Most voters in swing-state poll disapprove of how Biden is handling immigration

A new poll finds that a majority of voters — 58 percent — across seven swing states disapproves of how President Biden is handling immigration.

According to the Global Strategy Group poll, 32 percent of voters approve of how Biden is handling the issue.

A slim majority of respondents — 52 percent — also said that the president is ignoring problems at the border and half responded that Biden is ignoring undocumented immigrants and Dreamers, who are undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children.

Both Democrats and Republicans received low approval marks for handling immigration, according to the poll, which was first reported by Politico. Thirty-nine percent of respondents said that they trust Biden and Democrats in Congress more to handle immigration, while 47 percent chose Republicans.

Additionally, 82 percent of respondents said that the immigration system is broken, and 76 percent and 75 percent of voters positively view increasing border security and providing pathways to citizenship, respectively. Sixty-nine percent of voters also said they support efforts to make it easier for undocumented immigrants to apply for work permits and be protected from deportation if they meet certain criteria, like living in the United States for at least 10 years and passing a criminal background check.

This poll comes ahead of the May deadline for the termination of Title 42, which is a border management policy tied to the COVID-19 pandemic emergency. It also comes one day after Sen. Bob Menéndez (D-N.J.) released an immigration plan that would require Biden to take executive actions to address migration flows.

“For the last year, I have repeatedly expressed concerns over the Biden Administration’s decision to implement short-term deterrence policies that fail to address the cycle of irregular migration at our southwest border,” Menéndez said in a statement Tuesday.

His plan includes four different strategies, including expanding legal pathways for immigrants in the U.S., increasing border security resources, upping aid to countries in the region to help support their immigration programs and fighting organized crime and smuggling organizations.

The new poll was conducted between April 4 to 11 among 1,201 likely voters in seven 2024 presidential battleground states including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. The poll has a confidence interval of 2.8 percentage points.