This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, May 3rd, 2021.

I'm Caleb Brown.

What drives American opinions about immigration and immigrants?

A new survey from the Cato Institute examines Americans attitudes about the

thorniest of thorny political subjects. Emily Eekins is Cato's director of

polling. The results of the survey were released last week. Immigration is an issue has been with us for many, many years.

People talk about the Reagan Amnesty in the 1980s,

and of course the issue picked back up sort of in 2006 through 2008 during the latter years of

George W Bush's presidency and since then it just seems to have just overtaken a

whole lot of other issues in public policy.

So after the Trump years where immigration was restricting immigration was a centerpiece,

what was the goal with this survey?

So with this survey, it's a nationally representative survey of 2,600 Americans.

We wanted to understand not just the what, you know, what people think about

immigration, but the why. You know, what's what explains why people think what they do? And one of the

reasons why this was a really intensive you know deep

project is that people are rather reluctant to talk about this issue.

Surveys show that Americans have very warm feelings about immigration.

91% of Americans welcome immigration to the US and think it's been,

you know, has many benefits. But at the same time if you look at how many Americans

want to support more or increased immigration above what our current levels are it's

only about a third. Now that's risen a lot, that's

...