Joe Biden’s approval ratings remain historically low, and one issue that has become a big factor in those numbers is his handling of illegal immigration over the three years he’s been president.
For instance, in a Monmouth poll taken in late November, Biden’s approval rating on immigration was at 26 percent:
An NBC News poll from September also had bad news for Biden on the illegal immigration front, with voters including those from key Democrat voting blocs overwhelmingly saying they trust Republicans more than Democrats to handle the border crisis:
What’s one key reason why Biden is in trouble with voters on this issue? As CNN conceded during a Thursday segment, Republican governors busing illegal immigrants to Democrat-run cities. The mayors in those cities are now pleading with the Biden administration for help, so the GOP policy “has worked from a political perspective.”
In an exchange that featured “Inside Politics” anchor Dana Bash, fellow anchor Kasie Hunt, the Atlanta Journal Constitution‘s Tia Mitchell, and Seung Min Kim from the Associated Press, Bash point-blank admitted that Biden’s numbers on illegal immigration were “not good.” The other panelists helpfully explained why:
BASH: Look let’s just sort of put in context, the politics of this for President Biden, and how important it is. Just one example from a Monmouth approval rating poll – question. You look at the – the issues, and how he fares. Infrastructure, jobs, climate change, inflation, immigration, he is now 26 percent. That is not good.MIN KIM: It’s not good at all. And I think that part of the trip yesterday to Mexico, by senior Biden Administration officials, was obviously to have these diplomatic conversations, but also to make the broader administration’s point that this is a regional issue that requires regional cooperation, and sort of trying to blunt the criticism from Republicans that you’re hearing over and over saying that these were Biden’s border policy that’s causing these numbers at the border.But that certainly doesn’t change the fact that he’s under considerable political pressure over immigration, and that his administration is probably preparing to make some significant compromises on immigration next month.BASH: Pressure because of the situation at the border, pressure because Republicans are trying as much as they can to – to blame Biden and his policies. But it’s also big city mayors. Democratic mayors in big cities.[…]HUNT: Yeah, I mean, that right, there is the problem that Joe Biden has right, in a nutshell, because it is no longer – you know, for a long time this conversation was these, you know, red state mayors and governors are being alarmist. And, you know, we have to be – that we have to focus on the humanitarian issue here.Obviously, the U.S. has a humanitarian responsibility to you know, it’s written into the law into our asylum laws. But this crisis has gotten worse, not better. And, frankly, the strategy that these red state governors have had of sending a lot of these migrants up to blue states has worked from a political perspective. And it is very, very hard for these cities to absorb them.And you know, the Biden team, I think, knows that or they wouldn’t be willing to make these concessions in these policy negotiations that they’re having with Capitol Hill. I mean, the cynical, political way of looking at it might be to say, well, maybe Republicans don’t want to let them do it, because they prefer this continue to be a problem for them in the 2024 election.
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To put an even finer point on it, Biden has consistently polled poorly on the issue of illegal immigration, with voters routinely ranking it as a top issue they will take into consideration before heading to the ballot box. Considering how badly he and his “border czar” Kamala Harris (who interestingly enough was not mentioned in the above back and forth) have handled it to date, it’s not hard to understand why.
As much as he would like it to, the border crisis is not going to go away for Biden in 2024, and there are two primary reasons for that:
The number of concessions Biden will make in negotiations with Congressional Republicans on border security remains to be seen, but rest assured that he likely wouldn’t be contemplating them at all had Abbott and DeSantis not decided enough was enough and started playing hardball.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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