Donald Trump signed a wide-ranging executive order on Friday that resets the United States’ immigration and refugee programs. The policy bars immigrants from seven heavily Muslim countries from entering the U.S. for 90 days, including people with green cards. It bans all refugees from entering the U.S. for 120 days, and indefinitely bans Syrian refugees. And it cuts the number of refugees the U.S. will accept overall in 2017. (For a more detailed rundown, read here.) [...]
Slight differences in framing and question wording can also have big effects on how well immigration, refugee and terrorism policies poll. Whether Trump’s executive order is viewed in humanitarian terms or (as the Trump administration has tried to frame it) in the context of counterterrorism could go a long way towards determining how much the public supports it. [...]
Again, there are so many ways to look at these numbers. Will Americans react more to the fact that the U.S. is temporarily banning all refugees or to the halts on immigration from predominantly Muslim countries? It’s just not clear how it will play out politically. American opinions on immigration, counterterrorism and refugees are complicated and interact with one another, and different opinions can be activated at different times. Furthermore, some aspects of the policy — such as banning U.S. green card holders from re-entering the United States (or only allowing them to re-enter on a case-by-case basis) — have not been polled at all. For the time being, it’s probably safe to say that the policy is neither as unpopular as its detractors might hope for, nor as popular as its supporters might assume. But that could change as the public learns more about it in the days and weeks ahead.
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