More than 6 in 10 demand a barrier with Mexico and 80% say the migrant crisis is a 'serious problem'
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by Charlies Speiring,The Daily Mail.com, February 26, 2024
A new poll shows that the majority of Americans now support a wall on the southern border, as the issue of illegal immigration intensifies ahead of the 2024 election.
A Monmouth poll released Monday shows that 53 percent of Americans now support building a wall on the southern border with Mexico. Forty-six percent still oppose it.
Four years ago, in a 2019 poll, only 42 percent of Americans supported the idea.
The poll shows that 86 percent of Republicans support a border wall, but also 58 percent of Independents. Only 17 percent of Democrats support the idea.
The poll also shows that 84 percent of voters see illegal immigration as a very serious or somewhat serious issue, a number that has grown significantly since 2019.
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The issue polls 15 points higher among Democrats and Independents as it did in 2019 and 14 points higher among Republicans.
The issue of immigration has changed significantly since Trump first ran for office.
Sixty-one percent of Americans now say that migrants seeking political asylum should be made to stay in Mexico while their claims are processed. Five years ago, 41 percent said they should be allowed to wait in America.
The idea of a wall on the southern border is an early campaign promise from former President Donald Trump during his first presidential campaign for president in 2015, an idea he began promoting on social media as early as 2014.
'SECURE THE BORDER! BUILD A WALL!' he wrote on X in August 2014.
Trump also teased the idea of a wall before he even ran for president.
'We need strong borders. We need a wall. If I run I will tell you, the king of building buildings, the king of building walls. Nobody can build them like Trump, that I can promise you,' he said during a speech to CPAC in February 2015.
The former president is running again on the idea of a secure border, promising to finish the wall on the Southern border, after he struggled in his first term to fund and complete a border wall. During his administration, officials constructed 458 total miles of new primary and secondary border barriers, according to a report by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Biden ran in 2020 on the issue of stopping construction of Trump's wall.
'There will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration,' he vowed in a 2020 interview.
But the Biden administration has since fast-tracked border wall construction projects, as the issue of migration across the Southern border has grown into a crisis.
Both Biden and Trump announced Monday their plans to visit the border as the issue of border security becomes a major issue in the 2024 campaign.
