Survey: Most Americans Favor Restricting Asylum Seekers, Increasing Border Patrol Staff

A majority of Americans want to limit the number of migrants who can apply for asylum and believe that we should hire more Border Patrol agents, a recent poll found.

The poll, performed by the Associated Press and National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago between March 21st and 25th, found that 53% of Americans believe that we should limit the number of migrants who should be allowed to seek asylum. The issue was split by partisan affiliation, with 75% of Republicans and 51% of Independents saying that we should limit the number while just 35% of Democrats agreed.

There was broader support for hiring more Border Patrol agents, with 64% of Americans favoring the idea, including 54% of Democrats and 79% of Republicans, as well as 56% of Independents. Hiring more immigration judges is another popular idea, enjoying the support of 58% of Americans, including 60% of Republicans and 65% of Democrats.

There was a much wider partisan split on whether or not the United States should build a wall on the southern border, with just 12% of Democrats supporting the policy compared to 77% of Republicans and 42% of Americans overall.

Immigration is a significantly more important issue for Republicans than for Democrats, with 75% of those in the GOP calling it an “extremely” or “very” important issue as opposed to just 46% of Democrats.

While Democrats are less likely to call immigration an important issue, they have much more favorable views of mass immigration, with a majority of Democrats, 52%, saying that illegal immigrants “enrich American culture and values.”

Another recent poll found that Biden faces severe disapproval among the public for his handling of the border, with a recent poll finding that only 36 percent of registered voters saying they approve of his performance on the issue, the lowest of any topic.

The data comes out as the United States faces an unprecedented surge of illegal aliens with over 10 million crossing the border since Joe Biden took office. There have been over one million illegal immigrant encounters on the southern border in just the first six months of fiscal year 2024. There have also been an estimated 1.7 million illegal immigrant gotaways recorded since Biden took office in 2021. There were 415,000 total reported gotaways for 2018, 2019, and 2020 under the Trump administration.

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