Source : NEW INDIAN EXPRESS NEWS
Changing views
A poll from The Associated Press–NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that immigration is a relative high point for Trump compared with other issues, including his approach to the economy, foreign policy and trade negotiations. Slightly fewer than half of US adults, 46%, say they approve of Trump’s handling of the issue, compared with his overall job approval rating of 39%, according to the survey.
The poll was conducted April 17-21, a period that included a trip by Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., to El Salvador to demand that Kilmar Abrego Garcia be released from prison after the US government admitted he was wrongly deported.
In the 2020 election, few voters considered immigration the most important issue facing the country, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of registered voters in all 50 states.
Four years later, after Republicans and conservative media had hammered Biden for his policies and often cast migrant US-Mexico border crossings as an invasion, immigration had risen above health care, abortion and crime. It was second only to the economy.
Under Biden, migrant apprehensions spiked to more than 2 million two years in a row. Republican governors in border states bused migrants by the tens of thousands to cities across the country, including to New York, where migrants were placed in shelters and hotels, straining budgets.
Voters in the 2024 election were also more open to tougher immigration policies than the 2020 electorate. Last November, 44% of voters said most immigrants living in the United States illegally should be deported to their home countries, according to AP VoteCast, compared with 29% in 2020.
Immigration remains a relative strength for Trump today: 84% of Republicans approve of Trump’s immigration approach, according to the April AP-NORC poll, compared with 68% who approve of how he is handling trade negotiations.
The poll found about 4 in 10 US adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favor Trump’s policy of sending Venezuelan immigrants who authorities say are gang members to El Salvador, with an additional 22% saying they neither favor nor oppose it. About 4 in 10 were opposed.
Americans are more opposed, broadly, to revoking foreign students’ visas over their participation in pro-Palestinian activism, with about half opposed and about 3 in 10 in support.
The changing views are evident in places like northern New Jersey’s suburban Passaic County, one of the former Democratic strongholds where Trump overperformed in November.
Trump became the first Republican to win the county in more than 30 years. He carried the heavily Latino city of Passaic and significantly increased his support in Paterson, the state’s third-largest city, which is majority Latino and also has a large Muslim community. He drew 13,819 votes after winning 3,999 in 2016. Having lost New Jersey by nearly 16 percentage points to Biden in 2020, Trump narrowed that margin to 6 percentage points last year.
Paterson resident Sunny Cumur, 54, a truck driver who immigrated from Turkey in the late 1990s, describes himself as a Democrat who doesn’t usually vote. But he wanted Trump to win, he said, because he was concerned about the border under Biden.
While studies show immigrants are generally less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans, local news in New York and other cities frequently featured what Trump took to calling “migrant crime.”
“What Biden did, they opened all the borders, and a lot of people come here for political asylum. Come on! They don’t even check if they are terrorists or not,” Cumur said. He complained that newcomers willing to work for lower wages have been undercutting workers like him.
“Throw ’em out. I don’t want to live with criminals,” he said.
Still, other supporters worry Trump is taking things too far.
Republican Manuel Terrero, 39, a real estate agent from Clifton, said he was drawn to Trump because of what felt like “chaos” under Biden, with too many people crossing the border and too much crime in neighboring New York.
“It shouldn’t be allowed,” said Terrero, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic.
Trump “is doing a lot of good things. And that is one of them, stopping the people that are coming here to create chaos. And the people that have criminal records, send them back. But I am against (deporting) the people that are working,” he said. “I don’t think it’s the right way to do it.”
Rep. Nellie Pou, D-N.J., who was elected last year to represent the area in Congress, said her constituents believe strongly in border security but stand by her advocacy for immigrants. She recently joined Democrats on a trip to the US-Mexico border.
“I do not want anyone that may be a danger to come to our country to harm any of our citizens. No one wants that. And I firmly believe that’s what people in our district and across America want,” she said. At the same time, she said, “Our country was made of immigrants… So I believe there’s a place for someone who comes in the legal ways.”
SOURCE :- NEW INDIAN EXPRESS
