Voters are more anxious about illegal immigration, but Democrats seem oblivious to the problem.
It’s hard to know the extent to which President Biden’s job-approval tribulations can be linked to the continuing chaos at the southern border. But we know that illegal immigration has become a top concern of voters, and the amnesty provisions that Democrats want included in their Build Back Better reconciliation bill are unlikely to help matters.
Anxiety about illegal immigration typically increases during economic downturns, when foreign workers get blamed for unemployment. That’s obviously not the situation today. The economy is not in recession, and the number of available jobs far exceeds the number of people looking for work, even as employers have increased pay and offered signing bonuses to attract new employees. The current concern about illegal immigration has less to do with the labor market and more to do with the hundreds of thousands of people entering the country illegally while Biden administration officials play down the crisis or sit on their hands.
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Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator. Follow him on Twitter here.
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