(CN) — As presidential primaries draw near, the U.S. government’s handling of the ever-growing influx of migrants crossing the southern border may be the biggest issue of the 2024 general election. And although Americans differ on how the issue should be solved, nearly all agree that more has to be done, according to the Pew Research Center.
A report published by the center on Thursday found that 80% of more than 5,000 adult citizens surveyed believe the federal government is not handling the influx well.
“It's really hard for me to imagine that between now and election day, that immigration is not going to be salient,” said Francisco Pedraza, a political science professor at Arizona State University, in an interview with Courthouse News. “Candidates aren’t gonna be able to ignore it.”
While most agree that the issue exists, Americans are far from agreement on how it should be solved. Of nine policy proposals included in the survey, not one received a majority support from both Democrats and Republicans.
Democrats and those who lean left were more likely to support solutions like creating more legal immigration opportunities and letting migrants work while they await a decision on their asylum applications. Republicans and those who lean right were more likely to support increasing deportations and a substantial expansion of the border wall.
But Pedraza said the issue often confounds party lines. For example, conservative business owners might support a more open border because they rely on migrant workers, while liberals might see the influx of migrants as overwhelming to social services and government resources, and therefore prefer tighter border security.
Three proposals garnered more than 50% support from survey respondents: increasing the number of immigration judges to accelerate the asylum process, creating more opportunities to legally immigrate and increasing deportations of those who are in the country illegally.
Despite majority agreement on certain solutions, Pedraza said, partisan polarization has kept policymakers from making any meaningful change.
“There’s no hope of comprehensive immigration reform. It’s just not gonna happen,” he said.
Last week, U.S. Senate Republicans blocked a bipartisan border security bill supported by Joe Biden. Democrats accused Republicans of bending to the political will of former President Donald Trump at the expense of a solution. GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told fellow lawmakers that he doesn’t want to undermine Trump’s campaign by solving the issue too soon.
Meanwhile Biden has grown increasingly strict on border issues, threatening in January to “shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed.” Deportations under the Biden administration have nearly doubled over the last year, recording more than 142,000 deportations in fiscal year 2023. Nearly 18,000 of those deported were parents and children traveling together, surpassing the 14,400 migrant family members deported under Trump in 2020.
Nearly 60% of survey respondents said they believe that more migrants are coming now because they know it's easy for them to stay once they get here. But recent spikes in both deportations and arrests for illegal border crossings seem to contradict that theory.
Pedraza added that the bureaucracy involved in receiving visas to visit the U.S. has only grown more complex in the last few decades. People are more likely now to be denied access if they are single and/or in between jobs, Pedraza said, because officials may assume that person is intending to stay.
When asked for their biggest concerns over the border crisis, the two most common responses were economic strain on social services and government resources, and an increase in crime and drugs. In fact, 57% of respondents, and 85% of Republicans, believe that an increase in migration leads to an increase in crime.
But time and time again, research disproves that theory.
“Overwhelmingly, the data very clearly says that more immigrants arriving to a locale is not the cause of any kind of spike in crime,” Pedraza said. “In fact, in places that have had an influx in immigrant population, there tends to be a reduction in crime. As a result of a heavy-handed immigration enforcement regime, immigrants have greater incentive to walk a straight and narrow path.”
The least popular solution proposed in the survey was providing more foreign aid to the Central American countries from which most migrants are coming from. Only 27% of respondents said the proposal would help, and 18% said it would only make things worse.
Pedraza said he isn’t surprised that giving more money to other countries is unpopular, as most Americans believe U.S. citizens have enough problems at home that aren’t being solved. But as U.S. economic foreign policy tends to benefit the U.S., Pedraza said, there’s always a side that benefits less, often Central and South American countries.
“That's not without a consequence,” he said. “What do people do when they don’t have opportunities for upward social mobility? They go look elsewhere.”
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