I recently played hooky by attending a midweek, midday baseball game at the San Francisco Giants’ Oracle Park. The pre-game entertainment was a federal judge swearing in immigrants as citizens. The fifty brand new Americans lined up between the mound and home plate, each one waving a small American flag. The early crowd cheered the ceremony, the immigrant citizens, and even a jumbotron video of President Biden celebrating immigration.
Immigration will surely be a major topic in the 2024 presidential election. It has become a winning issue for the Trumpist part of the GOP (the pro-immigration free-marketeers of what used to be Ronald Reagan’s party having been emasculated). Americans are much concerned, of course, about illegal immigration and the recent flood of asylum-seekers. Even most Democrats, although they wish for a gentler policy, want to slow down those incursions.[1] But immigration in general has also become an issue–from neo-Nazi shouts about “the great replacement” to complaints about “chain migration” to quieter but perennial debates over whether legal immigrants take away jobs from the American-born, soak up tax money, and change American culture.
Americans’ attitudes toward immigrants had become increasingly positive since the 1990s. Vanderbilt sociologist Mario Sana wrote an article for The Conversation in 2019 making this point.(Sana has also shown that, over a much longer period, Americans became more sympathetic to refugees, too–more willing, for example, in 2015 to admit into the country Syrians fleeing Bashar al-Assad than they were in 1939 to admit Europeans fleeing Hitler.) And Americans today are much more supportive of immigrants than Americans were in the 19th and the early 20th centuries when the immigrants like the barefoot women in the adjoining picture arrived.
What I do here is update Sana’s 2019 analysis (and my own from 2013), but, more importantly, show how the immigration issue has been entangled by political polarization. It seems that more Republicans learned that they were supposed to be against immigration and more Democrats to be in favor of it.
Trends in Americans’ Views
Americans greatly overestimate how many foreign-born people are in the United States. One study found that, on average, Americans think that documented immigrants make up 36 percent of the population; 10 percent is the real number. Given this misconception, Americans who think that legal immigration should stay at what they believe to be the current level (or should be increased) are relatively welcoming of new arrivals.
And Americans have become more welcoming in recent decades. Between 1993 and 2016, for example, the percentage of Americans saying that immigration was a “good thing” went up by almost 20 points.
According to the American National Election Survey (ANES), in 1992 50% of Americans supported sustaining or increasing the number of immigrants to be allowed in.[2] That support dropped sharply to 33% around 1994 as controversies over public aid for immigrants spiked. (In 1994, a large majority of California voters approved Proposition 187 which denied undocumented immigrants many state services.) By 2000, however, support for sustaining or increasing legal immigration returned to about 50%; it rose again to 56% in 2016.
Underneath this trend, however, polarization emerged. You can see that in the graph below.[3] In 1992, Republicans and Democrats expressed similar levels of support for immigration; that changed circa 2012, mainly because Republicans turned hostile.
Another data series, this from General Social Survey (GSS), extends the time frame, covering 2004 to 2021.[4] The history shown in this next graph is in some ways quite different from that of the ANES. The GSS data show Republican views changing little while Democrats became much more supportive of immigration. But polarization is again quite evident.
Finally, let’s look at the Gallup Poll. The general trend is familiar: In the 1990s, under 40% of respondents supported allowing in the same number or more immigrants; in the 2000s, 50% did; in the 2010s, about 60 percent did; and in the 2020s so far, support is up to 63%.
Gallup also reported trends by political party, although with a slightly different question and only from 2001 on. The graph below shows the percent of respondents who were dissatisfied with the immigration situation and wanted to reduce immigration, by party, by year. As in the GSS data, the major change occurs among Democrats. In the 2000s, about 40% were dissatisfied with the situation and wanted to reduce immigration, but in the early 2020s, barely 10% of Democrats fekt that way. Republican opinion changed little (until 2022). (What about independents? They showed a sizeable decline in opposition to immigration, but not nearly as dramatic as the Democrats’.)
In sum, what had been a general, long, slow trend toward Americans increasingly accepting immigration got entangled in political partisanship.
Ahead
When the current hyper-polarization fades (I resist writing “if”), politicians might once again pursue, as they did about a decade or two ago, a comprehensive immigration package. It would include protection for the “Dreamers,” but more importantly for this aging society, admit young people from abroad to fill long-open jobs, to innovate, and to support the native-born elderly. Maintaining effective borders would be necessary to meet those goals. Attaining such a solution would require both sides to rein in the culture-war rhetoric that has derailed what had been movement toward greater acceptance of immigrants, acceptance that was on display when those baseball fans cheered the new citizens at Oracle Park.
NOTES
[1] See Pew reports such as this, roughly showing that circa 2020 half or more of Democrats endorsed stronger border security.
[2] My analysis of the online ANES.
[3] The ANES questions was, from 1992 to 1998, “Do you think the number of immigrants from foreign countries who are permitted to come to the United States to live should be increased a little, increased a lot, decreased a little, decreased a lot, or left the same as it is now?”; in 2000 was, “Do you think the number of immigrants from foreign countries who are permitted to come to the United States to live should be increased, decreased, or left the same as it is now?”; and after 2000, “Do you think the number of immigrants from foreign countries who are permitted to come to the United States to live should be increased a lot, increased a little, left the same as it is now, decreased a little, or decreased a lot?”
[4] The GSS question was, “Do you think the number of immigrants to America nowadays should be increased a lot, increased a little, remain the same as it is, reduced a little, reduced a lot” [LETIN1, LETIN1a, combined into variable “IMMIGRATION,” which reduced the categories to three ].