Mexican migrant workers pick blueberries during a harvest at a farm in Lake Wales, Fla., March 31, 2020. (OSV News/Reuters/Marco Bello,)
OSV News
As the Trump administration implements its hardline immigration policies, a record-high share of U.S. adults said immigration generally benefits the country, a new Gallup Poll found.
A record-high 79% of U.S. adults say immigration is generally a good thing for the country, the poll found.
In its analysis of the poll, Gallup said, "These shifts reverse a four-year trend of rising concern about immigration that began in 2021 and reflect changes among all major party groups."
Lydia Saad, Gallup's director of U.S. Social Research, added that "the recent jump in perceptions of immigration being a good thing is largely owed to a sharp increase among Republicans and, to a lesser extent, independents. These groups' views have essentially rebounded to 2020 levels after souring in the intervening years."
Mike Madrid, a political consultant and author of "The Latino Century: How America's Largest Minority Is Transforming Democracy," told OSV News the poll shows the public feels the Trump administration has "overreached" on migration issues.
"It's no longer even viewed as simply an immigrant or immigration issue," Madrid said. "This is viewed as a constitutional issue, a due process issue, a militarized country issue, and the numbers are tanking."
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The poll, while showing a starker shift, is not an outlier in recent polling on the public's views of migration issues. A June NPR-PBS News-Marist College poll showed 59% of independents disapproved of Trump's handling of the issue of immigration. A Quinnipiac University poll showed 66% of independents disapproved.
That same poll also found 64% of all adults said they would prefer to give most unauthorized immigrants in the United States a pathway to legal status, while just 31% said they would prefer deporting most immigrants who are in the United States without legal documents.
Julia Young, a historian of migration, Mexico and Latin America, and Catholicism at The Catholic University of America told OSV News, "This swing in opinion happened during the last Trump administration as well."
"Americans expressed higher levels of support for immigrants and immigration," Young said. "This support then declined again because of rapid increases in immigration and the perception of disorder at the U.S.-Mexico border. The fact is, what most Americans really want is a fair and orderly immigration system, which can only come about through comprehensive immigration reform."
Both Young and Madrid pointed to backlash to some hardline enforcement actions as behind the shift.
"When politicians enact punitive policies like mass incarceration or deportation to Salvadoran prisons, images of the results of these cruel policies appear in the press and evoke sympathy from the broader public," Young said. "They recognize the immigrants do essential work and enrich the country in many other ways."
Catholic social teaching on immigration seeks to balance three interrelated principles: the right of persons to migrate in order to sustain themselves and their families, the right of a country to regulate its borders and immigration, and a nation's duty to conduct that regulation with justice and mercy.
