Against The Tide? Core American Values and Attitudes Toward US Immigration Policy in the Mid-1990s

Abstract

Abstract This article considers the effect of core American values in the structuring of public opinion toward US immigration policies in the mid-1990s. Using the 1996 American National Election Study, ordered logistic and logistic analyses are used to examine the impact that individualism, humanitarianism and egalitarianism have in shaping attitudes toward three policy areas, namely border enforcement, reductions in the number of immigrants admitted, and immigrant eligibility for government services. The research finds that the three core values out-performed the traditional predictors in the third policy area because of the policy's explicit connection to the welfare state. Core values play a minimal role in shaping attitudes toward border enforcement. However, the pro-social values—egalitarianism and humanitarianism—are found to play a key role in favouring increases in the number of immigrants admitted into the US. The conclusion considers the implications of the findings. Keywords: ImmigrationCore ValuesPublic OpinionHumanitarianismEgalitarianismIndividualism Notes 1. Although Proposition 187 was designed to address concerns over California's growing illegal immigrant population, public debates and media coverage frequently failed to make the distinction between documented and undocumented immigrants, leading to a general mood that all immigrants were responsible for the state's financial and social woes (Chavez Citation2001). 2. The dependent variables for the first two policies are not continuous since the data are event-count data and hence ordered. This implies that, for all observations, the dependent variable can take on only a limited number of discrete values rather than the infinite possible values within the range. Thus, ordered logistic regression analysis is carried out for these policies. 3. I use CLARIFY (King et al. Citation2000; Tomz et al. Citation2001) to estimate these changes. Additional informationNotes on contributorsAdrian Pantoja Adrian Pantoja is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Arizona State University