Poll: Americans Support Zero Immigration More Than They Support Current Legal Immigration Levels

Legal Immigration
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Americans support admitting zero legal immigrants every year more than they support current legal immigration levels at which roughly between one to 1.5 million legal immigrants arrive in the United States annually.

The revelation comes in a Harvard-Harris poll released this month, finding that when asked “In your opinion, about how many legal immigrants should be admitted to the U.S. each year?” more Americans, about nine percent, say they support a legal immigration pause than those who said they support current legal immigration levels, about seven percent, at which the U.S. admits more than one million legal immigrants every year.

The poll found that about 12 percent wanted legal immigration levels increased beyond the current rate of immigration to the country, while the majority of Americans, about 81 percent, said they wanted legal immigration levels reduced to between zero to less than one million legal immigrants a year.

About 13 percent of Republicans said they wanted to see zero legal immigration to the country, while about ten percent of swing voters said they’d like to see a legal immigration pause.

As Breitbart News reported, nearly 50 percent of black Americans said they would like to see between only one and 250,000 legal immigrants brought to the U.S. a year.

Black Americans have been disproportionately impacted by mass immigration to the U.S., researchers say, as they were replaced by Hispanics in 2004 as the largest minority group in the country.

Center for Immigration Studies Director of Research Steven Camarota’s 2008 testimony before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission found that immigration had specifically impacted the poor and working-class black American men.

Americans’ vast support for reducing legal immigration levels to help raise the wages of American workers and increase the quality of life for America’s working and middle class embodies a plan endorsed by President Trump and put forward by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) known as the “RAISE Act,” which would reduce the immigration burden for Americans.

The RAISE Act embodies the pro-American reforms first put forward by Civil Rights icon and Democrat congresswoman Barbara Jordan, who in the last years of her life commissioned a congressional immigration study for then-President Bill Clinton which ultimately found that legal and illegal immigration to the U.S. needed to be greatly reduced in order to open more economic opportunities for black Americans and the white working class while also raising their wages.

Jordan’s 1995 immigration commission demanded Congress enact the same pro-American immigration reforms that Trump is now demanding, including:

  • Reducing legal immigration levels from more than one million immigrants a year to about 500,000 a year
  • End chain migration, which allows naturalized citizens to bring in an unlimited number of extended family members
  • Reducing the importation of low-skilled foreign workers who compete for U.S. jobs with poor and working-class Americans

Every year the U.S. admits more than 1.5 million foreign nationals, with the vast majority deriving from family-based chain migration, whereby newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the U.S. In 2016, the legal and illegal immigrant population reached a record high of 44 million. By 2023, the Center for Immigration Studies estimates that the legal and illegal immigrant population of the U.S. will make up nearly 15 percent of the entire U.S. population.

Mass immigration has come at the expense of America’s working and middle class, which has suffered from poor job growth, stagnant wages, and increased public costs to offset the importation of millions of low-skilled foreign nationals.

Four million young Americans enter the workforce every year, but their job opportunities are further diminished as the U.S. imports roughly two new foreign workers for every four American workers who enter the workforce. Even though researchers say 30 percent of the workforce could lose their jobs due to automation by 2030, the U.S. has not stopped importing more than a million foreign nationals every year.

For blue-collar American workers, mass immigration has not only kept wages down but in many cases decreased wages, as Breitbart News reported. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues importing more foreign nationals with whom working-class Americans are forced to compete. In 2016, the U.S. brought in about 1.8 million mostly low-skilled immigrants.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder

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