Americans Really Don't Like Immigration, New Survey Finds

Sixty-one percent say it jeopardizes the nation.
Bloomberg
Mar. 07, 2016

Sixty-one percent of Americans agree that "continued immigration into the country jeopardizes the United States," according to a new poll commissioned by management consulting firm A.T. Kearney that revealed pessimism across a wide range of issues.

The degree of concern is remarkable considering that the question was about all immigration, including the legal kind. Even Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said he supports legal immigration into the U.S.

A.T. Kearney gave Bloomberg Businessweek an exclusive first look at the results of the survey, which covers 2,590 respondents and is part of an America@250 study that's intended to gauge the nation's direction with 10 years to go before its 250th birthday. The study, which will be posted online later this month, was conducted last October and November by NPD Group.

The political climate may help account for Americans' immigration fears, says Paul Laudicina, chairman of the Global Business Policy Council, which is a unit of A.T. Kearney. "Given what's going on in the national discourse and the desperate state of national politics ... it makes people vulnerable to jingoistic sloganeering," he said in an interview.

A belief that immigration jeopardizes the U.S. was common across age groups, although highest among baby boomers (65 percent) and lowest among millennials (55 percent). By education, it was highest among those with just a high school education or some college (65 percent), and by region it was highest in the South, including Texas (66 percent).

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