January 21, 2024 - 1:00pm
California voters, including Democrats and racial minorities, are increasingly sceptical of immigration, a poll from Berkeley IGS found earlier this week.
According to the survey, 72% of registered voters in the state believed that illegal immigrants are a burden on the country, including 64% of Joe Biden supporters and 62% of registered Democrats. The majority of those who identified as moderate and somewhat liberal also believed illegal immigrants were a burden — as did the majority of voters in every age category, including 18-29 year olds.
While most prospective voters in California believe the border with Mexico is not secure, Democrats are evenly split on the issue.
California has more illegal immigrants than any other US state, and is still enacting policies which support them, despite the sentiments of Democratic voters. Last month, it became the first state to offer free health coverage to illegal immigrants. California is a sanctuary state, meaning many state agencies do not cooperate with federal authorities to deport illegal immigrants.
Beliefs about immigration are skewed along racial lines, with white voters holding more negative views on illegal immigration, the poll found. But even among Latino voters, 63% believed illegal immigrants were a burden on the US. The majority of black and Asian voters also agreed with the prompt.
A 2010 US Commission on Civil Rights report which is receiving renewed media attention this week found that illegal immigration is particularly harmful for black Americans, as it costs them job opportunities and depresses wages. Illegal immigrants increase the supply of low-skill, low-wage labour, and this has an outsize effect on black adults, 60% of whom had a high school degree or less at the time of the research.
In decades past, it was more common for Democrats to critique immigration along populist economic lines. In 2015, Bernie Sanders called open borders a “Koch brothers proposal” bound to “[make] people in this country even poorer”. In 2007, Biden said that “no great nation can be in a position where they can’t control their borders,” and that “people in the country should have the first opportunity to be able to have jobs that pay well and have jobs that are decent, and that, after that, the second crack goes to what we may need from other parts of the world.”
In the years since, Democrats have coalesced around a broadly pro-immigration position, particularly in response to calls for a physical border wall during the Donald Trump years.
But this dynamic is starting to change, and over the past year liberals have become increasingly critical of immigration as migrants overwhelm deep-blue cities and public resources are allocated to support migrants. Black residents of Chicago objected to the housing of migrants in predominantly black neighbourhoods, citing concerns about safety and migrants’ non-taxpaying status. New York residents, including liberals, are increasingly concerned about immigration and whether new migrants will assimilate.
As the country continues to see record rates of illegal immigration, Democrats in California and around the US will have to contend with increasingly anti-immigration sentiments among their voting base.
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SubscribeOne nit: The dynamic has started to change as voters come to understand that public resources are being not just allocated but REallocated to the illegal immigrants.
Immigration is such a fascinating issue, beyond its monumental consequences for the US and all the countries of the west. In less than 10 years, the left has morphed from supporters of tight immigration to supporters of open borders. They have basically done a 180 in a decade. How the heck does this happen? The Democrats and Labour still pretend to represent the working class, but there might not be a single policy that hurts the working class more than this – net zero might be a close second. I wonder how people like Bernie Sanders and others rationalize this radical change in philosophy. I can’t think of another issue that has prompted such a radical change in philosophy in such a short period of time. Maybe some posters can think of some.
The artificial house price inflation caused by mass immigration makes lazy middle class leftists rich – so an ideological justification is needed.
@Jim – Duggan’s article doesn’t mention the Left – I think your comment would be more accurate if it didn’t either. Swap left for Liberal or PMC and you’d be closer to the reality of the situation.
I can’t think of another issue that has prompted such a radical change in philosophy
Gay marriage?
Absolutely TM. Good call. One quibble. The Dems and GOP both support gay marriage now. The Dems and GOP have essentially reversed positions on immigration.
There’s something I just can’t understand.
It is argued that highly educated, intelligent people are voting for Biden. This is why Californians are voting for Democrats and Biden. Trump is the choice of stupid.
But it took these smart people several years to begin to suspect that Biden’s immigration policies were having unexpected consequences. And yet these very smart people will vote for Biden.
If it’s the mind, then it’s a little peculiar mind.
I think you’re mixing up highly intelligent with highly educated.
I did not mix up. I agree with you and with him too: “There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.” 🙂
You people are neither.
I, on the other hand, am obviously both.
Buddy, do you know why keeping an Adelie penguin in the house is a little difficult? The fact is that, running around the house, he leaves a trail of crap behind him with the frequency of a machine gun. Bird, they can’t fix it…
YouToo
Evidence?
Go CS-Go…
I wouldn’t say that being educated or intelligent makes one more likely to be right, outside areas of specialised knowledge or skill.
There’s a large number of clever-stupid people about: clever enough to make a good case, to ‘win’ arguments and to form the idea that they are right about everything; too stupid to recognise complexity, too unwise to know that they are bound to often be wrong, to recognise their own biases and consequently to have some humility.
Old- fashioned ‘stupid/low information’ people who recognise their own limitations and don’t habitually gob off about their opinions are often more right.
“I wouldn’t say that being educated or intelligent makes one more likely to be right”
Of course you wouldn’t. You are neither and therefore come to incredibly stupid conclusions.
Typical of you to pick out half a quote, in an effort to show how right you are. Then follow it up with some ad hom attack on someone you know nothing about. Clever-stupidity, arrogance based on a bit of knowledge but no wisdom.
Precisely. QED
The clue is in his alias.
You have it wrong. Trump is the choice of the smart people
OK, so 72% of Americans surveyed reckon that illegal immigration is a burden on the country.
Can it really be that as many as 28% think it’s actually a good thing ? Interesting to know how the remaining 28% breaks out between “think it’s helpful” and “don’t know”.
A quarter of the population believing that illegal immigration is a good thing (if that is the case) is still way too high IMHO.
Of course, the pure economic cost-benefit analysis is far from the only consideration.
It’s 72% of Californians, not all Americans. The Golden State is over 10% of the nation in population, but of course far more left-wing than much of the heartland. As a native Angeleno, surrounded by “progressives” (my voting districts were about 90% Democratic), they tend to shrug off the legality: “welcome refugees, no one is illegal, asylum seekers, workers here w/out permission,” the widespread P.C. term of “migrants” as a catch-all etc. They parrot “we all came from somewhere else” line, and for all their “green” rhetoric, ignore the impact on schools, hospitals. traffic, over-population, high-density developments, and the nepotism of a relentlessly “blue” power elite determined to celebrate BIPoC. They rather blithely dismiss these concerns as “racist” and “MAGA.”
But I thought Donald Trump was going to build a wall? And Mexico was going to pay for it?
A few Democrats are realizing that if Trump says it then it doesn’t automatically be evil. Millions of Republicans died of covid unvaccinated because. Biden told them to vaccinate. His advice, like Trumps was not necessarily evil just because he said it. A wise man will not automatically accept or reject. an idea because of the mouth it came from, but most do. Satan is permitted to speak truth. He loves reverse psychology. It works every time.
Millions of Republicans died of covid unvaccinated
In the US 1,169,666 are reported to have died from the Xu flu. Certainly a few were Donkeys.
The left has vowed to destroy America. They have forgotten that they themselves live in this hated country that they are trying to destroy. When it dies, leftists will die in its ashes. The rats will not be able to leave the sinking ship and will die along with the hated peasants. It’s a murder suicide.
I don’t think the leftists are trying to destroy the country, they merely want it to morph into something that will be dystopian and they are too stupid to realize it.
The Left has brainlessly imported Third World sectarian strife which is certain to break out in violence sooner rather than later.
Like progressives everywhere, California Donkeys are slow learners, but they can learn, at least a bit.
Some people aren’t being completely honest. This article, just like all the others, is supposedly about “illegals”. But the complaints I hear about immigration; not assimilating fast enough, speaking their own language, changing the character of our home towns, taking our jobs; are equally true about legal immigrants.
Here in the US the levels of immigration have gotten way out of hand. They need to be sharply reduced, if only because so many people are upset about it.
But everybody needs to admit that immigration has always been a big part of human history. To imagine a world where everybody stays in their own paddock is just silly. What are you going to do when your daughter decides to marry “the wrong kind”? Forbid it?! Yeah. Good luck with that!
I had to laugh at the opening line in this article: “California voters, including Democrats and racial minorities, are increasingly sceptical of immigration, a poll from Berkeley IGS foundearlier this week.
I have lived in California since 1965, and watched as immigration went from orderly to utterly out of control. My sister-in-law was born and raised in Mexico. Her father organized troops of migrant workers to harvest crops in California. He became quite wealthy, but his daughter worked in the fields right along with the others. She was still picking fruit and vegetables as she completed her Master’s degree in public policy at a California state university. She is now a highly regarded director of social programs in San Bernardino County. That’s how things used to be…
Fast forward thirty years or so, and you see how unfettered illegal immigration has wrecked the once Golden State. Many of the millions of people who have entered this country illegally have no respect whatsoever for the culture they are invading, and have no real interest in being integrated into its norms and mores. Disrespect for the law and property rights is common. In some areas of the state, Spanish is the first language. All commercial signs are in that language exclusively. No English. Trash and graffiti are seen everywhere, in places one would never have seen them thirty years ago. The strain on free public services ( healthcare, education, etc. ) is enormous. But, our state and federal government continue to turn a blind eye to a reality that even an elementary school child can see. The bureaucratic emperors have no clothes.
So, are we “skeptical” about illegal immigration here in California? Did it take a study out of Berkeley to detect some level of discontent? Hell, yes we’re skeptical! And, we’re a lot more than that. We’re downright angry at the failure of our so-called “leaders” to enforce the sovereign borders of this country. Their deliberate inaction amount to treason against the legitimate citizens of the United States of America. They are sworn to uphold the laws and the Constitution and they are violating those oaths. They have no right to give away the riches of this nation to people who come here illegally. Yet, the crime continues unabated as these unaccountable politicians sneer at the very people who elected them as if they were peons. This will not end well.
Chinese factory owners and communist party princelings now own a substantial percentage of the desirable real-estate in California. They pay cash and buy up multiple properties, many of which are un-occupied.
The best policy the state could institute to control housing costs, which are driven up almost solely by mass immigration and rich foreigners parking their wealth in California’s real-estate, is a significant tax on foreign nationals buying property in the state.
Vancouver now has a 15% tax on foreigners purchasing property, which has driven the mainland princelings to Seattle and slowed price inflation in that market.
I read ca. 2018 that about half of real estate sales were to “overseas buyers” in Southern California. As in Vancouver, so in San Francisco, Orange County, greater L.A. Speculation (and “anchor hotels” for PRC pregnant women in the San Gabriel Valley, a majority Asian enclave)… Plus Russian, Armenian, and Vietnamese investors, often tied to criminals… This fuels suburban and exurban sprawl, loss.of farmland and.open space.