A majority of Republican voters now say the current flow of legal and illegal immigration, where more than a million are added to the United States population annually, makes Americans “worse off” overall, a new poll finds.
A YouGov poll reveals that 56 percent of registered Republicans said immigration is making the U.S. “worse off,” while less than 2-in-10 Republicans said immigration is making the U.S. “better off.” About 15 percent said immigration has no impact.
Likewise, 62 percent of voters who supported former President Trump in the 2020 presidential election said immigration is making the U.S. “worse off,” while only 16 percent said the opposite.
Conservatives, similarly, said by a 54 percent majority that immigration is worse for Americans than it is better for the,m and a plurality of 36 percent of rural voters said the same. Even among swing voters, attitudes are split as 32 percent said they are “better off” with immigration while 30 percent said they are “worse off.”
Annually, the federal government awards permanent U.S. residency to about 1.2 million foreign nationals and temporary work visas to another million. In addition, President Joe Biden is adding roughly a million illegal aliens to the nation’s population every year.
Though Republican candidates have made illegal immigration a fixture of their campaigns, there has been little talk about legal immigration levels outside of GOP Senate candidates J.D. Vance in Ohio and Blake Masters in Arizona.
Republicans’ avoiding the issue of legal immigration levels, along with the resulting cost-of-living hikes, is evident in House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) “Commitment to America” plan which includes mandatory E-Verify to eliminate illegal hiring by companies.
The latest Rasmussen Reports survey shows 82 percent of Republican voters back mandatory E-Verify. The same survey, though, also shows similar wide majorities for reductions to legal immigration across the board.
“Which is closest to the number of new immigrants the government should be adding each year — fewer than 500,000, 750,000, one million, one and a half million, or more than one and a half million?” likely GOP voters were asked, to which 54 percent said they want fewer than half a million legal immigration admissions a year.
Meanwhile, 74 percent of likely Republican voters said they want to see the process known as “chain migration” — whereby newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the U.S. — eliminated entirely, and 72 percent said they want most white-collar legal immigration cut.
The YouGov poll surveyed nearly 1,500 American adults from September 17 to September 20 and has a margin of error of +/- 2.9 percentage points. The Rasmussen Reports survey included 1,250 likely U.S. voters from August 28 to September 1 and has a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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