A border wall between the U.S.-Mexico border has been a major focus of Donald Trump’s campaign. However, a new poll suggests people living in border cities oppose that idea.
The poll, sponsored by Cronkite News, Univision and the Dallas Morning News, found 72 percent of Americans and 86 percent of Mexicans living along both sides of the border are against a wall.
“It doesn’t mean that people are in favor of open borders by any means, but one thing we heard over and over again, up and down the border, especially in Texas, that it was too simple a solution,” Angela Kocherga, director of the Borderlands Bureau of Cronkite News, said. “It really doesn’t get to the heart of the problems.”
Among those problems: the demand for agricultural jobs and drug trafficking.
Kocherga says this is the first poll in 15 years that’s looked at the attitudes on both sides of the border.
“The poll before was done before September 11th, so a lot has changed,” she said. “There’s security concerns, the drug war and drug violence in Mexico, but you still see people feeling very close.”
Other poll findings:
- 88 percent of border residents in Mexico and 77 percent in the U.S. favor easier mobility across the border.
- 76 percent of Mexicans said they don’t trust their law enforcement officials while 82 percent of those polled on the U.S. side said they do.
- 51 percent of those polled on the Mexican side and 54 percent on the U.S. side said they oppose the legalization of marijuana.
Click here for more poll results, and listen to today’s Texas Standard interview with Angela Kocherga. (You can find it at the 7:19 mark.)
