Immigration Attitudes and Positive Messaging: Evidence From the United States

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X221078276
• Published date: 01 March 2023
• Date: 01 March 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

American Politics Research

2023, Vol. 51(2) 127–138

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X221078276

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Immigration Attitudes and Positive

Messaging: Evidence From the United States

David H. Bearce

1

and Ken Stallman

1

Abstract

This paper considers a messaging strategy to shift immigration preferences, arguing that if citizen attitudes in this issue-area build

from several dimensions, then a positive message related to each dimension should move attitudes in a more favorable direction.

It tests the f‌irst part using original survey data with directly comparable questions about whether immigration hurts/helps

American culture/the economy/national security, providing evidence that all three dimensions currently supp ort the pref-

erences of voting-age citizens. It tests the second part by randomly presenting another sample with different messages about

how labor immigration strengthens national security, creates new jobs, or enhances culture, f‌inding that all three reduce anti-

immigration attitudes with signif‌icant effects even within groups that are more opposed to immigration (namely, white

Americans, those with less education, and partisan Republicans).

Keywords

immigration attitudes, labor migration, messaging, national security

Among the primary features of economic globalization

(e.g., international trade, cross-border f‌lows of capital and

labor), labor immigration stands as the most restricted. And

immigration restrictions, especially in the democratic desti-

nation countries, are not hard to explain: a majority of citizens

consistently express a preference against immigration

openness in cross-national surveys (e.g., Facchini & Mayda,

2009). As Rosenblum and Cornelius (2012) argue on this

point, “if there is a universal truth about immigration policy, it

is that residents of industrialized states would prefer to see

lower levels of immigration.”

While the average citizen arguably knows little about

actual policy in this issue-area (Brader et al., 2008;Citrin &

Sides, 2008;Wong, 2007), these survey results suggest that

citizens appear to be at least somewhat familiar with the

potential costs associated with external labor openness (e.g.,

greater competition for lower-skilled jobs, helping to explain

why immigration opposition tends to be especially strong

among less educated individuals). And while citizens may be

less acquainted with the potential benef‌its, there are many

positive effects associated with a more open labor immi-

gration policy. The tension between achieving these benef‌its

while also adhering to the democratic principle of public

policy being set to majoritarian preferences underlies the

“liberal paradox”in this issue-area (Hollif‌ield, 1992).

Yet this liberal paradox, or the democratic immigration

dilemma, could be reduced if more citizens came to hold

favorable attitudes about external labor openness. This paper

thus considers a varied messaging strategy to shift immi-

gration attitudes, asking if positive messages and of what type

can move attitudes in a more favorable direction. While there

has been a lot of research focused on explaining individual-

level attitudes in this issue-area, less has been directed at

identifying “what might foster more positive immigration

attitudes”(Bonilla & Mo, 2018). Correspondingly, there is

“very little evidence indicating whether and how one can

systematically decrease anti-immigration sentiments on a

broad scale”(Facchini et al., 2016).

Given the importance of this research agenda, a growing

community of scholars are working on related questions. For

example, Grigorieff et al. (2016) provide experimental evi-

dence showing that information about the proportion of

immigrants improves attitudes about immigrants themselves,

but not about immigration policy. Conversely, Facchini et al.

(2016) demonstrate, using a Japanese sample, that infor-

mational treatments about how foreign workers could help

the country’s economy create support for a more open

external labor policy. However, Adida et al. (2018) f‌ind no

change in attitudes towards Syrian refugees from either an

1

University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

Corresponding Author:

David H. Bearce, University of Colorado Boulder, 333 UCB, Boulder, CO

80309, USA.

Email: david.bearce@colorado.edu