The immigration policies Americans actually want

Immigration has loomed large over the presidential election.

After going on the offensive against former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies in 2020, the Democratic Party has seen public opinion shift in recent years, with more people taking a dim view of immigration and favoring more restrictive border policies.

Trump has pounced on this shift, promising to revive — and expand — the draconian immigration platform of his first administration. That includes his 2024 pledges of mass deportations and ending birthright citizenship. He has blamed Harris for the surge in migrants arriving at the border for much of her vice presidency, mislabeling her as President Joe Biden’s “border czar,” as many others also have.

The question of what to do about immigration animates voters across the political spectrum. It’s an especially potent topic for Republicans, 48 percent of whom say it’s the most important issue facing the country in a running Gallup poll.

It’s less so for independents and Democrats, but notably, it’s the first time in more than a decade that such a large share of independents say it’s their top issue. And independents will likely decide the election: The US has seen its share of independent voters swell in recent years, particularly in Sunbelt swing states like Arizona and Nevada that have seen high levels of immigration.

Overall, an overwhelming majority of registered voters said in a June Gallup poll that they will only vote for a candidate who shares their views on immigration, or that it is one of many important factors determining who they support.

More voters of all stripes now want to see immigration levels decrease than at any point since the early 2000s, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks fueled a rise in nativism. This is in part a reaction to record levels of migrant crossings over the past few years — unauthorized migrant crossings hit a record high in December — and the resulting pressures in cities and border communities that have absorbed them. (However, it is worth noting that border crossings have declined for five straight months.)

In response to record crossings, the Biden administration shifted from its previous focus on implementing a more humane US immigration system to limiting the flow of people across the US-Mexico border. Biden has pursued some policies to curb asylum that put little daylight between him and Trump, and has credited those policies for the recent decline in crossings.

Simultaneously, Biden has advanced efforts to protect undocumented immigrants living in the US. Now, Democrats’ 2024 platform emphasizes border security and deterring unauthorized immigration while expanding legal pathways to the US.

Larger shifts in immigration have little to do with Biden’s policies. Rather, migration patterns have significantly shifted in only a few years, and the US immigration system just wasn’t designed to deal with it.

Historically, migrants came alone seeking work, mainly from Mexico. Now, more people are coming from South America, the Caribbean, and even China and Europe. They’re increasingly bringing their families and seeking asylum. Many of them are fleeing persecution or instability in their home countries.

But regardless of what voters think is behind the surge, it’s clear American public opinion on immigration has taken a sharp rightward turn in the last four years, and that a bipartisan consensus has emerged in Washington around further restricting immigration. The polling suggests that’s broadly what most voters want, too — but how exactly they think the US should go about it isn’t as clear-cut.

Some proposals for immigration enforcement that were controversial just a few years ago now have mainstream appeal.

That includes Trump’s efforts to build a border wall, a defining policy of his 2016 campaign. While in office, he erected about 500 miles of a 30-foot border fence, most of which replaced preexisting fencing or provided another layer of barrier where some already existed.

At that time, support for the project hovered around a third of Americans. But that share has since seemed to balloon. Multiple polls conducted in recent months have shown that a majority of Americans want a wall, and that support has grown substantially among independents. In a separate April Axios-Ipsos poll, 42 percent of Latinos, despite many of them having ties to the immigrant experience, supported building the wall.

Voters don’t even draw the line at the kind of mass deportation scheme that Trump is proposing anymore. He has promised the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” targeting millions of undocumented immigrants in large-scale raids and then forcibly detaining them in new camps.

Whereas in 2016, 66 percent of Americans opposed mass deportations in a CNN poll, an Axios Vibes survey by the Harris Poll and a CBS/YouGov poll conducted earlier this year showed that between 51 and 62 percent of Americans support such measures. That also includes large shares of Hispanics and Latinos, who support mass deportations at rates between 45 and 53 percent depending on the poll.

Significant shares of voters have also warmed to the idea of ending birthright citizenship (meaning if someone is born in the US, they are automatically a citizen), with the Axios/Harris poll showing that 30 percent of Democrats and 46 percent of Republicans support it.

Voters appear less sure of Biden’s efforts to limit access to asylum, which federal law guarantees to those who face credible fear of harm or persecution in their home countries no matter how they cross the border.

Biden introduced a new policy earlier this year that bars asylum seekers who cross the border without permission from applying for protections in the US when migrant crossings exceed a daily average of 2,500 in a week. Less than half of Americans supported the move in a June Monmouth University poll.

But it didn’t seem to inspire acute opposition among his base either: 38 percent of Democrats and 40 percent of independents approved. In another June Fox News poll, 57 percent of Americans overall supported the policy.

All of this seems to indicate that Trump’s approach to immigration might be more popular than the widespread protests against his immigration policies while he was in office previously suggested.

While voters support tougher immigration enforcement, they seem torn about what to do with undocumented immigrants who have put down roots in the US.

In apparent contradiction to the polling on mass deportations, most Americans appear to support a path to citizenship or legal status for the population of about 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the US as of 2022. An April Pew Research Center poll found that 59 percent of Americans, including 32 percent of Trump supporters, said that undocumented immigrants should be allowed to remain in the US legally.

Support for a pathway to citizenship for DREAMers — the estimated 3.6 million undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children — is even higher, according to a June National Immigration Forum/Bullfinch Group survey. Only about 530,000 DREAMers are currently shielded from deportation under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and legislative attempts to provide them with a pathway to citizenship have repeatedly failed over the last decade.

Biden’s new program to legalize undocumented spouses of Americans gives these populations some relief and represents the biggest legalization push since DACA. But only about 500,000 spouses and 50,000 stepchildren could be eligible for the new program.

The polling suggests that there may be room for the next president to pair further legalization efforts with stronger immigration enforcement, as Biden attempted, but ultimately failed, to do in a deal with Congress earlier this year. The question is whether Democrats and Republicans can break from the long-entrenched sides they have staked out on the issue of immigration now that their voters are coalescing around certain policies.