A poll of 52 nations shows overwhelming majorities of citizens say most “refugees” are just economic migrants seeking jobs and aid, not helpless victims of war or disaster.
The polling firm IPSOS asked 33,000 people in 52 countries to agree or disagree with this statement: “Most foreigners who want to get into my country as a refugee really aren’t refugees. They just want to come here for economic reasons, or to take advantage of our welfare services.”
Fifty-eight percent of Americans agreed with the “not refugees” view and just 34 percent disagreed, according to the poll, which was conducted to help the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to rebuild public support for more migration.
In the United Kingdom, the result was 62 percent agreement and 29 percent disagreement. In Germany, the score was 61 percent and 33 percent. In Ireland, the split was 63 percent to 32 percent.
Worldwide, the split was 61 percent agree, and 31 percent disagreed, despite relentless media cheerleading for more migration.
The unwanted result came after the survey skewed the poll in favor of migration. For example, the survey hid the current scale of migration, forced respondents to pick between extreme welcome-or-rejection alternatives, and hid the policy alternatives.
Those options include investment in U.S. productivity and mutually beneficial trade.
Despite the skew, the IPSOS survey admitted that most people worldwide share Americans’ rising opposition to migration: “Year-over-year tracking in select countries reveals declining support in many nations, indicating that while the principle of asylum retains majority support, this sentiment is eroding over time.”
In the United States, a June 12 Gallup poll showed that 55 percent of Americans want migration reductions while just 16 percent want more migration.
Still, the IPSOS survey played up results favorable to the UN’s more-migration plan. “There is openness, to varying degrees, to giving refugees access to their rights and resources,” IPSOS wrote.
In the United States, the Democratic-led coalition of business interests and progressive groups insist that Biden’s migrants are beneficial and are driven by crime and chaos toward Biden’s welcome at the U.S.-Mexico border.
That business/progressive coalition is powerful, in large part, because it uses Americans’ decent sympathy for poor foreigners to quietly and gradually turn a border trickle of migrants into a huge flood of foreign workers, consumers, and renters.
This strategy is aided by the many Americans who want to display their left-wing support for migrants. For example, the IPSOS poll showed that 26 percent of Americans agree with Biden’s claim that a person is a “refugee” even if they were only “seeking better economic opportunity outside their country” or if they sneaked across the U.S. border.
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But the IPSOS survey shows that most citizens in Western countries are growing more wary about the exceptions and loopholes that enable mass migration. For example, the poll showed that 48 percent of Americans and 44 percent of British agreed that “We must close our borders to refugees entirely – we can’t accept any at this time.”
That no-exceptions, hardline judgment was shared by 50 percent of Germans, 42 percent of Canadians, 53 percent of Irish, and 49 percent of Dutch.
The poll also showed that 44 percent of Americans say migrants impose a burden on schools, hospitals, and housing, while 22 percent say they have a positive effect.
However, the citizens of the countries that send migrants to Europe and the United States had much closer results.
Ethiopians disagreed 57 percent to 31 percent, while Kenyans split 46 percent agree, to 51 percent disagree. Both countries send many people to wealthier countries — but also try to exclude migrants from their poor neighbors.
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