A majority of Latinos agree there is trouble on the U.S.-Mexico border, but Latinos overall are less likely than other Americans to see more deportations and more border wall as effective responses, a Pew Research Center survey has found.
Pew’s analysis released Monday found that about three-quarters of Latinos surveyed view the increasing number of migrants seeking to cross the U.S.-Mexico border as a major problem or crisis. Roughly the same share believe the federal government is doing a bad job of handling it.
About two-thirds of Latinos said speeding up asylum decisions by increasing judges and staff would ease the problem, while 58% saw creating more ways to legally migrate as a tool for resolution.
But just a third of Hispanics backed increasing deportations of people in the country illegally and only around a quarter saw substantially expanding a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border as a way to handle it.
In comparison, a majority of non-Hispanic Americans (55%) backed more deportations to deal with the crisis, although less than half, 45%, agreed expanding the wall on the border would help.
Immigration has become a major issue in the 2024 election, and Republicans have been increasing their share of Latino voters.
The report analyzed data from a survey of over 5,000 American adults — including 879 Hispanics — that was conducted between Jan. 16 and 21.
The Pew survey comes about a month after Customs and Border Protection reported the highest monthly total number of encounters on record, with just over 300,000. Encounters include people who cross and are apprehended, including those who are released to await asylum decisions and those immediately removed. Encounters can include people who have made previous unsuccessful attempts to cross, so the number of individuals can differ from the number of encounters.
How Latinos feel about the migrant crisis and its solutions
In addition to increasing immigration judges and staff, most of the Latino adults surveyed, 57%, agreed that making it easier for migrants to legally work while waiting for decisions about their asylum status would help the present migrant situation. But less than half, 40%, agreed that increasing resources to provide a safe, clean place for people arriving in the U.S. would be helpful.
On the reasons why migrants look to cross the U.S.-Mexico border and seek asylum in the U.S., Latinos and non-Latinos shared similar ideas and beliefs. The prevailing view is that bad economic conditions at home in Latin America and good economic opportunities in the U.S. lead many migrants to make the journey.
Latino immigrants are just slightly more likely than U.S.-born Latinos to cite economic conditions as a reason for the large number of asylum-seekers at the border.
Along partisan lines, Democratic and Republican Latinos are in agreement that economic conditions at home and in the U.S. are a major driver in the current migrant situation.
However, Democratic Latinos are more likely than Republican Latinos to acknowledge violence in migrants’ home countries as a primary motivation to cross the border. On the other hand, Republican Latinos are more apt to believe that U.S. immigration policies make it easy for migrants to believe they can stay in the country after receiving asylum, which is driving most of the current migration.
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Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
