(Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
A majority of Americans want to curtail immigration into the United States for the first time since 2005, according to a new poll from Gallup.
The survey found that 55% of American adults want fewer immigrants to come to the country, while 41% said that they want immigration to remain at its present levels or would like to allow even more migrants to relocate here. This is the largest percentage of Americans who want immigration cut since 2001, when 58% favored fewer noncitizens.
While 25% of those polled said they want immigration to remain at its current level, 16% said they would like more immigrants to come to the U.S. The figure marks a drastic drop from May 2020, when 34% of respondents said that immigration should be increased.
Gallup also found that all three political affiliations – Republicans, Democrats, and independents – are more likely to support less immigration than last year. While 73% of Republicans said they wanted immigration to decrease in 2023, the figure now stands at an overwhelming 88%.
The share of independents who want immigration to be cut rose significantly from 2023 to 2024, starting at 39% last year before spiking to 50% in 2024. Just 18% of Democrats said that immigration should be reduced in 2023. Now, in 2024, 28% of Democrats want to reduce immigration.
Americans have become significantly more supportive of border security measures in the last several years.
While only 40% of Americans favored expanding the construction of walls along the U.S.-Mexico border in 2019, that figure jumped to 53% in 2023.
In 2019, just 37% of Americans were in favor of deporting all illegal immigrants back to their homelands. The figure sat at 47% as of 2023, according to Gallup.
The American public’s shifting views on immigration come amid a presidency where more than 10 million people have unlawfully crossed the border during the Biden administration, with an estimated 1.7 million illegal immigrant gotaways recorded since President Joe Biden was inaugurated in 2021. There were 415,000 total reported gotaways for 2018, 2019, and 2020 under the Trump administration.
Immigration has become a major issue heading into the 2024 presidential race. One poll found that only 36% of voters approve of Biden’s performance on immigration, while another found that a majority of Americans support increasing deportations, building a wall on the southern border, and penalizing businesses that hire illegal immigrants.
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