The news is filled with reports of employers pressuring the Trump Administration to increase immigration above the million-a-year average. But it is important to remember that the voters -- the ones who actually decide who gets to hold office -- have overwhelmingly preferred cutting immigration in poll after poll over the last two years.
In each poll, U.S. citizens who usually vote in every election were told that legal immigration runs around one million a year. They were then offered other levels that represented a cut in numbers (usually 750,000, 500,000 and less than 250,000) and not a cut (one million or usually 1.5 million and more than 2 million).
CUTS vs. NO CUTS
Here's what national polls have been finding about voters' preference for cuts vs. no cuts in immigration numbers.
Between 13% and 17% of voters each time answered that they weren't sure what they wanted. But the margin between those who have desire reductions in legal immigration has always been large.
Here are results going back two full years. The first one is from a poll of actual voters the day after the 2018 midterm elections:
53% preferred cuts vs. 30% who preferred NO cuts -- November 2018
62% vs. 25% -- March 2018
60% vs. 27% -- December 2017
55% vs. 29% -- October 2017
61% vs. 26% -- August 2017
62% vs. 23% -- July 2017
63% vs. 24% -- April 2017
59% vs. 27% -- February 2017
NumbersUSA sponsored those polls by Pulse Opinion Research. We also sponsored polling of likely voters in 25 battleground states throughout 2017 and 2018. Voters in every one of those states strongly preferred cutting legal immigration numbers.
See a map and table of all the results here: https://www.numbersusa.com/most-voters-want-less-immigration
ROY BECK is Founder & President of NumbersUSA
