Pew: 20 Percent More Americans Call Illegal Immigration ‘Very Big Problem’ Under Joe Biden

About 20 percent more Americans today call illegal immigration a “very big problem” under President Joe Biden’s direction as opposed to the same time last year when then-President Donald Trump imposed a series of controls to slow overall immigration levels.

The latest Pew Research Center survey, conducted from April 5 to 11, reveals the number of American adults who say illegal immigration is a very big problem has jumped 20 percentage points since last year when Trump was in office.

In June 2020, 28 percent of Americans called illegal immigration a very big problem. Today, 48 percent of Americans consider illegal immigration a very big problem. For context, more Americans see illegal immigration as a bigger problem than the Chinese coronavirus.

The jump in concern is across party lines. Today, 72 percent of Republican voters call illegal immigration a very big problem — a 29 percentage point increase since June 2020 — while 29 percent of Democrats say the same. In June 2020, just 15 percent of Democrats said illegal immigration was a very big problem.

After Biden took office, he quickly dismantled Trump’s legal wall at the southern border by ending the “Remain in Mexico” program, canceling cooperative asylum agreements with Central America, and fast-tracking border crossers into the U.S. interior while giving them one-year work permits.

Simultaneously, Biden’s administration issued “sanctuary country” orders that have massively cut interior immigration enforcement and are preventing about nine-in-ten deportations of illegal aliens, analysis shows.

Last month, nearly 170,000 border crossers were apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border. This is a 450 percent increase in illegal immigration compared to the same time last year under Trump.

The expansion of overall immigration levels is at odds with the majority of Americans.

The latest Rasmussen Reports survey of 1,250 likely U.S. voters shows nearly six-in-ten said the federal government is doing “too little” to stop illegal immigration. Only 14 percent said the government is doing “too much,” and 21 percent said their policies are “about right.”

Rather than allowing businesses to have an endless supply of foreign labor via immigration, 65 percent of likely U.S. voters say it is better for businesses to recruit Americans with higher wages and better benefits. Only 17 percent said the federal government should bring in new foreign workers for business.

Already, about 11 to 22 million illegal aliens live in the U.S. This year, analysts project that federal immigration officials will encounter 1.2 million border crossers with likely thousands more able to successfully illegally enter the nation without being detected.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.