Donald Trump Campaign Survey Ignores Visas, Legal Immigration

Juneteenth Rally
SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
Neil Munro

The hot-button issues of legal immigration, visa workers, and Americans’ wages are excluded from an election mailer sent to voters by the Trump Make America Great Again Committee.

Instead, the June mailer focused voters’ attention on the issue of illegal immigration, which Trump has largely contained amid fierce Democrat opposition.

The committee is a joint operation between Trump’s staff and the Republican National Committee (RNC). The RNC relies heavily on business donors who strongly favor additional legal immigration because it imports extra consumers and cheap workers.

The third question in the 18-question survey asks about immigration — but only illegal immigration. The question asked voters to “Please rank the following issue priorities”:

Growing the economy …

Rebuilding the military …

Starting over to fix healthcare.

Negotiating fair trade agreements.

Securing our borders and building the border wall.

The seventh question asks: “Do you support Democrat proposals to abolish ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)?”

The tenth question asks: “Should the U.S. stop dangerous caravans at the border and prevent mass illegal immigration?”

Subsequent questions ask voters for their views on impeachment, Supreme Court, taxes, China, Planned Parenthood, a balanced budget, gun control proposals, and term limits.

None of the questions asks about legal immigration, visa workers, or wages — despite the huge impact of legal immigration on voters’ wages, savings, and housing costs.

But a three-line space is left for voters to “Please provide any comments here.”

Numerous polls show that Americans want to like legal immigrants. But those polls also show most Americans strongly prefer that every American has a job before the government invites more legal immigrants.

In 2019, Trump successfully blocked the inflow of additional illegal southern migrants into blue-collar jobs throughout the country. He won that big victory by refecting appeals from business, enforcing tough diplomacy, reforming asylum rules, and expanding the border wall.

On April 22, 2020, Trump also suspended some legal immigration during the coronavirus crash. That is a win for Americans because legal immigration imports roughly one million people each year, so diverting wages, jobs, housing, and politicians’ attention away from Americans, including the four million young Americans who enter the workforce each year.

But Trump and his many deputies have done almost nothing to block Fortune 500 companies from importing a workforce of at least 1.3 million foreign graduates. This huge workforce allows CEOs to sideline many experienced American professionals and the 800,000 Americans who graduate each year from four-year colleges with skilled degrees.

Trump won in 2016 after promising to end the replacement of Americans by visa workers. In March 2016, after much zig-zagging, Trump declared:

The H-1B program is neither high-skilled nor immigration: these are temporary foreign workers, imported from abroad, for the explicit purpose of substituting for American workers at lower pay. I remain totally committed to eliminating rampant, widespread H-1B abuse and ending outrageous practices such as those that occurred at Disney in Florida when Americans were forced to train their foreign replacements. I will end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers for every visa and immigration program. No exceptions.

Many campaigns send surveys to their likely voters. The campaigns use the survey feedback to decide what messages will be sent to each voter during the campaign.

So the choice of questions helps to shape what issues will be raised during the campaign.

By excluding the issue of legal immigration, visa workers, and wages, the campaign officials who approved the survey are showing that they do not want to raise those issues during the 2020 election.

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