Democrats Test Pro-Amnesty Messages for 2020 Elections

Central American migrants -mostly honduran- taking part in a caravan to the US, are pictur
ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP via Getty Images

Democrat pollsters are testing election messages to help Democrats justify a 2021 amnesty for millions of wage-cutting migrants, even as millions of Americans need jobs.

The survey, titled “Winning the Immigration Debate during COVID-19,” was taken in a June-to-July survey of 1,011 registered voters by Geoff Garin at Hart Research for the American Progress Action Fund. It tested voters’ responses to the alternative words and themes that can be used by Democratic candidates during the 2020 election.

For example, the survey won a 66 percent positive response to the statement that:

When our country emerges from the coronavirus pandemic, we will owe a significant debt of gratitude to those who worked at great personal risk on the frontlines, regardless of their immigration status.

“This is a textbook definition of a push poll,” said Rosemary Jenks, policy director at NumbersUSA. “They’re asking ‘Should we appreciate nurses and doctors? Well, yeah. Duh. But to say that Americans don’t support what Trump has done on immigration lately, that is just crazy.”

The survey repeatedly described illegal migrants as immigrants and “undocumented immigrants,” who voluntarily play a vital role in “providing essential services,” in preserving “critical infrastructure,” or working as “essential workers.” The survey did not mention that many blue-collar Americans are pushed out of those jobs by companies’ preference for cheaper illegals.

The survey refused to include any numbers, such as the current population of illegals, the number of Americans who need jobs, or the number of young Americans who will graduate from schools into the labor market.

The survey did not mention any of the economic damage done to Americans, or the financial costs of importing more people, such as the rising costs of rent and real-estate.

The survey achieved a 65 percent positive response to this sentence:

During this crisis, immigrants across our nation, from janitors, to doctors, to farm workers, are working shoulder to shoulder with their fellow Americans to keep the country moving forward.

Illegal migrants provide a very small share of skilled workers, even though they are commonplace in the low-tech, labor-intensive farm and restaurant sectors.

Pro-migration activists are using the skewed survey to claim that Americans want more immigration, even during the economic crash.

The survey shows that “Trump is losing his argument on immigration,” said Francis Wilkonson, a pro-migration columnist for Mike Bloomberg’s pro-migration Bloomberg.com. Trump’s immigration curbs are driven by racism, not by decent pocketbook concerns about wages and jobs, Wilkinson insisted. “Restricting immigration is the policy dictated by his racial appeal, and his racial appeal is the bedrock of his politics. That foundation continues to crack.”

This poll testing of “messaging” words and themes is conducted by both parties.

Some pollsters, however, ask voters about their attitudes towards legal immigrants, visa workers, and illegal migrants.

For example, suburban women overwhelmingly support Trump’s policy of freezing the inflow of foreign workers until they, their husbands, and their children regain the jobs lost to the coronavirus crash, according to a poll of 1,810 likely voters by Rasmussen Reports.

Just 12 percent of swing-voting “moderate” suburban women, and just 19 percent of all likely voters, agreed that the government should “allow employers to import foreign workers to fill job openings instead of recruiting among these unemployed Americans.”

Rasmussen’s number should not be a surprise. Many polls — notably an April 2020 Washington Post poll — show that voters strongly prefer policies that pressure companies to hire Americans, even as they also tell pollsters that they want to welcome migrants.

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