Attitudes Toward Immigration: Ethnicity Trumps Skills But Not Legality?

Abstract

Objective The objectives of this study were to parse the effect of ethnicity as a potential driver of public perception of immigrants from previous finding on the labor market competition hypothesis (e.g., Hainmueller and Hiscox, 2010; Hainmueller and Hopkins, 2015). Methods We rely on survey experiments to analyze the effect of ethnicity on attitude formation toward immigrants. In a first experiment, we test whether favoritism for high‐skilled immigrants diminishes when we add the Hispanic descriptor. In a second experiment, we examine whether public opinion toward undocumented immigrants is affected by region of origin. Results We find that favoritism for high‐skilled immigrants drops when we add the Hispanic descriptor, but that legal status outweighs any possible anti‐Hispanic sentiment. Conclusion Our study provides a novel setup to study the interaction between economic factors and ethnicity as drivers of attitudes toward immigration among California's voters. We find some evidence that supports our hypothesis that anti‐Hispanic sentiment drives attitude formation toward immigrants and immigration.