An Examination of the Attitudes towards Immigration across U.S. Demographic Groups

Abstract

What demographic backgrounds are associated with a person’s attitudes toward immigrants and immigration policies? Applying group threat theory and contact theory, I propose that race, age, education, political views, and religiosity all affect how people view immigration. To test the hypotheses, I analyze data from the 2014 General Social Survey, in which adults living in households in the United States are randomly selected and interviewed. A subset containing 1,022 respondents who answered every question relevant to this study is selected from the 2014 GSS. The univariate analysis shows that most Americans do not agree with the statement that immigrants undermine American culture, and that Americans are divided on whether the number of immigrants should be increased nowadays. The multivariate result indicates that education and political views are the most significant predictors of how one views immigrants and immigration policies, correspondingly, while race, age, and religiosity have no statistically significant relationships with either dependent variable. Statistical findings support the hypothesis that the more liberal a person is, the more likely the person is to agree that immigrants do not undermine American culture and to say that the number of immigrants nowadays should be increased. Contact theory is consistent with the result of this study. However, the findings also demonstrate that immigration is a complicated issue. This study is valuable in understanding the acceptance of immigrants across demographic groups. It also invites additional research on this important topic that will affect the future of the United States.

The Trajectory of Public Attitudes Toward Immigrants in the United States: Latent Growth Analysis Approach

“…It means not only that low-income U.S. citizens had more negative attitudes toward immigrants but also that their negative attitudes have intensified more drastically. The finding of this study is also in line with previous studies based on the threat hypothesis of Blumer's (1958) prejudice theory which identified that U.S. citizens perceived immigrants as competitors for scarce jobs (Bonacich, 1972;Borjas, 1987;Card, 1990;Mayda, 2006;Scheve & Slaughter, 2001) and believed that large numbers of immigrants will threaten their job prospects and general welfare (Czaika, 2015;Yu, 2019). However, immigrants accounted for 17% (27.6 million) of the total civilian labor force in 2016 (161.8 million), and the portion of the foreign-born in the labor force more than tripled from 5% to 17% between 1970 and 2018 (Batalova et al, 2020).…”

“…Also, the sense of threat can be intensified when in-group members feel they are intimidated by an out-group, regardless of whether the threat actually affects them (Blumer, 1958;Fussell, 2014) The threat consolidates in-group members' sense of entitlement to rights, their elevated status, and their alienation from the out-group (Fussell, 2014). Previous studies examined that the most common threat that in-group members are concerned with was economic (Hainmueller & Hopkins, 2015;Mayda, 2006;Scheve & Slaughter, 2001), and more U.S. people in low-income worried that large numbers of immigrants would threaten their job prospects and general welfare (Czaika, 2015;Yu, 2019). This study aims to investigate the trajectory of public attitudes toward U.S. immigrants and examine how individuals' income level affected the trajectory.…”