American attitudes toward immigration: indifference

By Victor Landa, NewsTaco

For all the noise and anger and Trump surrounding the immigration issue of late, the American public just heaved a big meh. A hard thing to do unless prodded. And that’s exactly what the Gallup research folks did, they prodded in a national survey about American attitudes toward immigration. Specifically, they asked people whether the present levels of immigration to the U.S. should remain the same, be reduced or increased.

The majority think things are fine

Forty percent of those surveyed said the present levels of immigration are good as they stand.

Here’s the thing, the survey report doesn’t mention if the present number of immigrant entries was mentioned in the question. So, we can assume that the respondents answered based on their own assumptions about the present immigration level. I’m being purposely flippant here: 40 percent say that in their universe immigrant levels are OK, and they’d like for them to remain that way. We’ll call them the immigration Goldilocks agnostics. They don’t believe things are good or bad, they believe things are just right.

The usual one-third zealots want the level reduced.

And that’s predictable, because today’s political landscape makes room for the 33% devout partisans. These are the folks who don’t like immigration, don’t want things changed and want you off their lawn. They’re always going to think that way. So the 34% who prefer that the immigration levels be reduced did exactly what we thought they’d do. (The same, by the way, applies to the one-third at the other end of the political spectrum. There are zealot liberals who act predictably as well.)

The 25% that’re causing a stir

These are the surveyed people who think that the immigration levels should be increased. It’s a small deal because they’re a minority, and some analysts would have you think it’s a big deal because they’re growing.

So let’s pay attention to that growth. In June of 2002 only 12 percent of Americans thought that immigration levels should increase. An understandable circle-the-wagons reaction after 9/11. Today the percentage of Americans who believe that the immigration levels should increase is more than double that of 2002 – it stands at 25 percent.

But let’s look at something else.

Between 2000 and 2010 14 million new immigrants, authorized and unauthorized, settled in the U.S. And when you factor immigrant departures and deaths into the mix you get a net increase of 8.8 million. It was a record-setting decade for immigration.

Several things could be happening here, and let’s keep supposing that the actual immigration level was left out of the survey questions: the Gallup people talked to more immigrants than before because there are more available for surveys; there are more foreign-born people in the country, so more surveyed folks personally know immigrants and that knowledge affects their outlook; an increasing number of Americans understand that the immigration system is cracked and more immigrants should be let into the country to rekindle the American spirit of transformation. (That last part is heavily suffused with the perspective of my own assumptions)

Either way, it’s far from an immigration attitude tipping point. In order for that to happen the 34% naysayers need to be balanced by the one-third partisans at the other end of the hall. That would leave the usual 40 percent middle to be swayed.

We’re not there yet (I say that in the royal “we” sense of the word). So 25 percent of Americans think immigration should increase – meh. But the number is growing and is 10 points away from setting the stage for a possible tipping point. That’s something to keep watching.


[Photo by Grand Canyon National Park/Flickr]
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