Labor Market Competition and Individual Preferences Over Immigration Policy

Abstract

This paper uses three years of individual-level data to analyze the determinants of individual preferences over immigration policy in the United States. We have two main empirical results. First, less-skilled workers are significantly more likely to prefer limiting immigrant inflows into the United States. Our finding suggests that, over the time horizons that are relevant to individuals when evaluating immigration policy, individuals think that the U.S. economy absorbs immigrant inflows at least partly by changing wages. Second, we find no evidence that the relationship between skills and immigration opinions is stronger in high-immigration communities.

The Rationality Behind Immigration Policy Preferences

“…The more highly educated are least worried about the number of foreigners -39% think there are too many, and the remaining 61% think that there are neither too many, nor too few. The almost linearly increasing pattern of coefficients with respect to education is in line with the standard welfare theoretical analysis of immigration shocks, as set out by Borjas (1995), and also in line with empirical studies of developed countries (Bauer et al (2000), Scheve and Slaughter (2001)). …”

Explicit Evidence on the Import of Implicit Attitudes: The IAT and Immigration Policy Judgments

“…Demographic controls include gender, age, level of education, and reported income. 12 These have typically been used in order to account for plausible individual-level differences that are not political (e.g., conservatism) or racial (e.g., ethnocentrism) in nature, thereby allowing one to obtain more precise estimates of the latter (e.g., Citrin et al 1997;Scheve and Slaughter 2001). 13 In addition, I estimate the influence of individuals' level of conservatism (e.g., Citrin et al 1997) as well as their socio-economic concerns (e.g., Sniderman et al 2004).…”

Layers of Influence: Exploring Institutional- and State-Level Effects on College Student Views Toward Access to Public Education for Undocumented Immigrants

“…Empirical findings demonstrate individual demographics and background as impacting attitudes towards immigration in terms of gender (Pérez 2010), racial/ethnic identification (Brader et al 2010, Fennelly andFederico 2008;Wilkes et al 2008), and socioeconomic factors (Palmer and Davidson 2011;Pérez 2010). Individual predisposition and views are also significant predictors of immigration attitudes, such as political orientation (Chandler andTsai 2001, Fennelly andFederico 2008;Scheve and Slaughter 2001), meritocratic ideologies (Parks-Yancy et al 2009), and economic concerns (Fennelly and Federico 2008;Scheve and Slaughter 2001). Individual experiences including cross-racial interactions have been shown to impact attitudes toward immigrant educational access (Herrera et al, 2013).…”