According to recent exit polling conducted by Zogby Analytics on behalf of the Federation for American Immigration Reform a majority of voters still strongly favor strengthened border restrictions and tight limits on admission of foreign guest workers during the ongoing health and economic crisis and beyond.
In what may be a surprise for some, the poll went on to reveal that majorities of all voters – Democrats, Republicans, and Independents – believe that in the longer-term (post-Covid-19), overall levels of immigration should be reduced to prevent excessive U.S. population growth, and protect American jobs.
Broken down by political party, Republicans had the highest support for long-term reductions in total immigration, the most important factor fueling population growth and severely limiting economic opportunities for Americans, with 78% agreeing. Democrats supported the notion by 54% and Independents, with the lowest approval, still barely broke a majority with 51.4%.
When broken down by ethnicity, all groups questioned besides those who identified themselves as “other” also reached majority support for longer-term immigration reductions with the purpose of protecting American jobs and expanding opportunities for those already present in the country. White respondents supported the notion by 65.6%, Hispanics by 59.9%, African Americans by 55.5%, Asians by 52.3%, and Other by 45.9%.
These results were echoed throughout the entire poll, majority support was reached in each residential category from rural to metropolitan areas, Americans with and without college degrees, self-proclaimed conservatives, moderates, and socialists all agreed (liberals at 49.7%), each occupational category except “student” and those “unemployed and NOT looking for work,” and even a supermajority of Union members agreed (73%).
In addition, the vast majority of all voters – nearly 83%– agree that a decrease in cross-border traffic and the restricted admission of international travelers is key to slowing the spread of COVID-19.
In the short-term, strong majorities of Independents, Democrats and Republicans supporting the limiting of admissions of new immigrants and guest workers while COVID-19 related unemployment remains high. Majorities of Blacks, Whites, and Hispanics, along with Americans of all political stripes, support continuing to limit immigration and foreign guest workers in order to protect Americans during the COVID-19 crisis.
Overall, 78% of Americans who answered the exit survey said immigration was an “important” issue for them and was key to who they voted for. Support for the President’s border closings to block further COVID-19 exposure won 80% support.
In a similar vein, CIS recently released a review of what they called “one of the 2020 election's great surprises,” the drastic blue to red shift witnessed in Texas counties along the southern border. CIS reported:
Left largely unreported in the national press is that hundreds of thousands of Latino voters in rural Texas — the sons and daughters of early legal migration — also felt repulsed by the 2019 mass-migration crisis during which nearly one million illegal Central Americans swamped the border as Democratic voices encouraged it, litigated efforts to staunch the tide, and promised open gates under a Biden administration.
A large part of this new Trump support was a strong repudiation of relentless condemnations among demonstrators in big Democratic cities and in Congress of Border Patrol, ICE, and detention facilities, some of the largest employers in these areas.
The Latino border vote in Texas also seemed to stand at sharp variance with a widely and broadly repeated narrative that Donald Trump is a racist whose anti-Hispanic animus was manifested in his immigration-enforcement policies.
For more on this story, please visit the Washington Examiner.
To view the survey crosstabs yourself, please click here.
To read the CIS report on Texas border counties, please click here.
