Polls: Support for Syrian Refugee Program Falls Even Lower

Barack Obama delivers a statement on the attacks in Paris from the press briefing room on Friday Nov. 13, 2015, left, and a Syrian refugee yells at a Hungarian border guard. (Photos: Pete Souza/WH/Reuters)

Support for the president’s Syrian refugee program has fallen even farther over the past week as voters’ side with Republican governors and legislatures across the country. On the state level, 60% say they do not want the Syrian refugee program to relocate “asylum-seekers” from the Middle East to their state. According to the latest Rasmussen Reports survey, which has released multiple tracking polls on the issue before and after the Paris attacks, just 28% favor their state taking in refugees while 11% are undecided.

More than half of the nation’s governors said they will refuse to allow refugees into their states, including several Democrats bucking the president on the issue, and they pushed lawmakers in Congress to take legislative action.

“Following the terrorist attacks by ISIS in Paris that killed over 120 people and wounded more than 350, and the news that at least one of the terror attack suspects gained access to France by posing as a Syrian refugee, our state agency will not support the requests we have received,” Florida Gov. Rick Scott said in a statement. “Therefore, we are asking the United States Congress to take immediate and aggressive action to prevent President Obama and his administration from using any federal tax dollars to fund the relocation of up to 425 Syrian refugees (the total possible number of refugees pending for state relocation support at this time) to Florida, or anywhere in the United States, without an extensive evaluation of the risk these individuals may pose to our national security.”

On Thursday, the House of Representatives defied President Obama’s veto threat by overwhelmingly voting to put a “pause” on the program until more stringent vetting processes can be put in place. The American people agree by a wide margin and 77% of voters now saying they are “concerned” that giving thousands of Syrian refugees asylum inevitably poses a national security risk, including 52% who said they are “very” concerned. This level of concern is a marked increase from two months ago, as only 21% don’t share that concern now, including only 7% who are “not at all” concerned.

When Rasmussen first posed the question after the president announced his plan to take in up to 10,000 Middle East migrants, 50% were opposed and 36% said they supported it. But as of the last full tracking survey, which includes responses prior to the Paris attacks and developments that followed, 56% of all voters believe taking in thousands of Syrian refugees will make America a more dangerous.

As predicted, it’s fair to say those numbers are likely to be worse now and very well could further worsen for President Obama and supporting Democrats. At least one terrorist in the Paris attacks entered the European Union (EU) through Leros, Greece on Oct. 3, “where he was identified [as a ‘refugee’] based on EU rules,” officials told PPD Saturday. The Syrian passport in question was found on one of the dead suicide bombers, who was supposedly not known to French intelligence officials.

According to a new Gallup survey, the number of Americans expressing confidence in the government to protect the nation from future terrorist attacks was at the lowest level ever recorded in the history of this trend question, which began in late 2001. Overall, public concerns about the possibility of future terrorist attacks in the U.S. rose this year by 12 percentage points, up from 39% who expressed “a great deal of concern” in 2014 to 51% in 2015. Now, terrorism has become the third-highest on the list of 15 concerns posed in the Gallup poll, coming in behind only healthcare and the economy.

“Worry that oneself or a member of one’s family will be a victim of terrorism” has also increased substantially throughout the year. As of this week, 49% of Americans told Gallup they are “very” or “somewhat worried” about it, the highest rating on this measure since late 2001. Since Gallup began tracking, the number saying they were at least somewhat worried has ranged from 36% to 42% over the past seven years, and was just 39% when President George W. Bush handed over the keys to the Oval Office to Barack Obama.