The Trump Administration is taking a strong stance against violence from third-world nations after two National Guard members were shot on Nov. 26 while on duty in Washington, D.C. The suspect in the shooting, an Afghan-national, murdered one Guard member and injured another, prompting outrage against a system that repeatedly fails to identify individuals with mental illness and hatred toward the U.S. and law enforcement.
20-year-old National Guard member Sarah Beckstrom and 24-year-old National Guard member Andrew Wolfe were shot while on duty in the nation’s capital the day before Thanksgiving. Beckstrom passed away the next day due to her injuries, and Wolfe was left in critical condition.
In response to the tragic shooting, the Trump Administration is pausing green card requests from a list of countries including Afghanistan, Burma, Burundi, Chad, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Turkmenistan, Venezuela and Yemen. The list is set to expand to around 30 nations according to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and will focus on halting applications from unstable nations.
“If they don’t have a stable government there, if they don’t have a country that can sustain itself and tell us who those individuals are and help us vet them, why should we allow people from that country to come here to the United States?” Noem stated in an interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham on Dec. 4.
Because of the severe mishandling of immigration, asylum, and green card programs over the past few years, Americans are growing weary of the numbers of immigrants into the country and largely support scaling back that number.
Views on accepting refugees are tense, with the latest YouGov survey from Dec. 5 showing while 32 percent of Americans say accepting refugees makes the U.S. better off, 50 percent say accepting refugees makes the country worse off or makes no difference. Another 18 percent aren’t sure.
New data from the New York Times released Nov. 19 shows vast support for efforts to roll back the impact of the Biden Administration’s open borders policies, with voters saying by a resounding 30 points they support deporting immigrants who entered the U.S. over the past four years. Americans also support deporting immigrants who don’t show up for their immigration hearings by 43 points, and deporting illegals who have committed crimes by a broad 77 points.
President Trump’s dedication to border security, which has resulted in the lowest number of illegal border encounters in over half a century, is his strongest issue. The Times data shows Americans favor President Trump’s work to secure the southern border by eight points, 54 percent to 46 percent.
Even support for legal immigration is wavering, likely as a result of the vast numbers of immigrants and asylum-seekers admitted during the Biden Administration. The Economist/YouGov poll from Nov. 25 finds that the largest majority of voters — 35 percent — want immigration numbers decreased or reduced to zero.
In the survey, 26 percent say they want immigration decreased, while nine percent say they want immigration reduced to zero. Another 26 percent want immigration kept the same and the smallest number of voters — 23 percent — want to see immigration increased.
While Republicans and conservatives are more likely to want to see immigration decreased or reduced to zero, close to a third of independents favor lowering or halting immigration altogether, as do seventeen percent of Democrats.
Among Republicans, 41 percent would like to see immigration decreased and 19 percent would like to see it reduced to zero, according to the survey. Among independents, 23 percent would like to see immigration decreased and seven percent would like to see immigration reduced to zero. Among Democrats, 14 percent would like to see immigration decreased and three percent would like to see immigration reduced to zero.
Border security repeatedly ranks as one of the top issues for Americans, with voters giving President Trump credit for securing the southern border and reducing the number of illegal encounters to numbers not seen since the 1970s. However, tragedies like the incident that happened on November 26th continue to underscore the need for a wide-spread audit of the immigration, green-card, and asylum-seeking process to ensure newcomers are not harboring mental health issues or hatred toward the U.S. and law enforcement. That is exactly what President Trump is calling for, a citizens-first approach to immigration and the green-card system to prevent another tragedy.
Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
