Obama's Approval Rating On Immigration Has Totally Crashed Amid The Humanitarian Border Crisis

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Barack Obama sadPresident Barack Obama's approval rating on handling issues of immigration has fallen to its lowest level since 2010, amid diminished prospects for comprehensive reform legislation and a burgeoning humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.

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Just 31% of Americans approve of the job Obama's doing on immigration, according to a new poll from Gallup released on Friday. Meanwhile, disapproval ratings on the issue have soared to 65%. Together, it represents an 18-point swing from 10 months ago, a short while after the Senate had passed immigration-reform legislation.

Obama's approval rating has fallen among all parties. At 90%, Republicans give him their highest disapproval rating ever on the issue. And approval among self-identified independent voters and among voters in his own Democratic Party have each dropped 8 points.

Here's a chart that shows the drop:

Obama Gallup immigration

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Obama has taken heat from his party for not taking unilateral action to stem deportations of undocumented immigrants. Meanwhile, he is facing renewed fire from Republicans, amid a growing crisis on the U.S. border. Thousands of undocumented immigrants - many of them unaccompanied children - have flowed over the border in recent months, and many have been placed in detention facilities with nightmarish conditions.

"The Obama Administration's outright refusal to enforce the law is causing chaos for those of us who live and work in border states that must deal with the surge of immigrants who are illegally arriving each day," Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) wrote in a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Thursday.