Despite all the political rhetoric, neither major political party in America can be reasonably described as “anti-immigration.”
Republicans tend to favor a more controlled immigration, while Democrats increasingly favor open borders type policies. The debate in America is always over “how much” – not whether there should be immigration at all. This is unique to America. According to polling from the Pew Research Center, U.S. conservatives have a more favorable view of immigrants and diversity than the European left.
Some interesting new polling from the Cato Institute (which generally leans towards the “open borders” side) finds that immigration is still an issue that most Americans view through a nuanced lens. Few Americans want an end to immigration according to their polling (9%), while 23% want more immigration, and 68% want less. The only disclaimer here is we don’t know if the respondents are familiar with current immigration levels, so that missing context could affect their answers.
Where things go off the rails is when it comes to the left’s newfound embrace of illegal immigration – a term they often use interchangeably with legal immigration as they continue stripping the English language of all meaning for political gain.
Why that is should be obvious – because illegal immigrants tend to come from countries where their legal immigrant counterparts tend to vote Democrat. The more illegal immigration there is, the more leverage liberals are given to argue that it’s impossible to deport them all, and thus they should be given citizenship to mint them into new Democrat voters. This is made blatantly obvious when liberals propose amnesty without any sort of border controls to squash the demand for more amnesty a few decades down the line.
Tucker Carlson observed on his show earlier this month. “If 200,000 immigrants from Poland showed up at our southern border tomorrow, Kamala Harris wouldn’t promise them health care. Why? Simple: Poles tend to vote Republican.” Polish Americans actually voted for Obama in 08/12 before breaking for Trump, but the core of his argument that Democrats would change their views on immigration if they tended to support Republicans – and that too is confirmed by this recent polling by from Cato.
Eighty-seven percent of Democrats have a favorable view of immigrants when they vote Democrat – but only 31% view them favorably when they vote Republican, and 58% view them negatively.
The same trend emerges for Republicans when it comes to their views of immigrants who vote Democrat, but that’s less surprising given that Republicans tend to support more skilled immigration (and thus a demographic more likely to vote Republican in the first place), while Democrats pretend to be willing to welcome anyone in with open arms.
These results are hardly surprising, of course. Just look at how much Democrats publicly tout and virtue signal endless about their opposition to racism – until Tim Scott starts talking.
Matt Palumbo is the author of Dumb and Dumber: How Cuomo and de Blasio Ruined New York, Debunk This: Shattering Liberal Lies, and Spygate
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