Those surveyed have said that it's important to increase staff patrolling the border.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFUpdated: MAY 4, 2021 11:37A migrant from Guatemala talk to a US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent at the Paso del Norte international border bridge to request asylum in El Paso, Texas, U.S., in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico January 26, 2021. (photo credit: REUTERS/JOSE LUIS GONZALEZ)
Most Americans are critical of the way the government is handling the Mexico border situation, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.According to the survey, two-thirds of Americans (about 68%) believe that the government is doing a "very" bad job of dealing with the increased number of people seeking asylum, while a third say they're doing "somewhat" of a bad job. Some 29% say that the government is doing somewhat of a good job in handling the situation.Those surveyed said that it's important to increase staff patrolling the border, and both Democrats and Republicans said that it's at least somewhat important to reduce the number of asylum seekers entering the country.The survey also revealed that public opinion is roughly comparable to the way it was in 2019 regarding the issue of immigration, where 33% said that the government was dealing with the border situation well, though Republicans were far less critical of the government’s response than Democrats in 2019.The survey also shows that during 2020, the issue of immigration was not quite as prominent as usual, with the coronavirus pandemic becoming a larger issue for people. Once the pandemic slowed down, immigration returned to being an important issue, rising from 28% of the public thinking it is a very big national problem to almost half (48%) thinking so.The survey included 5,109 American adults, with a margin of sampling error of +/- 2.1 percentage points.
