Gallup Poll: Illegal Immigration 'Most Important Problem' Facing Country

Just over a month after Breitbart Texas broke the story about illegal immigrants being warehoused in Texas, Americans say that illegal immigration is the country’s top problem. 

A new Gallup poll found that 17% of Americans believe that “immigration/illegal aliens” is “the most important problem facing the country today.”  As Gallup noted, that is “up from 5% in June, and the highest seen since 2006.” Gallup found that “dissatisfaction with government” comes in second, at 16%, on the list of the country’s top problems.

On June 5, Breitbart Texas Managing Director Brandon Darby published leaked photos of illegal immigrant children being warehoused. Those photos forced the national media and other outlets to cover the issue. Matt Drudge’s Drudge Report, which was one of the only other outlets that had focused on illegal immigration issues before those photos were published, honed in on the issue even more. When Breitbart Texas first published the photos of children being warehoused, only 5% of the country thought that illegal immigration was the country’s top problem, largely because the mainstream media was not covering the issue. That is not the case now.

Darby’s coverage was in part responsible for ousting House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), whose campaigned reeled after challenger Dave Brat hammered him on the illegal immigration issue as the national media started to ramp up its coverage. Post-election polls showed that Tea Party and anti-illegal immigration voters ousted Cantor. Citizens across the country from Maryland to California have since fought the federal government’s attempts to secretly dump illegal immigrants in their communities.

Nearly 57,000 illegal immigration children have flooded across the border since October of last year, and federal officials expect at least 150,000 more to do so the next fiscal year. Nearly a third of Americans do not trust either party to competently deal with what they think are the “top problems”–like illegal immigration–the country faces.

Gallup’s poll, conducted July 7-10, has a margin of error of +/- four percentage points.