IMMIGRATION

Immigration

Immigration

Introduction

Immigration has been a topic of major public concern and often a point of contention among Americans in recent years. All indications are that immigration will continue to be hotly debated, and thus warrants further investigation into the mechanisms that influence an individual's attitudes toward immigrants. Whereas immigration is often discussed generally in the public, what is less explicitly stated are the implications of the diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds of many immigrants new to the United States (Alba, 2003).

As immigrants continue to enter the country at a steady pace, their settlement patterns have shifted from those of immigrants in previous decades in two distinct ways. First, many immigrants new to the country are settling in places with little or no immigration experience, as opposed to traditional gateway cities (Singer 2005). Second, many new immigrants are settling in suburban areas. As a result of these shifting settlement patterns the presence of immigrants is being felt by a larger proportion of native-born Americans. This study is particularly concerned with attitudes toward immigrants, and how they are influenced by cultural and economic factors. I intend to address the following questions using 2000 General Social Survey data: are individuals' attitudes toward immigration a function of prejudiced attitudes toward various racial and ethnic groups and their feelings about the importance of speaking English, or are they a function of economic concerns?

Theoretical Framework

Since the U.S. is receiving a large and diverse annual influx of immigrants, it is important to investigate the implications of their diversity of backgrounds and the resulting growth of immigrant populations in many areas of the country. Today's immigrants represent many and diverse racial, ethnic, and national backgrounds, and are often easily identifiable by skin color, language, and sometimes dress. This begs the question of what role the racial and ethnic composition of today's immigrant's plays in the formation of immigration attitudes of native born Americans (Chandler, 2001).

Immigration is more complex than some other controversial issues, thus attitudes toward immigration typically cannot be reduced to support or opposition. Immigration attitudes center on how people believe that immigrants impact national characteristics, such as the crime rate, unemployment and culture. So, for the purposes of this study immigration attitudes represent individuals' feelings about how negatively or positively immigrants affect the United States. Group Threat Theory predicts that the presence of a minority group poses a threat to the position of the dominant group and therefore fosters feelings of prejudice toward members of the minority group (Chandler, 2001).

Economic Threat

Economic threat refers to the belief that immigrants are potential competitors of native-born Americans in the labor market. For example, the idea that immigrants will cause native born Americans to lose their current job, or will take away potential future jobs, would be considered economic threat. Two types of measures used for gauging economic threat are often labeled objective and subjective. Measures of objective economic threat include things like income and employment status. Subjective measures of economic threat would include individuals' satisfaction with ...