Long-time pollster Gallup has a poll up regarding immigration, and here’s their summary:
Americans have grown markedly more positive toward immigration over the past year, with the share wanting immigration reduced dropping from 55% in 2024 to 30% today. At the same time, a record-high 79% of U.S. adults say immigration is a good thing for the country.
These shifts reverse a four-year trend of rising concern about immigration that began in 2021 and reflect changes among all major party groups.
With illegal border crossings down sharply this year, fewer Americans than in June 2024 back hard-line border enforcement measures, while more favor offering pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants already in the U.S.
These findings are based on a June 2-26 Gallup poll of 1,402 U.S. adults, including oversamples of Hispanic and Black Americans, weighted to match national demographics.
The same poll finds many more Americans disapproving than approving of President Donald Trump’s handling of immigration. Trump’s 21% approval rating on the issue among Hispanic adults is below his 35% rating nationally, with the deficit likely reflecting that group’s low support for some of the administration’s signature immigration policies.
It’s a bit fascinating how after media focusing on an issue for several months, Americans begin to really think about it. For a while, Republicans emphasized that a flood of immigrants – true or not – was lapping over our borders.
But, I suspect, this caused various media sources to explore and discuss immigration and its affect on the nation. For example:
- Do immigrants get free healthcare? Generally, no, although emergency rooms will provide care because of laws mandating same.
- Who picks fresh produce? Mostly, immigrants. They also staff abattoirs, and generally provide a lot of labor that native-born Americans currently find repugnant.
This way to common-sense. Just climb over that bank of plowed, compacted snow….
As their contributions become better known, the drive to chase illegal immigrants out becomes less and less attractive to the American public. The focus on removing immigrants, and anyone who gets in the way, from the country has the effect of focusing a conceptual lens on the issue for the electorate – and thus changing that opinion.
What are other issues that might change, or strengthen? Fossil fuel and their subsidies? Green energy? Coinage? Trump’s central motivation to return to the 1950s, see his demands that the Washington and Cleveland sports teams revert their team names?
And is this also true of lefty issues, such as woke-ism and transgenderism? While there’s been concern that The New York Times and WaPo have been captured by extreme-left journalists, Andrew Sullivan thinks that pendulum is beginning a return swing (paywall) in the wake of rank foolishness from the ACLU.
The times, they are a-changing, and maybe the extremists of all the sides are being rejected. We can hope.
