Immigration is a top concern for voters in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and will be on the minds of voters who will turn out for next month’s Georgia Senate runoffs, according to polls.
While immigration policy has taken a back seat to coronavirus-related topics, including healthcare and the economy, voters nationwide remain greatly interested in immigration even if news of raids, visa bans, border security, and more are no longer front-page news items.
In mid-2019, immigration tied healthcare for the most important issue to voters, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. The emergence of the coronavirus pandemic last winter prompted voters to shift their attention early on in 2020, but the Pew Research Center found that people were still greatly interested in immigration and planned to vote in November with those policies in mind. The majority of U.S. adults deemed immigration a “very important” issue in the 2020 election — topping economic inequality, climate change, and abortion.
An October poll of voters nationwide found immigration landed in the top 10 list for issues that people consider extremely or very important, according to Gallup. Sixty-five percent of respondents cited it as a major concern.
Registered voters in Arizona selected “border security to control immigration” as their second-biggest issue out of 20 presented in a survey by Arizona State University and Univision. The same month, registered voters in Florida surveyed by the same pollsters identified border security to control immigration as the second-most important issue.
Adults in Texas rated immigration as the second-most important issue facing the country after healthcare, according to a January survey by nonpartisan public policy firm Texas Lyceum. Texans said it was the state’s greatest concern.
Voters who planned to pick President Trump were more likely to care about immigration than people who voted for then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Sixty-two percent of Trump supporters named immigration as a priority, compared to 49% of Biden’s backers.
The finding indicates that Georgia Republicans may respond and turn out at higher rates when immigration is brought up by the Republican candidates. A Georgia Climate Nexus survey taken last November found immigration tied as the third-most important issue in the state.
Georgia’s Jan. 5 double runoff pits Republican incumbent David Perdue against Democrat Jon Ossoff. A RealClearPolitics average of recent polling shows Perdue and Ossoff tied at 48% of the vote. Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler is also tied at 48% with her opponent, Democrat Raphael Warnock.
Loeffler is conservative in her immigration views and does not believe the more than 10 million illegal immigrants in the country should receive government-subsidized healthcare. She, like Perdue, supports Trump’s border security initiatives to fortify the U.S.-Mexico border with hundreds more miles of wall.
However, Perdue is supportive of legalizing some groups of people who are illegally present, including the more than 750,000 American residents who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children and have since been granted protections for deportation. Perdue also introduced a law that the White House endorsed early on in the administration to get rid of the diversity visa lottery, where visas are randomly given to applicants worldwide, and instead grant them based on applicants’ skills and education.
Loeffler’s opponent, Warnock, described Jesus as an “undocumented immigrant” and supports a pathway to citizenship for all illegal immigrants. Ossoff described the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement as “dysfunctional,” calling for both to be reformed.
The public’s focus on immigration reveals a divide in how members of each party perceive immigrants, albeit those who are legally or illegally living in the United States. Republicans were far more likely to see immigrants through a negative lens than Democrats.
However, Pew found in September that a greater share of Trump supporters sees immigrants in a positive light than the number of Republicans who did during the 2016 election. Just 19% of registered voters who supported Trump in 2016 said recently arrived immigrants benefit the U.S., compared to 32% of his base who now say so. Sixty-five percent of Trump supporters said immigrants pose a threat to America’s customs and values — down from 79% who thought so during his previous presidential campaign.
