Who “They” Are Matters: Immigrant Stereotypes and Assessments of the Impact of Immigration

Abstract

We investigate the relationship between stereotypes of immigrants and assessments of the impact of immigration on U.S. society. Our analysis exploits a split-ballot survey of registered voters in Ohio, who were asked to evaluate both the characteristics of one of four randomly assigned immigrant groups and perceived impacts of immigration. We find that associations between impact assessments and stereotypes of Middle Eastern, Asian, and European immigrants are weak and fully attenuated by control covariates. By contrast, this relationship for Latin American immigrants is strong and robust to controls, particularly in the areas of unemployment, schools, and crime. Our findings suggest that public views of the impacts of immigration are strongly connected to beliefs about the traits of Latin American immigrants in particular.

Attitudes Toward Immigration: Ethnicity Trumps Skills But Not Legality?

“…It appears that their results for high‐skilled immigrants are in fact masking prejudices against certain immigrant groups. By pairing high‐skilled immigrants with an ethnicity that is traditionally associated with negative stereotypes (Santa Ana, ; Valentino, Brader, and Jardina, ), we find evidence of bias against Hispanic immigrants and support recent research that has noted that attitudes toward particular immigrant groups shape immigration opinion (Brader, Valentino, and Suhay, ; Malhotra and Newman, ; Timberlake et al., ; Valentino, Brader, and Jardina, ).…”

“…This finding provides an interesting comparison with the results of our first experiment. In this second experiment, respondents' unfavorable view of undocumented immigrants held constant regardless of any possible preferences for European immigrants over Hispanic ones (Fry et al., ; Levy et al., ; Timberlake et al., ). This result confirms previous findings that point to the overall negative opinion that Americans have toward undocumented immigrants (Amuedo‐Dorantes and Puttitanun, ; Chandler and Yung‐Mei, ; Levy et al., ; Wright, Levy, and Citrin, ).…”

“…However, there is no consensus on the extent to which economic concerns impact sentiment toward immigrants. Some of the research argues that the divergent findings on economic factors are the result of a failure to provide disaggregated and specific survey questions to respondents, in effect treating immigrants as a homogenous group (e.g., Bloom, Arikan, and Lahav, ; Hainmueller and Hopkins, ; Malhotra and Newman, , ; Timberlake et al., ).…”

“…Hispanics also tend to be perceived by whites in much more negative terms than other immigrant groups, such as Asians or Europeans (Ha, ; Levy and Wright, ; Fry et al., ; Masuoka and Junn, ; Timberlake and Williams, ; Valentino, Brader, and Jardina, ). Moreover, we know that this negative representation of Hispanic immigrants has implications for how Americans perceived them and think about immigration (e.g., Brader, Valentino, and Suhay, ; Hartman, Newman, and Scott Bell, ; Timberlake and Williams, ; Timberlake et al., ; Valentino, Brader, and Jardina, ). Taking into account these findings, we expect anti‐Hispanic sentiment to outweigh the preference for high‐skilled immigrants (Brader, Valentino, and Suhay, ; Malhotra, Margalit, and Hyunjung Mo, ).…”

Different Game, Different Frame?: Black Counterdiscourses and Depictions of Immigration in Atlanta's African-American and Mainstream Press

“…We expect multiple discourses in the general public press that reflect the public discourses found in previous studies: particularly, race frames constructed through negative stereotypes of immigrants as Latinos or criminals (Santa Ana ; Brown ; Chavez ; Timberlake et al ), legal frames that differentiate between authorized and unauthorized immigrants (Brown ), and economic frames that cast immigrant workers as competitors or that focus on the impact of immigrants on the economy (Fryeberg et al ). All of these frames should position whites as normative (Fraser ; Feagin ).…”