President Biden’s executive order shutting down asylum claims at the southern border is finding more support than opposition, but the question of whether it was enough to help fix the situation is another question, according to a Monmouth University poll.
“Forty percent approve of Biden’s executive order while 27% oppose it,” said Patrick Murray, head of the school’s polling institute, “but there’s really a sense that it’s not going to change much. You need to do something, and he did something, but it’s really not going to have that much of an impact.”
Forty-six percent said the president’s executive order is not tough enough on illegal immigration. Another 17% said the order is too tough and 31% said it’s about right.
Murray said a true solution may be held hostage to politics. “Particularly on the right we’ve seen immigration really used as a rallying cry, and quite frankly, to some extent, if you’re on the right and concerns about immigration, fears about immigration are ginning up your base, motivating your base, you really don’t want a solution,” he said.
Murray said the Biden campaign may have been hoping to make inroads with undecided voters here.
“Even though it hasn’t moved the needle in terms of public opinion about Joe Biden, I think the idea is that it hopes to lessen the impact of immigration as an issue so he can try to turn voters’ minds, particularly swing voters’ minds, to some other issues,” said Murray.
Support for Biden’s move was evenly spread across partisan groups – 44% of Republicans, 40% of Democrats and 38% of independents were in favor of it.