Harvard-Harris, a majority of Americans support granting Dreamers amnesty, which favors the Democrats (and quite a few Republicans, including the president). But while you can’t read a Washington Post story without having that stat thrown in your face, the rest of the poll reveals public sentiment that you may find surprising. Put simply, the public agrees with Trump when it comes to his demands: A wall across the southern border, a decisive limit on chain migration, and the elimination of the Diversity Visa Lottery system.
Even more interesting is what the poll reveals about the public’s attitude towards legal immigration levels. There are few supporters of lowering legal immigration in Congress (on either side of the aisle), but most Americans would like to see it capped well below the current levels. 35% of respondents said we should allow in no more than 250,000 people a year. 19% said they’d like to see the levels capped somewhere around 500,000. 18% said they would like immigration levels set between 500,000 to 1 million. In all three instances, this would bring our legal immigration levels down considerably from the current annual placemark of 1.5 million.
Furthermore, 79% of respondents said they would like the U.S. to favor skilled immigrants over the “chain migration” system of bringing in extended family members of naturalized migrants. 54% support building some form of wall across the U.S.-Mexico border.
These results pave a potential way for Republicans and Democrats to come together for a popular immigration bill that, while it may not entirely satisfy the margins on either the right or the left, will bring us a lot closer to an ideal system than we currently have. And it could prove to be a major victory for Trump and the GOP heading into the midterms.
Which is, by the way, the number one reason why it’s so unlikely to happen.
Comments are closed.