The public’s weak support for accepting more refugees from the Middle East craters once the public learns about the massive numbers of would-be migrants, according to a new Ipsos poll.

Initially, 31 percent of Americans said they would welcome a one-time inflow of 10,000 to 100,000 additional refugees.

But that number dropped to only 12 percent once the pollster described the millions of additional refugees and migrants now seeking to enter peaceful western countries.

The initial question that won 31 percent support was “how many additional refugees of the Syrian civil war do you think should be allowed into the United States, on top of the 1,500 who are already here?”

The 31 percent support for up to 100,000 migrants crashed to only 12 percent when the respondents were given some information about the potential inflow. “Estimates by the UN and other organizations indicate that between 3-4 million refugees have already left Syria and need asylum, and that at least 6 million more have been displaced internally within Syria and will likely seek refuge outside of Syria,” Ipsos said in the mid-September poll of 1,251 adults.

The dramatic drop reflects the political impact of information that evades the establishment media’s normal blackout on data about the current scale of migration and immigration. For example, only a minority of Americans know the country annually accepts roughly one million immigrants: 450,000 blue-collar guest workers, 200,000 white-collar guest-workers, 50,000 agricultural guest-workers, plus 350,000 illegal immigrants. That’s roughly one foreign worker for every two Americans who turn 18.

The information-enabled crash in support for migration is a political problem for President Barack Obama. He reportedly wants to boost the annual inflow of refugees from 70,000 up to roughly 100,000 per year.

Normally, refugees are given payments and aid when they are dropped off in towns and cities around the country, many of which can’t afford the additional spending on schools, police, and aid. Also, each year’s inflow of 70,000 migrants is augmented by subsequent family unification efforts, which bring in additional siblings and cousins. That’s the pattern set in Minnesota, where Somali settlers have added to their numbers by bringing in members of their extended families.

In Europe, hundreds of thousands of Arab and African migrants, or perhaps more than one million, are now shoving their way past European border guards to grab residency in the German and Swedish welfare states. In Europe, the migrant stampede is rapidly shifting public support towards left-wing and right-wing nationalist parties, and it may be hardening the American public’s opposition to Obama’s mass migration policies.

Americans don’t like mass immigration in practice, even as they praise hard-working immigrants and the idea of immigration.

In 2014, as Obama let roughly 130,000 Central American migrants stream over the Texas border, roughly half of Americans told pollsters that the migrants — including supposedly unaccompanied children — should be immediately sent home.

The frightening scale of possible Arab migration — and the recognition of subsequent expenses, security risks, and social turmoil — is overcoming Americans’ normal generosity. For example, the Ipsos poll showed that 56 percent of Americans said they wanted to aid the migrants more after seeing a picture of a drowned child on a Turkish beach. But that emotional reaction was offset by Americans’ concern for their fellow citizens.

The topline in the Ipsos poll is that only 22 percent of Ipsos’ respondents want the United States to accept 10,000 or more migrants. That number includes 10 percent who want the country to accept 500,000 or more migrants.

Another 26 percent of Americans said they would accept up to 10,000 refugees. The survey did not say that the country already accepts 70,000 refugees per year.

Twenty-four percent said they want no additional refugees above the 1,500, and 29 percent declined to answer the poll, indicating quiet opposition to greater inflows.

GOP legislators are responding to the public’s pro-American demands.

North Carolina Rep. Walter Jones, for example, wants Congress to quickly impose spending curbs on Obama’s ability to bring in refugees.

Texas Rep. Brian Babin objects to any increases. “This refugee crisis was caused largely by [Obama’s] inept foreign policy,” Babin said.

“As a former mayor, school board member, I talk to [American] folks and read about them and their complaints,” Babin said. “Their small towns and little communities are inundated with hundreds if not thousands of refugees who are loaded onto the welfare rolls and when they roll off federal aid they go on local and state aid.”

Fifty-one percent of households headed by legal or illegal immigrants reported using at least one welfare program during the year in 2012, according to a September report by the Center for Immigration Studies. Thirty percent of native-headed households, meanwhile, used at least one welfare program.

Most migrants score very low on international academic tests and drag down average U.S. productivity.