First Polls of Trump Admin. Show Immigration Is Still a Hot Topic

The first polls of the second Trump administration are now in, and they show that “immigration” remains a hot topic. Concerns about “birthright citizenship” aside, renewed and reinvigorated immigration enforcement appears to be giving the president a boost.

Reuters/Ipsos. Ipsos polled 1,034 U.S. adults between January 24 and 26 on a number of issues related to Trump’s first-week actions for Reuters. That poll had a margin of error of four points.

Skip past the overwrought headline (“Americans sour on some of Trump’s early moves, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds”), and you’ll find some bright spots for the president.

One not-so-bright spot is respondents’ assessment of Trump’s performance — though even that’s not so bad. According to Reuters/Ipsos, 45 percent of those polled approve of the job that Trump is doing while 46 percent disapprove.

Given the rather significant margin of error, that means that Trump’s approval could be as high as 49 percent or as low as 41 percent. Either way, it’s still early.

Things are both better and worse for the president in that poll when you focus solely on responses to his immigration performance.

According to the poll, 48 percent of respondents approve of the actions that the president has taken on immigration, compared to just 41 percent who disapprove. Reuters/Ipsos doesn’t offer any internals, so it’s not clear how the other 11 percent feel, but it’s safe to say they are likely undecided at this point.

What Reuters/Ipsos did offer was the following opinion from analyst Kyle Kondik at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics: “Trump was elected in large part because voters tended to side with him on the economy and immigration. To the extent he is viewed as doing positive things on that, it’s probably good for him”.

One issue on which the president polled particularly poorly on, however, had to do with his executive order captioned “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship” — better known as “the birthright citizenship” order.

According to Reuters/Ipsos, 59 percent of respondents opposed ending birthright citizenship, compared to just 36 percent who approved.

Keep in mind that the order doesn’t actually “end” birthright citizenship, which was the question that pollsters apparently asked, but rather tries to limit it for children born of parents here illegally.

Had Ipsos asked respondents whether children born in the United States of illegal alien parents should automatically receive U.S. citizenship, the answer likely would have been different.

Economist/YouGov. Next, polling outfit YouGov surveyed 1,577 U.S. adults between January 26 and 28 for UK journal The Economist and published its results shortly thereafter.

That poll does include internals, and it has a margin of error of between +/- 3.2 percent overall, and +/- 3.3 percent with respect to responses from registered voters.

Trump received higher marks in that poll, with half of both respondents generally and registered voters in particular — 50 percent — having a favorable impression of the president, compared to the 48 percent of respondents generally and 49 percent of registered voters who have an unfavorable view of him.

To put those responses differently, more registered voters had a favorable view of Trump than they did of Vice President J.D. Vance (47 percent), Elon Musk (45 percent), Joe Biden (43 percent), Secretary of State Marco Rubio (41 percent), or his wife, First Lady Melania Trump (48 percent).

Trump narrowly trails Pope Francis in esteem among registered voters (52 percent, although it’s not clear whether any respondents are in the College of Cardinals), but bests the pontiff among respondents generally (just 48 percent of whom expressed a favorable impression of the Bishop of Rome).

Continuing a trend from prior Economist/YouGov polls, “immigration” tied for second place with “jobs and the economy” and “health care” as the most important issue to respondents personally (11 percent), trailing only “inflation/prices” (23 percent).

Immigration, however, surges beyond jobs (10 percent) and health care (9 percent) among registered voters, 13 percent of whom stated that immigration was the most important issue to them. Trump’s ascension plainly has not soothed voters’ concerns about the four-year migrant crisis, at least not yet.

Finally, respondents were asked whether immigration makes the United States worse off or better off. The good news is that a plurality of respondents in this “nation of immigrants” still sees immigration as a positive thing, though the responses are definitely mixed.

On the upside, 40 percent of those polled, and 45 percent of registered voters, said that immigration makes the country a better place. On the downside, 25 percent of both overall respondents and registered voters believe that immigration makes the United States worse.

Interestingly, black respondents (42 percent) were more likely than whites (39 percent) to say that immigration makes the country better off, and both were more likely to respond positively than Hispanic respondents were (35 percent).

That said, whites (29 percent) were more likely than either blacks (11 percent) or Hispanics (24 percent) to say that immigration makes the country worse off.

All of that said, blacks were more likely (28 percent) to say immigration doesn’t make much difference than white or Hispanic respondents (both 18 percent) were, while more Hispanics (23 percent) weren’t sure one way or the other on the question than either whites (14 percent) or blacks (18 percent).

There are many continuing negative impacts of the Biden-Harris migrant surge, from fiscal costs to strains on medical resources to general lawlessness and increased criminality, but among the worst was the impact that it had on Americans’ perceptions of immigration.

Nothing underscores the deleterious effects of the prior administration’s feckless border policies more clearly than the fact that less than half of the population now believes immigrants make the United States better, and that a quarter of Americans think it makes the country worse.

Unlike his first go-round, Trump is having a honeymoon of sorts during the first weeks of his second term. At least part of those good feelings is the result of how quickly he has acted on his immigration promises, even though Americans are still wary about immigration’s impact on this country.