What if deportation, and not abortion, is the keyword of the 2024 election? A new poll finds more Americans across the political spectrum support strong action to resolve the illegal immigration crisis.
“Half of Americans – including 42% of Democrats – say they’d support mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, according to a new Axios Vibes survey by The Harris Poll,” Axios reported. Yes, the news site still couldn’t resist using the loaded term “undocumented immigrants” as it related the growing exasperation of the American people on an issue the big-box media would dearly love to play down in an election year.
“Americans are open to former President [Donald] Trump’s harshest immigration plans, spurred on by a record surge of illegal border crossings and a relentless messaging war waged by Republicans,” the establishment outlet continued. “And 30% of Democrats – as well as 46% of Republicans – now say they’d end birthright citizenship, something guaranteed under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution,” Axios noted with obvious astonishment.
“I was surprised at the public support for large-scale deportations,” Mark Penn, chairman of The Harris Poll, said of the results. “I think they’re just sending a message to politicians: ‘Get this under control.’”
Blue Flight on Immigration
(Photo by Qian Weizhong/VCG via Getty Images)
Democrats seeking re-election do not want to be tied to the Biden administration’s disastrous inaction on border security. On April 24, five “centrist” House Democrats released a statement declaring their staunch support for increased Border Patrol funding. “[W]e strongly agree with the National Border Patrol Council that Congress and the president must act and bring order to the southern border,” the statement by Reps. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA), Jared Golden (D-ME), Mary Peltola (D-AK), Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX), and Don Davis (D-NC) read. “That is why … we all voted last month for $19.6 billion for Border Patrol so that it could ramp up its efforts to secure the border.”
It isn’t only the “moderate” Democrats feeling the heat. In woke California, elected officials are having to deal with mounting anger over the unchecked wave of refugees allowed into the United States during the Biden years. And it’s not just coming from the white middle class, either.
“Even in his heavily immigrant district, which contains large Latino and Vietnamese communities, the ‘visceral reaction to the refugees, it’s universal,’ state Rep. Lou Correa told the Los Angeles Times in February. “I have Latinos, I have [illegal aliens] saying, ‘Why are you letting in so many people when I busted my a** for 30 years, and I can’t get a work permit?’” Correa said. “You cannot sit there and explain to people … You’ve got to come up with a slogan. Is the slogan going to be, ‘kick them all out’? That’s the challenge we have.”
‘Single Biggest Issue’ in Massachusetts
The story is the same in Massachusetts.
Immigration “is the ‘single biggest issue’ facing Massachusetts, according to the poll of 1,002 Massachusetts residents conducted by MassINC with GBH News and Commonwealth Beacon,” the Boston Herald reported in April. “Twenty-one percent of those polled said immigration was on top of their list of concerns, followed by 15% for housing and 12% for the cost of living.”
It’s not a mystery why this would be so. “The ongoing influx of illegal immigrants, lured to Massachusetts because of its generous welfare benefits, is threatening to wreak havoc with the state budget, let alone with the social fabric of some cities and towns which are housing the immigrants,” the paper stressed. “State services are being cut and money being transferred to accounts to cope with the needs of the needy immigrants, many of whom are women and children.”
National polls reflect this acute state of alarm as well.
In each of the first three months of 2024, Gallup asked poll respondents: “What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?” Immigration was the top answer in February and March, garnering a whopping 28% of the 20 different answers given, and it came in second by one percentage point (21% to 20%) in January to “the government/poor leadership.”
How vital a concern was abortion? It garnered 2% of responses in January and February and then jumped all the way to 3% in March.
The overarching question is twofold. First, how long can a manipulative big-box media shy away from honestly conveying the reality of a core issue that can demolish blue electoral hopes in November? Second, what can Democrats do to dodge this potential ballot disaster of their own making?
