The Biden Administration intends to fully lift the Title 42 border restrictions, which have been in place since March 2020, on May 23. A federal judge appointed by Donald Trump, however, has ordered a two-week halt to the phasing out of those restrictions.
In the meantime, three media polls—Politico/Morning Consult, Fox and CNN—have conducted surveys to get the views of the public on this proposed change.
As the graph below indicates, all three found majority opposition to lifting the restrictions: Politico by a 19-point margin (35% favor, 54% oppose), Fox by 36 points (27% to 63%) and CNN by 14 points (43% to 57%).
The public’s widespread lack of information on political matters has been amply demonstrated over the years. (See here, here and here.) Yet Politico and Fox are able to coax opinions on this rather obscure policy from 90% of their samples. CNN is even more talented, with fully 100% of its sample expressing an opinion on whether Title 42 border restrictions should be lifted or not.
Fox News‘ subhead (5/3/22) said Title 42 “limited illegal immigration”—when it actually barred seekers of asylum, an internationally guaranteed legal right.
Before asking about Title 42, both CNN and Fox asked their respondents how attentive they had been to the issue. CNN found just 12% of their sample who said they had been following the news about Title 42 “very closely.” Another 29% said “somewhat closely.”
Fox reported 29% saying they had heard “a great deal” about the Biden administration’s decision to end Title 42 restrictions. Another 32% said they had heard “some” about the decision.
It’s the 12% and 29% figures that are of most interest, because only people who paid a great deal of attention might have a genuine sense of the issues at stake. People who have heard of the issue only casually (followed the issue “somewhat” closely, or heard “some” information) are highly unlikely to know much.
Yet somehow all three news organizations report 90–100% of the public with a meaningful opinion on the issue. Clearly these results are illusory.
Points of information
Here are some relevant points one might want to know about and consider in determining whether to support lifting the Title 42 border restrictions.
- The US has a legal obligation to hear asylum seekers about their reasons for seeking asylum, based on US law and as signatory to international protocols.
- Toward the start of the pandemic, the Trump administration invoked Title 42 to allow the US to return asylum seekers to their home countries without a hearing. The justification was that it would help prevent Americans from getting Covid.
- The CDC initially refused to comply with the order, because the scientists argued there was no evidence that such restrictions would slow the coronavirus. The organization was overruled by Vice President Mike Pence.
- As a consequence, 1.7 million people have been denied a legal hearing, and will be ready to apply for asylum as soon as Title 42 is lifted. Some people argue the flood of migrants could overwhelm the ability of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to process all asylum claims.
- Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas predicted that up to 18,000 asylum seekers could cross the border per day once the restrictions are lifted: “We’re not projecting 18,000, but what we do in the department is we plan for different scenarios, so we’re ready for anything.”
Eliciting opinion
CNN (5/5/22) connected polling numbers to a fears of a “mob” of migrants prepared to “surge” into the US.
Media pollsters typically use two techniques to elicit opinions from respondents who might otherwise admit they have “no opinion.”
The first is to ask forced-choice questions—whether the respondents favor or oppose a policy, with no explicit “unsure” or “don’t know” option. Respondents who have agreed to participate in the poll feel obligated to please the interviewers, to do what is “right,” what is expected of them. So if at all possible, respondents will try to find something in the question itself to help them come up with an opinion. Very few will insist on volunteering they don’t have an opinion.
The second tactic is to simply give respondents a limited subset of knowledge about the issue, and then immediately ask whether they support or oppose the policy.
The limitations here should be obvious. First, once respondents have been given specific information, they no longer represent the larger population they are supposed to represent—because the general public has not been given the same information.
The second limitation is that almost any given issue is too complex to describe fully. So pollsters have to decide how to limit what information they give. The result cannot help but be biased.
Fox, for example, told their respondents that the border restrictions were enacted during the pandemic to “enable the US to block migrants from entering the country based on public health concerns.”
If you didn’t know anything about the issue, of course you would be against lifting the restrictions—since, according to the poll interviewer, they’re “based on public health concerns.”
The other two polls also informed their respondents that the restrictions were implemented for health reasons. No mention was made of the United States’ legal obligation to have hearings to judge whether asylum should be granted, nor the CDC’s initial evidence-based refusal to comply with the Trump administration’s invocation of Title 42. Nor did they mention that the Homeland Security Secretary specified that numerous steps had been taken to deal with the expected surge of migrants.
Had some or all of that information been provided, the polls might well have produced quite different results.
Still, even then, those samples would not represent a cross-section of the general public, which would not have been given the same information.
The polls simply do not represent the US public.
What do polls really measure?
It’s clear the poll results cannot be interpreted literally, as though the vast majority of the US public has come to a conclusion about lifting Title 42 restrictions.
But the results do indicate that emphasizing health concerns as the reason for Title 42 resonates with the public.
CNN asked a few additional questions, with these results:
- 68% of adult Americans believe the situation at the Mexican/US border to be a “crisis.”
- 73% disapprove of the way migrants are being treated in the US.
- 56% favor allowing refugees from Central America to seek asylum in the US.
- 74% are not confident that once Title 42 is lifted, the Biden administration will be ready to handle the increase in the number of migrants who will try to enter the US.
Each one of those questions is seriously flawed, yet overall they indicate the public’s top-of-mind reaction to be generally positive toward migrants, but concerned about the ability of the government to deal with large numbers of asylum seekers.
How many people are actually engaged enough to hold those opinions, however, the polls don’t tell us.
The post Manufacturing Opinion on Lifting Title 42 Border Restrictions appeared first on FAIR.
This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by David W. Moore.
David W. Moore | Radio Free (2022-05-10T20:05:16+00:00) Manufacturing Opinion on Lifting Title 42 Border Restrictions. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2022/05/10/manufacturing-opinion-on-lifting-title-42-border-restrictions/
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