The election of President-elect Donald Trump, a strident opponent of illegal immigration who is poised to unleash sweeping crackdowns, has galvanized American views on the issue. Significantly more people now cite immigration as the most pressing problem facing the country, a new poll that closed Thursday found. And a large majority believes that he will order massive deportations of people living in the United States who are here without legal permission, the poll showed.
Those fears are partly driven by the perception that many immigrants have become a drain on the economy and contribute to crime, drugs, violence, and the added cost to taxpayers. However, the poll found that many of these views are based on misinformation or deeply rooted in long-held immigration stereotypes. The survey, conducted in the two days after the Republican clinched his election victory, also revealed deep divisions about how to deal with the issue of long-settled undocumented residents.
For example, a significant minority of respondents — including a plurality of Republicans and a majority of Democrats — believe that so-called Dreamers should be given a path to citizenship. These are the people brought to the United States by their parents as children and protected from deportation under the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. However, Trump has promised to end the program, leaving some recipients in limbo.
Overall, seven in ten Americans now say that immigrants should be allowed to stay in the United States if they meet specific requirements. This figure is up by 11 percentage points since last year when a Gallup poll showed that support was at its lowest level ever. The survey of 6,251 U.S. adults also showed that people with higher education levels are more likely to favor a path to citizenship. At the same time, those with lower educational achievement are more inclined to back a crackdown on the immigration system.
Some of the biggest concerns people have about immigration relate to job and economic issues, with a substantial majority believing that immigrants pay less in taxes than they receive in government benefits. But many of the same people surveyed also wrongly believe that illegal immigration is responsible for spiking crime rates and that immigrants are to blame for a decline in the number of white jobs.
In addition, people who have family members who are undocumented say they are afraid for their futures if Trump pursues deportations in the same way that he campaigned. They have begun to carefully plan routine activities, like grocery shopping and making appointments, to ensure they are in the presence of a family member with legal status. Many also worry that they will be disenrolled from public services, like health insurance or food stamps because they lack official documentation. This would hurt the nation’s economy because it removes people from critical sectors such as construction, agriculture, and caregiving that could not be easily replaced.
