Welcoming the Stranger
Perceived Local Population Dynamics and Immigration Policy Views
Stephanie Chan, Tanika Raychaudhuri & Ali Valenzuela
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
How do perceptions of local immigrant populations influence immigration policy views? Building on findings that Americans may not accurately perceive population dynamics, we argue that objective measures do not fully capture the effects of local context on public opinion. Our research uses novel subjective experimental reminders about current levels of and recent changes in local immigrant populations to explore how these perceptions impact immigration policy views. In a survey experiment, we asked 2,400 Americans to consider current levels of or recent changes in their local immigrant population. Asking subjects to consider current levels of local immigrant populations modestly increases support for pro-immigrant policies, with particularly strong effects among non-White and Republicans. These effects may be driven by positive perceptions of immigrants and have implications for understanding the role of local community frames in shaping public opinion about immigration, particularly for groups who do not typically support permissive immigration policies.
Hispanic Americans in the Labor Market: Patterns Over Time and Across Generations
Francisca Antman, Brian Duncan & Stephen Trejo
NBER Working Paper, December 2022
Abstract:
This article reviews evidence on the labor market performance of Hispanics in the United States, with a particular focus on the US-born segment of this population. After discussing critical issues that arise in the US data sources commonly used to study Hispanics, we document how Hispanics currently compare with other Americans in terms of education, earnings, and labor supply, and then we discuss long-term trends in these outcomes. Relative to non-Hispanic Whites, US-born Hispanics from most national origin groups possess sizeable deficits in earnings, which in large part reflect corresponding educational deficits. Over time, rates of high school completion by US-born Hispanics have almost converged to those of non-Hispanic Whites, but the large Hispanic deficits in college completion have instead widened. Finally, from the perspective of immigrant generations, Hispanics experience substantial improvements in education and earnings between first-generation immigrants and the second-generation consisting of the US-born children of immigrants. Continued progress beyond the second generation is obscured by measurement issues arising from high rates of Hispanic intermarriage and the fact that later-generation descendants of Hispanic immigrants often do not self-identify as Hispanic when they come from families with mixed ethnic origins.
Do Anti-immigration Voters Care More? Documenting the Issue Importance Asymmetry of Immigration Attitudes
Alexander Kustov
British Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Why do politicians and policymakers not prioritize pro-immigration reforms, even when public opinion on the issue is positive? This research note examines one previously overlooked explanation related to the systematically greater importance of immigration as a political issue among those who oppose it relative to those who support it. To provide a comprehensive empirical assessment of how personal immigration issue importance is related to policy preferences, I use the best available cross-national and longitudinal surveys from multiple immigrant-receiving contexts. I find that compared to pro-immigration voters, anti-immigration voters feel stronger about the issue and are more likely to consider it as both personally and nationally important. This finding holds across virtually all observed countries, years, and alternative survey measures of immigration preferences and their importance. Overall, these results suggest that public attitudes toward immigration exhibit a substantial issue importance asymmetry that systematically advantages anti-immigration causes when the issue is more contextually salient.
Public Attitudes Toward Immigration: Was There a Trump Effect?
Mustafa Sagir & Stephen Mockabee
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines public opinion about immigration policy in 2012 and 2016, seeking to understand whether there are meaningful differences in public opinion across these elections, whether the predictors of opinion changed, and whether the issue’s salience grew. One prominent candidate for explaining differences in opinion about immigration in 2016 is the rhetoric of Donald J. Trump, whose presidential candidacy was launched with an attack on immigration from Mexico. We analyze content from Trump’s campaign speeches and from Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign speeches to compare the emphasis on immigration themes, finding that Trump talked far more about immigration than Romney did. We also examine media coverage and find a marked increase in mentions of the immigration issue, which should, in theory, lead to more people seeing immigration as an important problem. We analyze “most important problem” questions from American National Election Studies surveys and find that mentions of immigration increased from less than one percent in 2012 to about five percent in 2016. However, we find that the overall distribution of public opinion about immigration changed very little from 2012 to 2016. Multivariate models show that the predictors of opinion about immigration policies were primarily the same in 2016 as in 2012: a combination of perceived economic threat, perceived cultural threat, and ethnic prejudice. In addition, models of presidential vote choice find that immigration issues were statistically significant predictors in 2016 but not in 2012. All of this suggests that Trump’s 2016 candidacy did not persuade so much as it activated. Trump’s rhetoric did not significantly alter American public opinion on immigration. Still, his emphasis on the immigration issue did garner increased media coverage and was attractive to many Republican and conservative voters who already held anti-immigration views.
Immigration and economic freedom of the US states: Does the institutional quality of immigrants' origin countries matter?
Alexandre Padilla & Nicolás Cachanosky
Contemporary Economic Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
When people immigrate to the United States from countries with less economic freedom, they do not dampen economic freedom in their destination states. We use the Economic Freedom of North America report to rate the economic freedom of US states, and we group immigrants by how far below the United States their origin countries score in the Economic Freedom of the World report. Our major findings hold true even when states receive immigrants from countries with far less economic freedom. Most relationships between immigration and the US states' economic freedom scores are neither statistically nor economically significant.
Changes in the Public Charge Rule and Health of Mothers and Infants Enrolled in New York State’s Medicaid Program, 2014‒2019
Scarlett Sijia Wang et al.
American Journal of Public Health, December 2022, Pages 1747-1756
Objectives: To examine the effect of the January 2017 leak of the federal government’s intent to broaden the public charge rule (making participation in some public programs a barrier to citizenship) on immigrant mothers and newborns in New York State.
Methods: We used New York State Medicaid data (2014–2019) to measure the effects of the rule leak (January 2017) on Medicaid enrollment, health care utilization, and severe maternal morbidity among women who joined Medicaid during their pregnancies and on the birth weight of their newborns. We repeated our analyses using simulated measures of citizenship status.
Results: We observed an immediate statewide delay in prenatal Medicaid enrollment by immigrant mothers (odds ratio = 1.49). Using predicted citizenship, we observed significantly larger declines in birth weight (−56 grams) among infants of immigrant mothers.
Misperceptions about Refugee Policy
Emily Thorson & Lamis Abdelaaty
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This letter explores the prevalence of misperceptions about refugee policy and tests whether correcting these misperceptions changes attitudes toward refugees. Large numbers of people hold misperceptions about both the nature and effects of refugee policy. An experiment directly compares the effects of correcting misperceptions about existing refugee policy (e.g., the refugee admission process) with correcting misperceptions about the outcomes of refugee policy (e.g., the proportion of refugees in the United States and the percentage who receive welfare benefits). Corrective information about existing policy substantially increases support for refugees, but corrective information about policy outcomes has no effect on attitudes. The results suggest that including descriptive information about existing U.S. policy in media coverage of refugees could both correct misperceptions and change attitudes.
Villains or vermin? The differential effects of criminal and animal rhetoric on immigrant cardiovascular responses
Mona El-Hout & Kristen Salomon
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, December 2022, Pages 1939–1957
Abstract:
Prejudicial stressors are well documented and have been shown to elicit both cardiovascular threat responses as well as poor poststressor cardiovascular recovery among targets of prejudice, but these responses may be even stronger if those prejudicial stressors involve dehumanizing, animalistic content. We predicted that immigrant participants who are exposed to animal metaphors in an attempt to elicit feelings of dehumanization (i.e., metadehumanization) would exhibit both larger cardiovascular threat responses and poorer poststressor recovery, as mediated by the presence of state-rumination, than participants exposed to criminal metaphors. We examined the cardiovascular reactivity and recovery of 150 first- and second-generation U.S. immigrants during nonimmigration and immigration speech tasks. For the immigration speech, participants were randomly assigned to read a fabricated article that either primed prejudicial attitudes via animal metaphors or via criminal metaphors about immigrants. Controlling for nonimmigration speech reactivity, results showed that threat responses were significantly greater among those primed with animal metaphors compared to those primed with criminal metaphors. These effects were prolonged, such that participants in the animal condition displayed poorer recovery after the task compared to those in the criminal condition. Participants with greater levels of state-rumination also exhibited poorer recovery than those who ruminated less. These results showcase the more insidious cardiovascular stress responses to dehumanizing prejudice compared with nondehumanizing rhetoric. Implications of these findings are discussed.
Who Controls the Immigration Bureaucracy? The Relative Influence of the Three Branches Over Asylum Policy Implementation
Maureen Stobb, Banks Miller & Joshua Kennedy
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
At the center of contentious debates concerning U.S. asylum policy are immigration judges, bureaucrats who decide life and death cases on a daily basis. Congress, the executive and the courts compete for influence over these key actors — administrative judges distinct from those examined in much of the bureaucratic control literature. They are hired, fired, promoted or demoted by executive officials; face congressional oversight; and must follow circuit law. We argue that, because of the fear of reversal, immigration judges will look most to the courts in the decision-making process. Our results support our theory. Examining over 900,000 immigration judges’ decisions, we find that, although IJs are influenced by a fear of pushback from the elected branches, the impact is conditional on circuit preferences. Our findings inform scholarly understanding of judicial behavior and bureaucratic accountability, and support the pursuit of judicial independence and due process in immigration courts.
¿Quién Importa? State Legislators and Their Responsiveness to Undocumented Immigrants
Matthew Mendez Garcia & Sara Sadhwani
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Do undocumented immigrants matter as constituents for state legislators? In this study we examine legislator responsiveness to differing ethnicities and immigration statuses of immigrant constituents through a field experiment conducted in 2014 in 44 U.S. state legislatures. We advance a theory of citizen advantage, that citizens and particularly white citizens will reap greater representation from legislators, but that even undocumented immigrants can constitute a meaningful subconstituency that receives some, albeit less, responsiveness from legislators. Each legislator received a constituent request that was identical in content and varied the constituent’s race/ethnic identity by using a first name and surname cue (Latinx or Eastern European) and immigration status (undocumented/citizen/control). We found that legislators respond less to undocumented constituents regardless of their ethnicity and are more responsive to both the Latinx and Eastern European-origin citizen treatments, with Republicans being more biased in their responsiveness to undocumented residents. Nuances within the data reveal that despite limited electoral incentive, some legislators are responsive to undocumented immigrants regardless of race or ethnicity; however, when immigration status is not cued, white residents receive greater responsiveness than Latinx.
Immigration and Work Schedules: Theory and Evidence
Timothy Bond, Osea Giuntella & Jakub Lonsky
NBER Working Paper, December 2022
Abstract:
We develop a theoretical framework to analyze the effects of immigration on native job amenities, focusing on work schedules. Immigrants have a comparative advantage in production at, and lower disamenity cost for nighttime work, which leads them to disproportionately choose nighttime employment. Because day and night tasks are imperfect substitutes, the relative price of day tasks increases as their supply becomes relatively more scarce. We provide empirical support for our theory. Native workers in local labor markets that experienced higher rates of immigration are more likely to work day shifts and receive a lower compensating differential for nighttime work.