Immigration is really a bunch of different issues
that are kind of related, all wrapped into one.
You have the border itself.
You have undocumented immigrants.
You have the so-called dreamers.
You have issues around asylum seeking and refugees, issues
around legal immigration.
Well, for one thing, the immigration thing.
I'm a Christian woman.
I believe we have to help others.
But I don't know what to do about that.
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Immigration is not something that most people experience
in their daily lives.
But if you ask them if it's important to them,
25% of Democrats and 87% of Republicans
say that it's a very important issue to them.
So really, whether or not if they're feeling it
in their daily life, has little bearing now on whether or not
they think it's an important issue or one that might
impact their voting behavior.
It's also something that we've seen pop up
in polling in places that are nowhere
near the US-Mexico border.
Immigration is a major issue among voters in Iowa and New
Hampshire, two early voting states
that are thousands of miles away from the border with Mexico.
I believe the border is a big issue.
We need to get that settled.
You see on TV, you see all-- everybody flooding
in through the borders.
And it's just-- I don't know how our economy can absorb
all of that over time, so.
G. ELLIOT MORRIS: According to the US Customs and Border
Protection, about 300,000 migrants
are arriving every month on the southern border.
That puts us on track in 2023 for nearly
two million arrivals.
And that would be the largest number basically on record
since records were being kept.
RICK KLEIN: Comprehensive immigration
reform has been the goal of presidents going back decades.
It's increasingly hard to see how that comes together.
The American people expect us to meet our responsibility
and deliver immigration reform that fixes the problems
in the current system.
So in 2013, Congress came really close to passing
comprehensive border reform.
Despite the fact that the American people
want the border secured--
--there appears to be a majority of this body that believe
legalization must come first.
That, sort of, solution feels off the table now.
The leading policy proposals from the Democrats and
Republicans are a world apart.
But Republicans need to actually work with us
on realistic border policies.
The border needs to be a part of it
if it's gonna clear the Senate.
A lot of the Republicans will blame President Biden
for any perceived weaknesses at the border, any perceived holes
in the immigration system.
A lot of the Republican candidates
are gonna blame both parties for a failure
to act in a comprehensive way.
A lot of them are gonna turn their backs on Ronald Reagan,
whose famous amnesty program in the 1980s
may have laid the groundwork for the current situation
that we see right now, and couldn't
imagine a Republican Party further
away from where Reagan was.
The administration and the allies of immigration reform
on both sides of the Capitol and both sides of the aisle,
worked together to accomplish these critically
important reforms to control illegal immigration.
RICK KLEIN: The wall itself is an item
of considerable controversy inside the Democratic Party.
President Biden campaigned against the wall.
He said, he would never build any more of it.
Since then, he has changed his position.
The border wall-- the money was appropriated
for the border wall.
I tried to get them to re-appropriate it,
to redirect that money.
They didn't.
They wouldn't.
And in the meantime, there's nothing under the law
other than they have to use the money
for what it was appropriated.
I can't stop that.
The Department of Homeland Security moving toward what
they're not quite calling a wall but essentially is,
additional physical barriers at portions of the US-Mexico
border, as they have dealt with an influx of people trying
to come to the country under the most
desperate situations possible.
According to Gallup data in 2023,
47% of Americans say that increased immigration,
just writ large, makes crime worse
and 55% say it makes drug-trafficking
or just the drug--
the drug problem worse.
And I think that makes the conversation about immigration
more negative, again harms progress, but just creates
a division in American politics that I think we all feel
and we can see.
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