Americans are way more worried about cyberterrorism than an influx of immigrants

(Image credit: PHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images)

published 5 March 2018

Americans rank cyberterrorism and North Korea's nuclear weapons development program as the two most critical threats to the United States, a new Gallup poll released Monday reveals. The two are in a statistical tie, and just 3 percent of Americans consider each unimportant.

Intriguingly, though international terrorism of the offline variety takes a close third place, other security issues Gallup listed ranked much lower in respondents' concern. Only 39 percent of Americans — fewer than half of those most worried about cyberterrorism and North Korea — said "large numbers of immigrants entering the United States" is a critical threat. Moreover, 29 percent said it's not a threat at all.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.