WASHINGTON / NEW YORK (Reuters) – US President Donald Trump is moving forward with his immigration agenda, even though voters say they are more concerned about the coronavirus pandemic and the economic devastation it has caused.
PHILO PHOTO: US President Donald Trump blows as he tours a section of the new US-Mexico border wall built in San Luis, Arizona, US, June 23, 2020. REUTERS / Carlos Barria
The Republican president won the White House in large part because of his hard-line stance on immigration, an underground issue that animates his base. His administration has maintained that focus despite intense pressure to respond to the worst coronavirus outbreak in the world and nationwide protests against police brutality and racism that have sparked a summer of discontent.
Trump has stepped up new spending this election cycle, including law and order in the wake of the protests, and unconfirmed claims that a rise in postal vote due to concerns about coronavirus will lead to widespread fraud. However, during the pandemic, he re-introduced new immigration policies and made it a campaign that has advertising priority on Facebook.
Recent policy changes include broad shutdowns of the U.S. legal immigration system, such as blocking the entry of a range of temporary foreign workers and some applicants for permanent residency. With Trump in the running for office, the White House is preparing for further restrictions in the run-up to the Nov. 3 election, according to Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration agenda.
In an interview with Reuters, Miller said Trump’s tough stance would contrast with that of his Democratic challenger Joe Biden. Powerful immigration policies, Miller argued, will prove a ‘massive political vulnerability’ in the upcoming elections.
In a new television ad launched on Tuesday in the early-voting campaign states of Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin, the Trump campaign warned that Biden’s support for legalizing millions of immigrants who ‘ t in the country illegally, American workers are facing more competition in a stupid labor market.
The strategy has baffled some Republican strategists, who say the election will be decided primarily on bread and butter issues. Trump’s sagging fortune is linked to the US failure to tackle coronavirus, which has killed more Americans than World War I and caused the U.S. economy to slow down since the Great Depression.
Trump’s use of immigration to energize his core supporters and shift the conversation from the crisis facing the country could alienate swinging voters, according to Alex Conant, a Republican strategist.
“If he’s not talking about the pandemic or the economy, he’s not talking about what Americans are most,” Conant said.
In an analysis conducted for Reuters, the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank, said that before the pandemic, the administration made changes to immigration policy at a rate of about one every three days.
During the pandemic, this has increased to about one every two days, a range that includes both major changes to the immigration system and logistical movements, such as the temporary closure of offices that process immigration applications.
“You would expect it to take a backseat to the massive public health and economic crisis under COVID,” said Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst at the institute. “Instead, the administration had been just as active on immigration as ever.”
ANTI-IMMIGRATION ADS
White House and Trump officials said they were confident the president’s tough immigration was a winner. More actions are likely ahead of the election, including finalized rules that would severely restrict access to asylum, and measures to protect U.S. workers from competition with knowledgeable foreigners entering the country on H-1B visas.
Those movements could sway some voters as they are framed around the pandemic and economic recovery, according to a new Reuters / Ipsos poll conducted July 31 to August 4.
A majority of undecided voters generally had a positive view of immigration – unless they were tied to the pandemic. Some 53% stood for stopping some legal immigration as it protects jobs for Americans during the COVID-19 crisis, the poll showed. About half of the undecided voters support a recent Trump policy to quickly deport migrants, including unaccompanied children, which the administration claims was necessary to stop the spread of the virus. As many as one in six registered voters have yet to decide between Trump and Biden, according to recent polls.
(For polling data on the opinion of voters on immigration see: tmsnrt.rs/3gVvmnP)
Ann Rone, a 49-year-old radiology technologist in Missouri, is an outspoken voter who supports legal immigration, but agrees that it should be paused during the pandemic to create jobs for Americans.
“They may not be the best paying jobs, or whatever we want, but they are jobs,” she said.
Tim Murtaugh, spokesman for the Trump campaign, said the campaign’s focus was on immigration in Americans’ concerns about the economy and public safety.
“Voters want a president who will protect American workers and our borders,” Murtaugh said. “And you do that by enforcing immigration laws.”
REQUEST ON MESSAGE
Trump made immigration a pillar of his agenda for the first term, separating billions into military funds to pay for a border wall with Mexico and severely restricting refugees and access to asylum.
Chants “Build that wall” came to define his 2016 campaign, which attracted crowds at rallies across the country. This election cycle, immigration is not so prevalent on its Twitter feed and on its news conferences, but it remains a constant theme and one of its biggest policy priorities.
Immigration is one policy area where Trump has the power to take action that results in relatively rapid change, even if the moves are later challenged in court. Rebuilding a sick economy is more complicated and usually requires the support of Congress, where Democrats control the House of Representatives.
In recent months, the administration has reduced family-based immigration and effectively disrupted the paus lottery for diversity, issuing approximately 55,000 visas annually to immigrants from countries with a low rate of immigration to the United States.
The Trump campaign focused more on immigration-themed ads on Facebook than on any other policy area from April to June, according to an analysis by Bully Pulpit Interactive, a Democratic public opinion firm based in Washington. Facebook has more than 160 million voting-age users in the United States, according to the company.
The ads focused on the border wall and criticized Biden’s support for a path to citizenship for an estimated 11 million immigrants who entered the country illegally or violated the terms of a visa.
If elected, Biden also promised to pause all deportations of people living and working illegally in the United States for 100 days, a position he took in a March debate amid questions about millions of deportations during his tenure. time as Vice President in the administration of former President Barack Obama. Biden said that after the 100-day break, his administration would only deport criminals.
Miller said such a move “would spark a run on the border like this world has never seen before.”
Trump campaign officials have highlighted Biden’s planned moratorium, and the president criticized the idea at a July conference in the White House Rose Garden.
“So in other words, we’re going to take all these people, a lot of people who are in jail for rape, murder (and) a lot of other things,” Trump said.
A Biden campaign spokesman said the deportation moratorium would apply only to people already in the United States and would not encourage illegal crossings.
‘THE LAND BECOMES’
U.S. voters ranked immigration in 2018 and early 2019, according to Reuters / Ipsos polls, but the issue lost traction with the wider electorate in the latter half of 2019 and in 2020. Even Republicans, who have viewed immigration as an increasing number major concerns in recent years, the focus seems to have shifted since coronavirus hit the country in March. Like other voters, they now rank the economy and health care as top concerns, according to the Reuters / Ipsos poll from July 31 to August 4.
Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, said Trump’s failure to run would make it harder for him to pick up new voters and win ground on Biden, who has been leading the ballot box for months.
“His message today is almost exactly what it was in 2016,” Ayres said. “The country has changed, but the president’s message is not.”
Report by Ted Hesson in Washington and Chris Kahn in New York; edited by Ross Colvin and Marla Dickerson
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