Poll: Biden's Move on Title 42 to Let In More Illegal Aliens Isn't Going Over Well with Americans
For a rare moment, President Joe Biden seems to have united the country. Republicans loathe his decision to end Title 42 legal provisions in May, meaning illegal immigrants can’t be summarily returned to Mexico or their country of origin due to the pandemic if they’re caught by U.S. border security officials. Democrats aren’t entirely fond of it, either.
And the rest of America? They’re not too keen on the whole thing, with well over half protesting the move.
In a poll released Wednesday, a majority of Americans opposed the decision to stop using federal public health law to expel illegal immigrants during the border crisis, with 56 pecent of Americans opposed.
In fact, in a news release, Morning Consult — which conducted the poll, along with Politico — called it “Biden’s Most Unpopular Move Yet.”
(The new numbers are just the latest evidence Americans don’t like how the new administration is opening up the country’s borders to whoever wants to cross. Here at The Western Journal, we’ve been filling America in on how Title 42 protections were the only thing stopping the border crisis from becoming a deluge. We’ll keep America abreast of the facts without the establishment media spin. You can help by subscribing.)
As Morning Consult reported in the Wednesday release: “Republicans were eager to seize on the Biden administration’s announcement last week that it will curtail the Title 42 public health measure that has allowed the United States to swiftly expel nearly 2 million migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border over the past two years, and a new Morning Consult/Politico survey shows why: It’s this administration’s most unpopular decision so far.”
For Biden, the numbers are grim.
“A majority of registered voters (56%) oppose the decision to remove the border controls implemented by the Trump administration, the largest backlash against a Biden administration policy among dozens tracked by Morning Consult since January 2021,” Morning Consult reported.
“While 60% of Democratic voters support the move, just 31% of independents and 8% of Republicans feel similarly.”
The poll was conducted April 1-4 among 2,003 registered voters. It had a margin of error of 2 percent.
There are several reasons for the findings — most notably, the fact that Biden’s numbers on the border crisis have always been his worst.
“From day one, Morning Consult survey data has shown Biden’s executive actions on immigration to be his most unpopular, and even when the president was enjoying favorable approval ratings early on, voters tended to disapprove of his handling of the issue,” the release stated.
“For example, a March 2021 survey found that just 40% of voters approved of Biden’s immigration handling, 18 percentage points lower than his overall approval rating at the time.”
That hasn’t improved as Biden’s numbers have gone down otherwise, either.
And even if Democrats approve of it, it’s not overwhelmingly. While 66 percent of Dems support the president’s immigration policies, it’s the second-smallest approval number of the issues polled. (Gun control, which has long trended lower if just because the White House hasn’t been able to do anything on it, could only garner 44 percent approval from Democrats.)
Let’s not forget that this is what we saw at the southern border last year when a massive group of Haitians tried to cross over to the United States — with Title 42 in place.
AMAZING — Since the Biden administration has kicked @BillFoxLA and his team out from flying Fox News’s drones along the U.S./Mexico border in Del Rio, TX, *local* law enforcement decided to get him a helicopter to hop in and go check things out to continue reporting. pic.twitter.com/pZ54my6E7o
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 17, 2021
“Title 42” refers to the section of the U.S. Code that vests the government with the power to expel illegal immigrants and other migrants from countries where there’s a communicable disease problem — which is pretty much everywhere during the COVID epidemic.
While Title 42 authority was initially invoked under Trump, it’s remained mostly in place under Biden’s administration, despite Biden’s disavowal of Trump’s border policies. This was in no small part due to a record number of apprehensions at the southern border last fiscal year — 2 million, according to Border Report.
Not only that, the makeup of the illegal immigrants being picked up has significantly altered. According to the Pew Research Center, 2021 saw a record number of apprehensions that didn’t involve illegal aliens from Mexico. This didn’t just include those from the so-called “Northern Triangle” countries in Central America — El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — but South American and Caribbean countries like Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Haiti and Venezuela.
Three Republican-led states are now suing to force the administration to keep Title 42 measures in place, and judging by the Morning Consult poll, they have the majority of Americans behind them.
That’s no doubt going to play a big role in the November midterm elections. The country can only hope that by then, the damage will not be irreversible.
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