Poll Shows Only 48 Percent of Voters Say Migration Flood Is a ‘Crisis’

Only 48 percent of registered voters say the nation is suffering from a border crisis and only 45 percent of adults strongly blame President Joe Biden, according to a new poll by YouGov.

The poll comes after Biden’s border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas, quietly imported roughly one migrant worker for every American who turned 18. That massive migration shifts much wealth to Wall Street because it slashes wages and salaries for Americans, and also inflates the cost of housing and autos.

The poll results show that “it is not enough [for GOP politicians] to just say, ‘We’re gonna build a wall,’ and it’s not enough to just say ‘We’re going to turn people away,'” said Rosemary Jenks, the director of government relations at NumbersUSA. She continued:

Most Americans sort of intuitively understand that what’s happening is not good for America. But it definitely needs to be spelled out just how it affects them, how it affects their schools, how it affects their grocery bills, how it affects their housing costs — and that Republicans have a plan to fix it.

Wages and job availability is a huge part of it. The fact that we’re seeing all these these cheap-labor companies demanding more foreign labor while at the same time they’re laying off tens of thousands of Americans. That needs to be pointed out and held up for the American people to see.

It’s not covered well in most of the media, and people have a lot to worry about. If you’re trying to figure out whether you can pay your food bill or your heating bill, the border crisis is probably not high up on your list of priorities.

Republicans “have to get the message to the people directly because the [establishment] media is not going to do it for them,” she added. “It has to be done simply and calmly and rationally — not the mean tweets kind of thing,” she added.

Democrats admit that a pocketbook message by GOP politicians is a “big MAGA argument.”

But the media hides the scale of the migration.

“Americans would be even more concerned about the border if they were fully informed,” Democratic pollster Mark Penn said in a January 23 op-ed at Fox News. He continued:

Voters actually vastly underestimate the scale of illegal border crossings. Sixty-four percent knew that illegal crossings have increased since Biden took office, but only 6% knew the extent – between 2-3 million in the past year. The median voter underestimated the number of illegal crossings by a factor of 10.

…

Giving people the facts on immigration made them want change more. When told that over 2.75 million people illegally crossed the border in the past year, 67% of voters, including 53% of Democrats, wanted Biden to enact new, stricter policies to reduce the flow of migrants. It turns out stricter immigration reform is a bipartisan issue.

So Democrats use the national media to keep the data and the migrants out of sight and mind, Penn wrote:

Democrats have contributed to and benefited from this lack of knowledge. Biden visited the border once and keeps saying he has more important things to do. Vice President Kamala Harris only visited once – in 2021 – even though immigration is one of the few substantive issues in her portfolio.

The YouGov poll showed that political loyalties reduce voters’ willingness to blame Biden — or the GOP — for the border breakdown.

For example, 67 percent of registered voters want a congressional investigation into the border breakdown, while just 18 percent oppose an investigation, says the poll. Independent adults favor an investigation by 66 percent to 12 percent. An investigation is favored by 51 percent of Democrats and 66 percent of independents.

But when the pollsters asked about political blame, the Democrats rallied behind Biden, and non-political respondents tried to avoid pinning the political blame on Biden.

The Democratic Party’s ideologically hardcore voters ” know that this is Biden’s fault and they don’t want to say that,” said Jenks. So Biden’s border policy is still getting 58 percent support among Democrats and 22 percent support among independents.

But “the majority of the population doesn’t follow the details of what’s actually happening,” she said, adding: “It is only when it gets to a crisis that they realize because they see it somewhere on the news. “Oh, yeah, there’s that’s really bad, that’s a crisis, but I have no idea how it happened.”

“They don’t know if they can blame Biden — and it’s just safer not to,” she said.

Overall, the YouGov poll showed that only 48 percent of registered voters say the border is in a crisis — although 30 percent believe it is a “major problem.”

If the GOP wants to win on immigration, it must offer a clear and practical message, said Jenks:

[Republicans] have to come out with a plan of action that can actually solve the border crisis and they need to be able to explain how it will solve the border crisis … You have to explain how you’re going to disincentivize additional illegal immigration, how you’re going to stop the current flow, how you’re going to return people humanely to their countries, and how you’re going to remove the people who are here

“It’s a hard issue to talk about, and it needs to be talked about carefully, but it needs to be talked about,” Jenks said.

Donor-funded GOP politicians usually avoid such a clear, pragmatic message — and especially any mention of falling wages and rising rents caused by the federal migration policies. So establishment-backed GOP legislators prefer to talk about border chaos, illegality, drugs, and lettuce.

The YouGov poll showed that Americans were much more willing to be clear-eyed when the pollsters did not ask them to credit or blame domestic politicians.

For example, Americans strongly blamed Biden’s migration on the governments in the migrants’ home countries, by 70 percent to 18 percent.

Americans overwhelmingly say migrants are motivated by economics, not by fear of political persecution, as many Democrats claim.

Fifty-eight percent of poll respondents say the migrants are looking for work, 63 percent say they are fleeing poverty — while only 44 percent say they are fleeing persecution. Seventy-one percent of Democrats say they are looking for jobs, and just 55 percent say they are fleeing persecution.