A recent Fox News poll indicates that support for building a border wall has shifted 14 points since November 2015. The poll showed that 57% of registered voters support the construction of a border wall on the nation’s southern border with Mexico. That changed from a bare majority, 50 to 47%.
This is fascinating for several reasons. It represents being mugged by reality. Many of the liberal policies that support immigration were because those liberals were unaffected by it. They live in a safe enclave around very few minorities or crime and the only change from unchecked immigration is that their housekeeper or nanny gets to bring their family members into the country.
But for many other people, it means overcrowded schools and hospitals, depressed wages, more crime, and possible infiltration by terrorists. The people impacted by illegal immigration always cared about the border wall and Democrats called them racist for their troubles. But when Texas Governor Greg Abbot started to challenge those people with busloads of immigrants, their attitudes toward immigrants and border walls changed.
It turns out that when liberal strongholds like Chicago and New York receive more illegal immigrants than they can handle, they start to sound like supposedly evil and racist conservatives. On the south side of Chicago, many of the residents complain that brown-skinned immigrants take priority over the black residents and the homeless crisis they already face.
Migrants ‘dumped’ in Chicago shelter could 'destroy' Black communities, residents say https://t.co/JJMZq27U52
— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 13, 2023
In New York, many intellectuals who used to say housing was a human right suddenly challenged that right in court when they didn’t have enough housing for the immigrants and homeless. The irony in all of this is that the people now complaining about immigration were the ones who claimed they were the most welcoming.
That change of heart after being mugged by reality is reflected in this poll. President Biden, despite calling the wall needless and racist, is now building miles of wall. The sanctuary cities that claimed to be welcoming face protests and near riots against the immigrants in their communities. And now a majority of people want to build the wall.
