Since Paris attacks, survey shows public opinion has hardened among American and Britons but Canadians soften stance – yet all agree on security checks

British and American public opinion towards refugees has hardened following the terrorist attacks in Paris. More than four in ten (44%) Britons now believe that the UK should close its borders to refugees entirely, up five points since October, according to new research by Ipsos Mori.



The view is shared by nearly one in two (48%) Americans, up two points compared with last month.

Opinions in the two countries are in stark contrast to opinion in Canada, where a third of voters want to see borders shut to refugees, which represents a one point drop on October.

The debate in the US after the attacks in Paris has centred around the security checks and processes that Syrian refugees go through before being resettled, with the rhetoric among Republican presidential candidates turning particularly explosive and the House of Representatives passing a bill that would make it even more difficult for refugees from Syria and Iraq to enter the country.

Meanwhile, the Canadian government of recently elected prime minister Justin Trudeau has reaffirmed its commitment of increasing to the 25,000 the number of Syrian refugees it aims to welcome by the end of the year.

In all three countries surveyed there is strong agreement for putting refugees through proper security screening regardless of their situation, with 83% of Americans, 80% of Canadians and 86% of Britons saying that this should be the case.

Far fewer – 28% in the US, 25% in the UK and 30% in Canada – believe refugees should be admitted as quickly as possible when a humanitarian emergency takes place, a 10-point drop across all three countries on views held before last weekend’s events.

Syrian refugees in America: separating fact from fiction in the debate Read more

Canadians also have a different perspective to Britons and Americans when it comes to perceiving refugees as a threat; 67% believe there are terrorists posing as refugees. This compares to eight in 10 in both the UK and the US who believe that terrorists are pretending to be refugees, up nine and four points respectively compared with the month before events in Paris.

But all three countries have seen a double digit increase in how dangerous they view the threat of terrorism, with 95% of Britons, 91% of Americans and 75% of Canadians now saying that the threat of an attack in their own country in the next 12 months is real and 84%, 89% and 66% respectively fearing an international war.

However, nearly two thirds of respondents in all three countries have confidence in their respective government’s ability to provide the appropriate levels of security and protection in the event of a terrorist attack.

A smaller proportion – but still a majority in Britain, the US and Canada – believes there is a real threat of an inter-minority conflict or an WMD attack within the next 12 months. In the case of a nuclear, biological or chemical attack, the proportion of those that feels protected by their government falls to around 50% in all three countries.

Another area of debate has been the alleged failures of Europe’s intelligence services and their ability to keep the European Union’s open Schengen area borders secure.



This may explain, in part at least, why confidence in security forces to identify potential terrorists has dropped in all three countries surveyed. One in two Canadians (48%), a third of Britons (34%) and four in 10 Americans (39%) are confident in their country’s respective security forces ability to identify potential terrorists who pretend to be refugees.

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One aspect that is clear from the UK data is that the events of the past week have increased a belief among the British public that the government needs to do “something”:

A majority of Britons (54%) now says that doing nothing in Syria would be worse than taking military action, a 14 point increase since September 2013 when parliament rejected UK military action against Syria.



One in two back the use of military intervention in areas of conflict, up 16 points since October.

More than eight in 10 want to see an increase in border controls and checks, up 11 points over the past month.

Two thirds want to see an increase in aid to refugees in UN camps on the border of Syria, up four points.

Just over four in 10 believe Britain should help other European countries who are taking refugees, such as Germany, Italy and Greece, up seven points compared to the weeks prior to the Paris attacks. However, less than a quarter of Britons want the UK to increase the number of refugees accepted into Britain by more than the existing commitment (20,000 people), which represents a four point drop over the same period.

In contrast, the proportion of the public that believes the problems of Syria are none of Britain’s business and the UK should not interfere has dropped by 28 points to 30% since the 2013 House of Commons vote.



There are important nuances in the data though.

Eight Britons in 10 believe that taking military action in Syria will encourage attacks on the UK and the west, while other attitudes towards the refugee crisis remain at largely similar levels to before the Paris attacks.

Just over a half of British respondents in the Ipsos survey have sympathy for refugees coming to Europe (up three points on October), a third believes that refugees should not count towards the government’s immigration targets and 28% say that Britain has responded well to the refugee crisis (also up three points on last month).

The proportion that believes immigration has generally had a positive impact on Britain is also relatively unchanged by events in Paris. It is up three points since last month, on 34%, and higher, for example, than in November 2010, when fewer than a fifth of Britons shared this view.

However, it is unclear how the public’s understanding of immigration weighs on many of its views. The Ipsos data reveals that Britons believe 23% of migrants are coming to UK to seek asylum while the actual proportion is less than 5%.

The Paris attacks appear to have had little effect on British views on EU membership. Some 30% believe the EU’s poor response to the refugee crisis shows that Britain needs to leave the EU, up only two points over the past four weeks.

Among the respondents of the three countries surveyed, British citizens are the most pessimistic around prospects for the future integration of refugees. Only 43% are confident that refugees will integrate into British society compared to 52% in the US and 57% in Canada.

Methodology: Ipsos Mori interviewed 1,002 adults aged 16-75 in Canada, 1,007 in Great Britain, 1,002 in the USA. Interviews were carried out online 18-19 November 2015 and weighted to national profiles. The results are compared with previous surveys also carried out online by Ipsos.

