Americans have named immigration as the single biggest problem facing the United States for the third month in a row, a series of polls from Gallup has found.
The open-ended question posed by Gallup found that 27 percent of respondents said that immigration was the biggest issue facing the country in April, with 28 percent saying the same in February and March, up from 21 percent in January.
Nearly half of Republicans, 48 percent, named immigration as the biggest issue facing the country in April, while 52 and 57 percent said so in March and February, respectively. The share of independents who dubbed immigration as America’s top issue rose to 25 percent in April to reach its record high, while just 8 percent of Democrats agreed.
A growing share of respondents say that the economy is the biggest problem facing the country, but the issue sits in third place behind those who said that the government is the biggest problem.
This is the moment when TX National Guard became overrun by migrants rioting to get across the border here in El Paso today
We were there and saw it all happen. Absolute chaos here. pic.twitter.com/VN6Kf663ie
— Jennie Taer (@JennieSTaer) March 21, 2024
The poll results are just the latest examples amid a mounting number of public opinion surveys that have indicated that Biden is underwater with voters on the critical issue, which has become a top concern heading into the November election.
One poll found that an abysmally low 20 percent of eligible voters say that the United States has control over its own borders, with a plurality of all age groups surveyed in agreement. Even respondents in states like Colorado and Massachusetts, where Biden won a commanding victory in the 2020 election, have said that immigration is the biggest issue facing their respective states. Yet another public opinion survey revealed that a majority of Americans want to limit the number of people who can seek asylum in the U.S. and believe that we should hire more Border Patrol agents.
Another recent poll found that just over half of Americans support the mass deportation of illegal immigrants, citing concerns about crime, national security, and the cost to taxpayers. Former President Donald Trump has pledged that he will carry out the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history” if he is reelected in November.
The shifting public opinion has come amid an unprecedented crisis on our southern border under the Biden administration, with officials recording over 9.5 million nationwide encounters and 1.7 million estimated illegal immigrant gotaways since the Democrat took office. There were only 445,000 total reported gotaways for 2018, 2019, and 2020 under the Trump administration.