Public opinion analyst Karlyn Bowman said in an interview that aired Tuesday on Hill.TV’s “What America’s Thinking” that many Americans would like to see the issue of immigration taken off the national stage.
“I think they’d like to remove the immigration issue, for example, from the national stage,” Bowman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Hill.TV’s Joe Concha.
“That would be a nice thing to do because it’s just been so controversial for so long. I think people really do want to get things done, but they’re not very optimistic about what could happen in Washington,” she continued.
President Trump made immigration a key issue in an effort to energize the Republican base and boost GOP voter turnout ahead of November’s midterm elections.
The issue has continued to make headlines in the weeks following the contests, with the arrival of the so-called caravan of Central American migrants making their way to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents on Sunday fired tear gas at migrants. CBP said its agents fired the tear gas after asylum-seekers tried to cross the border illegally, with some throwing rocks at CBP agents.
A Monmouth University Poll released Monday found that 54 percent of respondents said they perceived the caravan as some kind of threat, while 70 percent said the same migrants should be able to qualify for asylum in the U.S.
— Julia Manchester
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