The nativists are getting restless.
To the graph I'll add one possibly mitigating factor: The survey was conducted by Harris, whose chairman is the lubricious Mark Penn and whose 538 rating is an undesirable 1.6 out of 3.0. That said, this poll is no outlier; it may be a bit harsher here and there, but in general, its numbers suggest that President Biden has no good options, and that the nihilist party has him precisely where it has maneuvered him.
At Trump's bidding, congressional Republicans have played the immigration game of Boo! with rare skill. Biden achieved the nearly unimaginable by working with Senate Republicans in crafting legislation that gave them virtually all the immigration restrictions they wanted and then convincing unhappy Senate Democrats that they should go along.
After the GOP killed its own legislative offspring — sired on Day One of the Biden administration — its principal victim took to the bully pulpit to then convince voters of something the nihilist party never gives them: the truth. Biden has chased his tail here, there and everywhere, reminding them that Republicans were the assassin of expansive immigration reform, and so we are where we are.
But the president's bully message, as T.R. would say, has fizzled, much as presidents' pulpit-pounding messages commonly do: "32% of respondents say his administration is 'most responsible' for the crisis," reports Axios.
Trump's harangues about America's immigrants are reminiscent of Hitler's diatribes about Germany's Jews: both scapegoats "poisoned the blood" of the country and both demagogues promised massive "domestic deportation operation[s]." One, carried them out.
The ex-president's bile has indeed poisoned the blood of the country, or most of it, if the above poll is accurate. Axios notes that 56% of respondents wrongly "believe illegal immigration is linked to spiking U.S. crime rates." It just isn't so.
From Stanford's Institute for Economic Policy Research, 2023:
"Opponents of immigration often argue that immigrants drive up crime rates. But newly released research ... finds that hasn’t been the case in America for the last 140 years. The study reveals that first-generation immigrants have not been more likely to be imprisoned than people born in the United States since 1880. Today, immigrants are 30 percent less likely to be incarcerated than are U.S.-born individuals who are white."
The average voter, however, seldom snuggles up at night with recent editions from Stanford's Institute. While that's understandable, what's unforgivable is that voters also don't take the time to snuggle up, however briefly, with reliable news outlets, which by now would have disabused them of their mistaken beliefs about immigrant crime and which party killed immigration reform.
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