Political Threat and Immigration: Party Identification, Demographic Context, and Immigration Policy Preference^*

Abstract

Objective. I propose that the effect of partisanship on views on immigration is context dependent. I argue that Republicans in counties experiencing high levels of immigration are more likely to support new immigration restrictions in contrast to Democrats and Independents than Republicans in counties with a relatively small foreign‐born population, and I suspect this is the case because Republicans in high‐immigration counties feel politically threatened by the foreign‐born residents, who are more likely to support Democratic candidates. Method. To test this theory, I create hierarchical logit models of views on immigration policy in which individual party identification interacts with the size of the local immigrant population. Individual‐level data were drawn from the 2004 National Annenberg Election Survey and county‐level contextual variables from the U.S. Census Bureau. Results. I find that the effect of partisanship on individual views on immigration is context dependent; native‐born Republicans are more likely to support immigration restrictions when their local community has a large immigrant population and Democrats less likely. Conclusion. In areas where immigration levels are low, partisanship is a weak predictor of immigration views. As the foreign‐born population increases, however, the views of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents increasingly diverge.

Undocumented Immigrant Threat and Support for Social Controls

“…When contextual threat has referenced country of origin (e.g., percent foreign born) results have shown little relationship to immigration policy preferences (Hawley 2011;McLaren 2003;Sides and Citrin 2007). One exception provided by Hood and Morris (1998) found more opposition to increased immigration in relation to levels of undocumented immigrants and less opposition related to legal immigrants.…”

“…Results provide only limited support for the threat hypothesis. M. V. , Justin Allen Berg (2009), andGeorge Hawley (2011) all reported null findings. Louise Campbell and colleagues (2006) found that percent Hispanic significantly influenced opposition to one of three California initiatives-Proposition 187 limiting public services for immigrants.…”

“…Hawley (2011) reported null findings involving unemployment; John Sides and Citrin (2007) found higher unemployment related to less negative attitudes in 20 European countries; and while Campbell and colleagues (2006) found conflicting results depending on the attitude measured in relation to unemployment, Berg (2009) reported positive findings for unemployment using 1996 data, but not for 2004. The latter study is one of very few conducted to date that measures policy preference specific to undocumented immigrants.…”

“…For example, it has been argued that immigrant threat would be higher in places with a higher percentage of foreign-born residents (Hjerm 2007;McLaren 2003). The greater presence of groups that might be perceived to more often involve recent immigrants, such as Latinos or Asians, has been similarly hypothesized to increase immigrant threat (Berg 2009;Hawley 2011;Rocha and Espino 2009). It has also been argued that the presence or prospect of immigrants would be more threatening in contexts that are experiencing weak economic performance as indicated by higher levels of unemployment (Sides and Citrin 2007) or lower levels of economic productivity (Quillian 1995).…”

“…Whatever the particular framing, group threat is hypothesized to be an important impetus for discriminatory or controlling responses from the dominant group. Originally developed to help explain aspects of race relations, group threat has more recently been applied to relationships between immigrant and native groups in the United States and Europe (Hawley 2011;McLaren 2003;Quillian 1995;Semyonov, Raijman, and Gorodzeisky 2006;Sides and Citrin 2007).…”