Exploring the Contextual Determinants of Individual Attitudes toward Immigrants and Criminal Activity and their Spillover Policy Implications

Abstract

Immigrants are routinely tied to a range of social problems in the policy making process in the US political system. Little is known however about the extent to which citizens hold attitudes that connect immigrants to particular social problems and whether these attitudes spill over to influence citizens' preferences toward specific public policy alternatives that might appear to be largely independent of immigrants and immigration. Investigating the nexus between immigration and crime, we ask how Anglo whites' contextual environments influence their propensity to link immigrants to a salient social pathology like crime. Results show that whites living in states where immigrant populations have increased most dramatically and in states with lower socioeconomic characteristics are more likely to associate immigration with increased criminal activity. Whites' attitudes toward immigration-induced crime has important spillover implications to the larger public policy making process as whites who view immigrants as a cause of criminal activity are more likely to support tougher criminal sentencing and the death penalty.The study of public attitudes toward immigration is often carried out quite independently of research on public attitudes regarding other policy issues despite the fact that in the world of practical politics and public debate, views about immigrants and immigration might significantly influence preferences toward other salient but only tangentially related public policy issues. While it is important to examine immigration as a singular issue, this narrow focus severely limits our understanding of the extent to which citizens connect immigrants and immigration to the broader spectrum of public issues within the larger context of public policymaking. As the United States becomes increasingly racially and ethnically diverse as a result of both legal and illegal immigration it is important to begin to advance our understanding of the impact that immigration has on the larger public policy making process above and beyond the narrow confines of ''border-related'' issues. Recent political history tells us for example that the public makes connections between immigrants and a variety of social and economic problems above and beyond those that are traditionally associated with border issues (Smith and Edmonston, 1998). For instance, in 1994 California citizens placed

Immigrant-Friendly and Unfriendly Cities: Impacts on the Presence of a Foreign-Born Population and City Crime

“…Despite this growing body of more sophisticated analyses uncovering negative associations between crime and immigration/immigrants, the perceptions of a crimeimmigration relationship remain largely stable. Percival and Currin-Percival (2013) found after using group threat theory, social contacting theory, and socio-economic theory to assess the impacts of immigrants on perceptions of crime among the local population towards immigrants that evidence supports the group threat theory and socio-economic theory. Group threat theory supposes that as a separate and distinct group increases in population in an area, the dominant group feels threatened by its presence for a number of reasons.…”

Mandatory detention for criminal convictions: The reproduction of racial inequality throughU.S.immigration law

“…Today, despite the fact that the majority of immigrants detained by ICE have no criminal record-a ratio that grew under the Trump administration (TRAC Immigration, 2019b)-and a wide body of research showing that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than their native-born counterparts (Hagan et al, 2008;Martinez & Valenzuela, 2006;Percival & Currin-Percival, 2013;Zatz & Smith, 2012), mass detention and deportation are continually rationalized through a focus on the "criminal alien." Whether it be nationalist rhetoric referring to Mexican immigrants as "rapists" who are "bringing crime" and "bringing drugs" (M. Y. H. Lee, 2015), or liberal arguments urging the deportation of "criminals" and "gangbangers" rather than "folks just trying to feed their families" (Thompson & Cohen, 2014), noncitizens with criminal records are framed as the dangerous folk devil, deserving of indefinite detention and deportation.…”

“…Today, despite the fact that the majority of immigrants detained by ICE have no criminal record—a ratio that grew under the Trump administration (TRAC Immigration, 2019b)—and a wide body of research showing that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than their native‐born counterparts (Hagan et al, 2008; Martinez & Valenzuela, 2006; Percival & Currin‐Percival, 2013; Zatz & Smith, 2012), mass detention and deportation are continually rationalized through a focus on the “criminal alien.” Whether it be nationalist rhetoric referring to Mexican immigrants as “rapists” who are “bringing crime” and “bringing drugs” (M. Y. H. Lee, 2015), or liberal arguments urging the deportation of “criminals” and “gangbangers” rather than “folks just trying to feed their families” (Thompson & Cohen, 2014), noncitizens with criminal records are framed as the dangerous folk devil, deserving of indefinite detention and deportation. Contextualized by systems of mass incarceration and militarized criminal justice enforcement long shown to exacerbate inequality and uphold socially constructed racial hierarchies (Alexander, 2012; Chambliss, 1995; Delgado & Stefancic, 2001; Provine, 2008; Tonry, 1995; Wacquant, 2001), such uncritical acceptance and operationalization of systemic designations of criminality become especially problematic.…”

Foreign-Born Population Growth, Negative Outgroup Contact, and Americans’ Attitudes Towards Legal and Unauthorized Immigration

“…Recent work has demonstrated how the change in (rather than level of) immigration is more negatively related to views towards immigration, threat-stereotypes, reported race-hate crimes, and restrictive immigration policies (Hopkins, 2010; Kaufmann, 2014, 2017; Kessler and Freeman, 2005; Marquez and Schraufnagel, 2013; Percival and Currin-Percival, 2013; Stacey et al, 2011). In addition, studies show the impact of change may itself be conditional on other factors within both the local and national sociocultural environment (Green et al, 1998; Newman, 2013).…”