White House Fairness Polls Show Huge Support for Trump’s Immigration Priorities

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Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images
Neil Munro

The White House’s immigration policy priorities are backed by polls showing that a huge majority of Americans expect federal immigration policy to treat them fairly instead of unfairly helping outsourcing corporations and illegal immigrants.

“The Administration’s immigration priorities are overwhelmingly popular with the American People,” a senior administration official told Breitbart News. The official continued:

For decades, the voters have been pleading for these exact reforms — but their mainstream demands have been held at a bay by a small minority of extreme open borders special interests. That is why we are appealing to members of both parties to adopt responsible immigration reforms that increase wages, employment and security for working families.

Most of the new data come from a recent poll of 1,202 registered voters commissioned by America First Policies, a non-profit with an affiliated PAC political group titled America First Action. The poll was conducted by two polling firms, National Research Inc., and The Polling Company, which was created by Kellyanne Conway, the polling expert who was Donald Trump’s campaign manager in 2016.

Conway pioneered this research in 2013 by showing that most Americans generously want to welcome immigrants — but they strongly prefer that their government set and enforce immigration rules so that other Americans are not unfairly sidelined or displaced by cheap-labor immigration. In 2014, for example, Conway told this reporter that voters want immigration policies which are fair to Americans employees and also decent to immigrants. “To win, a strong message of fairness (to everyone, not just the illegal immigrants) and common sense is compelling,” she said in a message.

Business-first groups and progressive advocates who want more immigration tout their welcoming ‘nation of immigrants’ polls while hiding the many polls about fairness, priorities, and displacement.

That media-aided deception helped several politicians walk off an electoral cliff during the 2013-2014 debate over immigration, including House GOP Majority Leader Eric Cantor, at least five Senate Democrats, and would-be Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, who now remains the Senate Minority Leader.

Hillary Clinton also fell victim in 2016 to skewed polls which hid Americans’ sense that they were being sidelined by Democrats’ advocacy for illegals. “Progressives will only get an audience with these voters if they listen to them and understand why they were desperate for sweeping changes, why they voted for Trump and what message they were sending to the elites about putting ‘us’ and America first,” said a March report by the left-wing Democracy Corps.

The new poll results include:

  • The American Public’s Priorities: 82% of Americans (including 78% of Democrats) believe that helping unemployed Americans find jobs should be a higher priority for Congress than providing work permits to younger illegal immigrants. (National Research Inc /The Polling Company, August 11-13, 2017)
  • Discourage illegal re-entry: 82% of voters support a law that would strengthen sentencing penalties for illegal immigrants who had previously been deported and strengthens laws against illegal immigrants who commit crimes in the U.S. (National Research Inc /The Polling Company, August 11-13, 2017)
  • Stop Sanctuary Cities: 80% of voters say local authorities should have to comply with the law by turning over incarcerated illegal immigrants to federal agents (Harvard Harris, February 11-13, 2017). 64% of voters support legislation that would cut some federal grants to cities that refuse to turn over criminal illegal aliens (National Research Inc /The Polling Company, August 11-13, 2017)
  • Hire More ICE Officers: 76% of voters support increasing the number of ICE officers to protect public safety and national security. (National Research Inc /The Polling Company, August 11-13, 2017)
  • Hire 300 Additional Federal Prosecutors: 75% of Americans support President Trump’s efforts to target violent gang, including adding funding for 300 federal prosecutors (National Research Inc /The Polling Company, August 11-13, 2017)
  • E-Verify: 68% of likely voters support requiring every business to use E-Verify to make sure U.S. jobs go to American workers rather than illegal labor (Pulse Opinion Research, August 24-25, 2017)
  • Protect U.S. Workers: 71% of voters believe companies should offer open jobs to American workers before foreign workers (National Research Inc /The Polling Company, August 11-13, 2017)
  • End Chain Migration: By a 2-to-1 margin, voters support limiting the number of immigrants who are seeking to live here just because their relatives do and expanding immigration for people with the job and technical skills our country needs (National Research Inc /The Polling Company, August 11-13, 2017)
  • End the Visa Lottery: 56% of likely midterm voters favor ending the diversity visa lottery, which awards 50,000 green cards at random to foreign nationals with absolutely no ties to the U.S. and no special skills.
  • Establish Points Based Immigration System: 64% of voters support creating a point system of entry based on factors such as English speaking ability, education levels and jobs skills. Nearly 60% of voters support new requirements that would require incoming immigrants to speak English. 73% of voter support a new requirement that incoming immigrants must be able to support themselves financially. (National Research Inc /The Polling Company, August 11-13, 2017)

Throughout his 2016 campaign, Trump showed that he wants to help Americans before also helping illegal immigrants. In a September 5 statement announcing the phase-out of the DACA amnesty for up to 690,000 illegal immigrants, Trump declared:

Few in Washington expressed any compassion for the millions of Americans victimized by this unfair system. Before we ask what is fair to illegal immigrants, we must also ask what is fair to American families, students, taxpayers, and jobseekers … Above all else, we must remember that young Americans have dreams too. Being in government means setting priorities. Our first and highest priority in advancing immigration reform must be to improve jobs, wages and security for American workers and their families.

The results from the fairness and priority polls are often very different from the “nation of immigrants” polls, and especially from the business-funded polls which prod Americans to show support for “dreamers” or “kids.”

For example, Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us advocacy group is touting polls showing very high apparent support among Americans for an amnesty for younger illegal immigrants.

But NumbersUSA, and immigration reform group, has rival polls showing very high support among Americans for their fellow Americans.

A poll conducted July 24 to July 25, 2017, by Pulse Opinion Research for NumbersUSA asked 1,000 likely midterm voters:

Some businesses say it is especially difficult to hire workers from among groups with the highest unemployment and poverty rates, which includes Black and Hispanic Americans and younger Americans of all ethnic groups without a college degree.  Should businesses be required to try harder to recruit and train people from those groups with the highest unemployment or should the government continue to bring in new immigrants to compete for the jobs?

Seventy-two percent of respondents said “business should be required to try harder to recruit and train from groups with the highest unemployment,” and only 11 percent said, “government should continue to bring in new immigrants to compete for the jobs.” Seventeen percent said they were “not sure.”

The “nation of immigrants” polls are skewed because the pollsters ask the wrong questions, says Roy Beck, the founder of NumbersUSA, an immigration reform group. “If you ask a question ‘Do you want to be nice [to foreigners]?’ The response you get is: ‘I want to answer this so I’m seen to be nice,'” he said. 

Polls get better results for politicians if they ask voters to choose between priorities, and also provide respondents with the basic information they will learn during elections, he said. “If you ask people do you want to this [migration] to continue or to stop what created it, Americans will dig in,” he said. 

Those fairness polls show strong public support for Trump’s merit-based immigration proposal, the RAISE Act. The act would raise salaries by lowering the supply of immigrant labor into American workplaces, and it is being pushed by Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and Georgia Sen. David Perdue.

 

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