The public greatly underestimates the scale of the migration crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, which the Biden administration’s policies prompted, according to a new Harvard Harris poll.
“The media coverage to some degree is engineered to achieve that result,” responded Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “If you don’t stress numbers over and over again, it’s not going to sink in,” he said, adding, “[t]he [media is] not going to draw attention to the reality that people are dramatically underestimating the size of immigration because if they did, it would undermine support for their guy in the White House.”
In May, 180,000 migrants were caught crossing the border. Most were sent back to Mexico to rest before their next attempt while Biden’s deputies allowed 68,000 migrants into the United States.
An additional 50,000 migrants successfully sneaked through the border to reach jobs inside the United States, according to unpublished official estimates.
Overall, in May, roughly 230,000 migrants crossed the border, and 120,000 got through the border, including roughly 100,000 job seekers.
The June 15-17 Harvard Harris poll of 2,006 registered voters asked: “How many border crossings of illegal immigrants would you say are occurring every month in the United States right now?”
Twenty-one percent of the respondents estimated fewer than 10,000 people per month.
Thirty-one percent guessed between 10,000 and 50,000 migrants.
Nineteen percent guessed between 50,000 and 100,000 migrants.
The results show that 71 percent of respondents deeply underestimated the flow of migrants into Americans’ jobs, apartments, schools, and culture.
Just 22 percent provided answers that roughly match the inflow: 13 percent guessed between 100,000 and 150,000 migrants, 7 percent guessed 150,000 to 200,000 migrants, and 2 percent guessed 200,000 to 250,000 migrants.
If Biden’s people allow 750,000 migrants into the United States during 2021, that would add up to one migrant for every five Americans who turn 18 during the year.
So far, Republican leaders have dodged much of the immigration debate, likely because donors want more imported consumers, renters, and workers, Instead, GOP leaders have characterized Biden’s migration as a chaotic crisis, as cruel to migrants, and helpful to the drug cartels. This GOP message downplays the inflow numbers and sidelines the economic damage being done to Americans.
Numerous polls have shown that Americans underestimate the scale of migration and also prefer that companies hire Americans before migrants. For example, a June 21-25 report by Rasmussen Reports showed that 63 percent of 1,250 likely voters say that ‘it is better for the nation “for businesses to raise the pay and try harder to recruit non-working Americans even if it causes prices to rise,” than “for the government to bring in new foreign workers to help keep business costs and prices down.”
“If our leadership class, including the media, politicians, and others, actually stressed the magnitude of the influx of people from abroad, that would undermine support for immigration policy,” Krikorian said. “They want to make sure that the frog is boiled slowly,” he added.
Each year, four million young Americans enter the workforce. But they are forced by their government to compete against a growing population of illegal migrants, one million new legal immigrants, and the resident workforce of roughly two million temporary guest workers.
For many years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates. This opposition is multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, bipartisan, rational, persistent, and recognizes the solidarity Americans owe to each other.
The voter opposition to elite-backed economic migration coexists with support for legal immigrants and some sympathy for illegal migrants. But only a minority of Americans — mostly leftists — embrace the many skewed polls and articles pushing the 1950’s corporate “Nation of Immigrants” claim.
The deep public opposition to labor migration is built on the widespread recognition that legal immigration, visa workers, and illegal migration undermine democratic self-government, fracture Americans’ society, move money away from Americans’ pocketbooks, and worsen living costs for American families.
Migration moves wealth from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from children to their parents, from homebuyers to investors, from technology to stoop labor, from red states to blue states, and from the central states to the coastal states such as New York.