Republican Views On Immigration Are Shifting Even Further To The Right Under Biden
In early August, President Biden took aim at Republican governors like Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas for not taking enough precautions to counter the surge in COVID-19 cases in their states.
But DeSantis was quick to pin the blame on Biden instead, writing the following in a fundraising email to supporters: “Joe Biden has the nerve to tell me to get out of the way on COVID while he lets COVID-infected migrants pour over our southern border by the hundreds of thousands. No elected official is doing more to enable the transmission of COVID in America than Joe Biden with his open borders policies.”
Only what DeSantis is claiming isn’t borne out by data. Rather, according to public health experts, the far more likely culprit for the surge in Florida’s cases is the state’s low vaccination rates.
DeSantis’s decision to scapegoat immigrants for the record number of coronavirus cases is important, though, as it speaks to a larger strategy within the GOP: attack Biden’s immigration policies at every conceivable turn. Prominent Republicans, including former President Donald Trump and Sens. Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, not to mention dozens of other GOP lawmakers, have been vocal in their criticism of how the Biden administration has handled immigration. Conservative cable news channel Fox News has also doubled down on its immigration coverage since Biden’s inauguration, mentioning “immigration,” “immigrant” or the “border” more than 39,000 times compared with fewer than 7,000 and 9,000 mentions on CNN and MSNBC, respectively.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/republican-views-on-immigration-are-shifting-even-further-to-the-right-under-biden/