The past two decades have seen anti‐immigrant ideas permeate national political discourse in Europe and North America. Ideas previously confined to the political margins are now part of the mainstream. Appeals to traditional political ideas and loyalty to state institutions—seen as an antidote to such ideas—have failed to stem the tide of anti‐immigrant policies. We offer an explanation of why appeals to political institutions fail to curb anti‐immigrant sentiment. We demonstrate that past empirical research into dimensions of identity has failed to model interactive effects between dimensions, leading to mixed results concerning policy preference and identity formation. We also demonstrate that an interaction effect exists between civic and ethnocultural dimensions that moderate each other as affinity rises. We show that previous research blaming most negative policy preference on the ethnocultural dimension is incomplete. This has significant implications for those seeking to design policies and programs that moderate negative attitudes toward immigrants. Related Articles Podcast National Public Radio. . “Do America's Changing Demographics Impact Politics?” http://www.npr.org/2011/07/04/137609363/do‐americas‐changing‐demographics‐impact‐politics

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In today's fragmented media environment, citizens have an enhanced ability to select information outlets that match their preexisting political beliefs and avoid information sources that clash. This modern version of “selective exposure” means that citizens can more easily isolate themselves from perspectives unlike their own. In this article, we employed a quasi‐experimental design to test (1) the extent to which subjects selectively exposed themselves to opinion articles that were congenial to their presumed predispositions about Sarah Palin and (2) whether selective exposure reinforced these predispositions, thereby magnifying differences between Republicans and Democrats. We found that subjects did indeed tend to engage in selective exposure. And among those who did, there was evidence of reinforcement. Interestingly, there was evidence of persuasion among the relatively few subjects who exposed themselves to sources that ran counter to their predispositions. En el ambiente fragmentado de los medios de comunicación actuales los ciudadanos tienen una mayor habilidad de seleccionar medios de comunicación que sean compatibles con sus creencias políticas preexistentes y evitar fuentes de información incompatibles. Esta versión moderna de la “exposición selectiva” permite que los ciudadanos puedan aislarse más fácilmente de perspectivas contrarias a la propia. En este artículo, empleamos un diseño cuasi‐experimental para examinar: (1) la medida en la que los sujetos selectivamente se exponen a artículos de opinión que congenien con sus predisposiciones acerca de Sarah Palin y (2) si la exposición selectiva refuerza esta opinión, por lo tanto magnificando las diferencias entre Republicanos y Demócratas. Encontramos que los sujetos efectivamente tienden a emplear una exposición selectiva. Y entre aquellos que lo hacen, hay evidencia del reforzamiento de dicha opinión. Curiosamente, hubo evidencia de persuasión entre los sujetos que se expusieron a fuentes contrarias a su ideología.

This study expands the literature by examining how the relationship between ethnic/cultural, civic, and liberal conceptions of American national identity shapes attitudes toward immigrants. Using two cross‐sectional datasets, an ordinal logit model, and predicted probability scenarios, I find that an unequal balance (i.e., strong favoring of one or more dimensions at the expense of the others) of these three different dimensions of national identity results in extremely negative or positive attitudes toward immigrants, while those that hold moderate levels of these three elements of identity are likely to express neutral‐to‐positive attitudes. I argue that it is the balance between these dimensions that is important in shaping individual attitudes toward immigrants, making it essential to determine not just individual support for each dimension of national identity but the support of each dimension vis‐à‐vis each other.

Since 2009, more Mexicans have been leaving rather than coming to the USA; likewise, illegal immigration from Mexico has declined. Yet, immigration remains a hotly contested issue in the 2016 presidential election, with a seemingly marked increase in anti-immigrant policy and rhetoric, much of which is directed at immigrants from Mexico. In this paper, we seek to explain how individual ethnocultural and civic-based conceptions of what it means to be an American influence attitudes towards immigration. Past theoretical research on national identity has framed the effects of these dimensions as interactive but past empirical work has yet to demonstrate an important interaction between race and ethnocultural identity. Failure to account for these interaction effects has led to inaccurate assumptions about the levels of hostility towards immigrants and how widespread anti-immigrant sentiment really is. We demonstrate a clear interactive effect between identification as white and ethnocultural dimensions of identity and show that this effect has masked the root of the most ardent anti-immigrant sentiment. We also show that while there is a sizeable minority of the population that identifies as both white and have high levels of ethnocultural identity, a majority of Americans prefer to keep immigration levels at the status quo and have an identity that is balanced between ethnoculturalism and civic-based conceptions of identity.