Immigration still No. 1; Trump gets a new app

“What do the numbers tell us, Steve, about what’s working for the president and where he may be a little vulnerable?” NBC’s Craig Melvin asked Steve Kornacki about NBC’s latest poll.

“This would be number one,” Kornacki responded, “border security/immigration: majority approval for Trump here – 55 percent. That goes beyond his base who like how he’s handled this.”

NBC’s story expands:

“When it comes to the issues, Trump fares particularly well on immigration. Fifty-five percent of voters approve of his handling of border security and immigration, while 43% disapprove. A similar share, 56%, say he’s bringing the “right kind of change” on the issue, while 25% say he’s bringing the wrong change and 18% say he isn’t bringing change.”

Trump gets an app

The Trump administration released a video this week featuring Trump himself introducing the new app that illegal aliens can use to schedule a return trip home.

“Using the CBP Home app to leave the United States voluntarily is the safest option for illegal aliens [and] our law enforcement,” President Trump says in the video. “It also saves our U.S. taxpayers dollars and valuable CBP and ICE resources.”

The CBP One app was central to the Biden administration’s strategy to allow a record number of inadmissible aliens to enter and work in the United States. The Biden administration helped over a million people schedule their release into the United States outside of the legal limits permitted by Congress. Now, Trump is reimagining the app so inadmissible aliens can schedule their departure. Those who do will not be subject to bans to re-entry.

Watching Trump clearly revel in converting Biden’s app into an enforcement tool calls to mind the scene in the some-would-argue Christmas movie Die Hard when Bruce Willis sends a message to Alan Rickman, letting him know that he has stolen his machine gun (“Ho. Ho. Ho.”).

The Democratic Party received the worst approval rating for any party in the history of NBC’s poll. Could immigration be playing a role in that as well?

The Hill provided a round up of additional polling:

• In a Pew Research survey taken shortly after Trump’s inauguration, 59 percent of surveyed U.S. adults said they approved of the administration ramping up deportations, and 58 percent approved of sending additional military to the southern border.
• CNN found 51 percent of respondents approved of his handling of immigration, his highest positive rating among a range of issue areas tested. Emerson found Trump performed best on immigration, at 48 percent approval.
• Gallup polling from February also found that Trump’s approval on immigration, at 46 percent, was higher than his overall job approval, at 45 percent. Though his support from Democrats on immigration was in the single digits, he scored a notable 40 percent approval from independents, the highest of a half-dozen issues tested.

“Immigration is a natural issue for the Brahmin left,” wrote David Leonhardt in the New York Times Magazine last month. “The old left worried that a labor pool swollen by immigration would undermine unions and lower wages. The new progressives focused instead on the large benefits for the new arrivals.”

The problem for the Democratic Party, in Leonhardt’s view, is that while corporations often push for higher immigration in order to lower wages, immigration expansionist advocates take a moralistic view that’s devoid of nuance: “The advocates’ position, in essence, was: More is good, and less is racist. Voters disagreed, and they rebelled.”

The latest polling appears to vindicate Leonhardt’s analysis. He has been joined, at times, by others such as Senator Fetterman of Pennsylvania:

Meanwhile, California’s Medi-Cal shortfall has reportedly reached $6.2 billion as the state spends over $8 billion to cover illegal aliens, a point that Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas has made as Congress prepares to consider immigration funding through the Reconciliation process.

“Rapid immigration can strain schools, social services, welfare programs and the housing market,” Leonhardt wrote, “especially in the working-class communities where immigrants usually settle (as happened in Chicago, Denver, El Paso, New York and elsewhere over the past four years).”

“The Brahmin left sometimes waves away these effects as too small to matter.”

We saw that play out during a debate on Rising two years ago:

Leonhardt’s analysis has earned praise from across the political spectrum. Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson wrote on his substack:

“Occasionally, an article lands at exactly the right moment, and this piece feels like one of those. As the left reels, Leonhardt’s cogent argument that less migration will both help it politically and makes sense societally is likely to influence top Democrats – encouraging them to work with Republicans to keep the borders closed.”

Ramesh Ponuru wrote in his column for the Washington Post:

“In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton appointed a commission on immigration that issued balanced recommendations including a reduction in legal immigration, timely removal of undocumented newcomers and access to government benefits for those legally admitted. Clinton endorsed those recommendations.

“Returning to that older approach, or something like it, wouldn’t make Democrats less effective in attacking Trump’s excesses. It would make them more credible.”

Immigration-Reduction Grade Cards here.