What Do People Have Against Immigrants?
The most common answer to this question usually goes as follows: “immigrants will take our jobs, lower our wages, damage the welfare state and especially hurt the poor.” While conventional wisdom alleges that economic concerns are at the top of the list of qualms held by anti-immigrationists, recent data has shown that non-economic factors actually serve to more heavily influence individual preference formation on immigration policy.
Results of recent studies looking at the role of fiscal burdens on public services and labour market competition have suggested that economic self-interest is not sufficient in explaining individual attitudes on the topic of immigration. Additionally, older studies looking at the role of economic factors in driving opposition to immigration have failed to produce a consensus on the relative impact of these factors, arguably because the data constraints imposed on economic models force indirect testing.
Such implications often leave the results of testing ambiguous, thereby illustrating the insufficiency of using economic models—and the problem with prioritizing economic factors—in trying to understand individual preferences towards immigration. Instead, noneconomic factors among voters seem to play a larger role in understanding individuals' level of opposition towards both low-skilled and high-skilled immigrants; sociotropic considerations and ethnocentrism might clue into how native people react and drive policy with regards to immigration. Instead of the purely material, self-interest focus on competition for jobs or fiscal burdens said to shape attitudes on immigration, alternative arguments that may explain views on immigration suggest that education is associated with higher levels of racial tolerance and a corresponding stronger preference for cultural diversity.
Perceptions on how migrants may contribute to policy impact on the nation as a whole also seem to play a crucial role, as does personal experience with migrants, and how protective of national culture, language and identity certain citizens are. These culture-driven considerations help paint a better picture of the opposition many natives express towards immigration and allow for a more cohesive look at the impact on immigration policy that comes about.
With the rapid and rising influx of economic migrants crossing the Southern border into the United States, the rise of white nativist backlash and subsequent pressure on immigration policy can be attributed to some crucial, non-economic factors. Renowned political scientist Samuel Huntington argued that the overwhelming and increasing cultural and linguistic threats, not primarily economic threats, that whites perceive in the incoming wave of Hispanic immigrants will continue to be the greatest stimulus to nativist backlash and, in turn, provide a natural path to white nationalism. Native populations of predominantly white, working- and middle-class men are reacting to the demographic changes underway by fighting to “preserve their culture and the displacement of their language.”
Huntington noted that the increasing anti-immigrant sentiment among this class of people is not solely a matter of labour market competition (wage differentials and “stealing” jobs), but rather a matter of the increased actual and perceived losses in power and status that white nativists are experiencing. Rising numbers of Hispanic immigrants, specifically in states where the proportion of Hispanics is climbing more steeply (California, New Mexico, Texas), has inevitably produced a reaction among the existing inhabitants of these areas, one that can already be seen in the reduction of benefits for illegal immigrants, acts against affirmative action, against bilingual education, and whites moving out of Hispanic-heavy states.
Huntington also alluded to the problematic nature of so-called irreconcilable differences between Hispanics and Americans, noting the “profound cultural differences that exist between Mexicans and Americans,” that contribute to some nativist opposition to Hispanic immigrants; many nativists do not believe that migrants carry the same Protestant values of “individualism and work ethic” that provided the foundation for the United States, as Huntington cites. This commonly held perception of a ‘misalignment of values’, regardless of whether it’s based in fact, has contributed to mistrust of- and opposition to pro-immigration policy, specifically for Hispanic immigrants.
While historically, scientific approaches to explaining the complex nature of general opposition to pro-immigration policy identify both economic and non-economic factors as significant in conjunction, esteemed political scientists Jens Hainmueller, of Stanford, and Michael Hiscox, of Harvard, find fault with using such strategies, namely using the Heckscher-Olin modelling to explain opposition to immigration, the issue being a lack of regard for the sensitivity of real income to nontraded goods.
They argue that movement of labour from one state to another can generate a reduction in the price of nontraded goods, which creates ambiguity as to whether native workers will be better or worse off than migrants with their same skill level. With such theoretical ambiguity, it’s difficult to discern the true reliability and value of economic factors at play. Hainmueller and Hiscox also find problems with using the labour market competition model, as well as the fiscal burdens model, to account for opposition to immigration. While the labor competition model predicts that natives will be most opposed to immigrants who have skill levels similar to their own, Hainmueller and Hiscox find that both high-skilled and low-skilled natives prefer high-skilled immigrants, a finding consistent with respondents both in and out of the labor market.
These conclusions point to the fact that concerns about labour-market competition are not a significant motivator of anti-immigrant sentiment. In the same breadth, the fiscal burdens argument posits that rich natives oppose low-skill immigrants more than poor natives for the economic drag they put on government services, and the difference should be larger in states with greater fiscal exposure where welfare effects are strongest.
However, Hainmueller and Hiscox find evidence that rich and poor natives alike are both equally opposed to low-skill immigrants, and rich natives are less opposed to low-skill immigration in high-exposure states, despite high welfare exposure. These results are therefore inconsistent with claims that concerns about a heavier tax burden associated with the provision of public services are driving rich natives to oppose low-skill immigration, but do support the claim that poor natives oppose low-skill immigrants in high fiscal-exposure states for fears of overcrowding of public services.
Perhaps the most agreed upon external factor in immigration policy preference can be attributed to the positive correlation between education level and pro-immigrant attitudes. Studies have shown that the more educated a person is, the greater tendency they possess to display higher levels of ethnic tolerance, as well as higher opinions on cultural diversity and more knowledge on the workings of the economy.
These characteristics arguably lead to more favorable views on immigration, at least more-so than less-educated people. Factors like the nativist-held perception of migrants contributing to higher crime rates, ideas on the disparity of cultural values held by foreigners, and racial intolerance are all products of education level and political knowledgeability, and all correlate with immigration policy attitudes. Racist feelings have a very strong, negative and significant impact on pro-immigration preferences, as noted by economist Anna Maria Mayda, of Georgetown.
As immigration policy continues to dominate political discussions in many first-world, receiving countries across the world, understanding the factors that makeup individual attitudes in preference formation is crucial to understand policy decisions. While economic factors remain an important determinant in the way that people view immigration, it is important to note that existing prejudices, education level, personal experiences, importance of national identity, cultural values and so forth are crucial, sociotropic elements that can largely dictate opinions on immigration preferences, and thus deserve greater credence in conversations about immigration policy.