Economic Explanations for Opposition to Immigration: Distinguishing between Prevalence and Conditional Impact

Abstract

What explains variation in individuals' opposition to immigration? While scholars have consistently shown cultural concerns to be strong predictors of opposition, findings regarding the labor-market competition hypothesis are highly contested. To help understand these divergent results, we distinguish between the prevalence and conditional impact of determinants of immigration attitudes. Leveraging a targeted sampling strategy of high-technology counties, we conduct a study of Americans' attitudes toward H-1B visas. The plurality of these visas are occupied by Indian immigrants, who are skilled but ethnically distinct, enabling us to measure a specific skill set (high technology) that is threatened by a particular type of immigrant (H-1B visa holders). Unlike recent aggregate studies, our targeted approach reveals that the conditional impact of the relationship in the high-technology sector between economic threat and immigration attitudes is sizable. However, labor-market competition is not a prevalent source of threat and therefore is generally not detected in aggregate analyses.

Unauthorized Immigration and Electoral Outcomes

“…They find that both low-skilled and high-skilled workers prefer high-skilled immigrants to low-skilled immigrants. Even more recently, Malhotra, Margalit, and Mo (2013) find persuasive evidence that job competition amongst hi-tech workers make natives much more likely to support restrictive immigration policy, again lending support to the idea that labor market competition matters.…”

Imported Inequality? Immigration and Income Inequality in the American States

“…Americans are divided in how they think about high-and low-skill immigrants, particularly in terms of their perceptions of the economic benefits and costs of these two immigrant groups (Hainmueller and Hiscox, 2010;Malhotra, Margolit, and Mo, 2013). We further disaggregate states' foreign-born population by skill levels to calibrate the size of the low-skill and high-skill immigration subpopulations.…”

Rethinking the Boundaries: Competitive Threat and the Asymmetric Salience of Race/Ethnicity in Attitudes toward Immigrants

“…Comparative and cross-national research has shown that perceived cultural threat shapes attitudes toward immigrants regardless of where an immigrant is from or whether an immigrant is clearly of a different race/ethnicity than the majority of the native population (Hainmueller and Hiscox 2007;Malhotra et al 2013;Sniderman et al 2000). As such, the research to date indicates that cultural threats are important in shaping attitudes toward all immigrants and that the effect is not contingent on the presence of racial or ethnic differences.…”