Dr. Anthony Fauci slammed a belief popular among Republicans and the unvaccinated that immigrants are to blame for the U.S.’s Covid-19 transmission, as reported in a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll, saying Sunday the issue is “within our country” and is not because of immigrants or tourists bringing the coronavirus from other countries.
Fauci was asked on CNN Sunday about the KFF poll and whether he believed immigrants are a “major reason why Covid-19 is spreading in the U.S.,” to which he responded, “Absolutely not.”
The White House medical advisor said “look[ing] at the data” about who’s gotten sick and died from Covid-19 shows “this is not driven by immigrants.”
The KFF poll found 55% of Republicans and 40% of unvaccinated respondents blame immigrants and tourists bringing Covid-19 into the country for the U.S.’ high case rates.
Republicans ranked immigrants as the biggest factor affecting Covid-19 transmission, and it was the second highest factor among the unvaccinated, behind the belief “the vaccines are not as effective at preventing the spread of Covid-19 as scientists initially thought” (58% said that was the case).
Fauci was also asked about Title 42, the controversial public health law being used to expel migrants as a Covid-19 health measure, and said while he didn’t know enough about the “intricacies” of the policy to comment, “My feeling has always been that focusing on immigrants, expelling them…is not the solution to an outbreak.”
“When you have 700,000 Americans dead and millions and millions and millions of Americans getting infected, you don’t want to look outside to the problem. The problem is within our own country,” Fauci said. “Certainly immigrants can get infected, but they’re not the driving force of this, let’s face reality here.”
Republicans have repeatedly blamed immigrants for the U.S.’ Covid-19 surge rather than issues like a lack of mask mandates or lower vaccination rates, with officials like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis often pointing to the southern border to justify recent outbreaks in their states. Abbott issued an executive order in July that restricted the ground transportation of migrants into Texas because of the perceived Covid-19 risk, for instance, while DeSantis blamed President Joe Biden for “having a wide open southern border” that could bring in the coronavirus. Fauci follows other medical experts who have similarly criticized those arguments, saying Republicans are “scapegoating” by blaming immigrants rather than imposing Covid-19 mitigation measures like ma
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