A majority of Americans want all immigration to the United States halted in the midst of the Chinese coronavirus crisis, a new poll reveals.
Last week, President Trump signed an executive order slowing green card processing for less than ten percent of the 1.2 million legal immigrants annually admitted to the U.S.
In addition to these annual legal immigrant admissions are millions of foreign nationals who can still arrive on foreign visa worker programs, student visas, tourist visas, and special immigrant visas — all of which have continued despite more than 26 million Americans now unemployed.
The latest Washington Post/University of Maryland poll finds that Americans, by a majority, want all immigration to the U.S. halted.
When asked “Would you support or oppose temporarily blocking nearly all immigration into the United States during the coronavirus outbreak?” about 65 percent of Americans said they favored such a policy. Only 34 percent opposed an immigration moratorium while one percent had no opinion.
Recent Pew Research Center and Ipsos polling have found similar support for reassessing current immigration levels. The latest Pew survey revealed that more than 8-in-10 Americans call mass migration a “threat” to the U.S.
An Ipsos poll found that nearly 8-in-10 Americans want all immigration halted.
The poll comes as some lawmakers, like Reps. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Lance Gooden (R-TX), have called on Trump to expand his executive order to include most of all visa programs to prevent Americans from being forced to compete for scarce U.S. jobs against foreign workers.
An earlier draft of the executive order, exclusively obtained by Breitbart News, showed that the administration had initially intended to suspend the H-1B visa program — as well as H-2B visas, E visas, J-1 visas, B visas, and O visas — but those provisions were removed from the final draft.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.