As was the case with Assignment 2, analysis of public opinion in LA-3 is made difficult by the fact that the foreign-born and Latino populations are miniscule (3.1% and 3.8%, respectively), and that the change in these populations is also insignificant (around 1% over 10 years). Thus, predictions made rely on examining the inverse of many of the claims made in relevant literature. The two sources used for prediction-making here are Abrajano and Hajnal (2015) and Hopkins (2010). Abrajano and Hajnal contribute two relevant findings here: firstly, that a large influx of Latinos is what triggers White ingroups (as compared to just a large Latino population), and secondly, that the mechanism through which anti-Latino attitudes develop is one of racial threat, where outgroup communities are viewed as a direct threat, such as through crime, competition for jobs, or burden on the social welfare system (2015). Based on the fact that there is a very small Latino population and very little growth, my first prediction was that the White ingroup would not feel threatened by the Latino population. The second relevant piece of literature is from Hopkins, who writes that hostility towards immigrants is again the result of two factors: national salience (e.g. from national crises like 9/11 or elite/media cues), and again a demographic shift with more immigrants (2010). There are many arguments to be made that salience is high today, and has been high since 9/11, and some evidence shows that salience has been particularly high since the beginning of the Trump presidential bid (Newman et al., 2018). However, once again the influx of Latinos/immigrants in LA-3 has been very minimal. Thus, despite high salience, I predict that Whites in LA-3 will hold generally neutral or positive views towards Latinos and immigrants.

The data used in this study was taken from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) conducted in 2016. The study is conducted by YouGov, through a network of volunteers across the country, and reported responses from 64,600. The study was conducted in two waves: one set of questions is asked before the election, and one set after the election. The chosen for this analysis include 4 from before the election, and 4 from after, though the timing is not analyzed – only the question content is considered relevant here. For this analysis, only White respondents were analyzed,  as the goal was to determine ingroup feelings about immigrants/Latinos. For context, responses to each question were tallied at the national, state, and congressional district level. The first set of responses stem from a single question, where respondents were asked: “What do you think the U.S. government should do about immigration?” Respondents were given several options and instructed to choose all the applicable options. Notably, not all respondents received the same options: a small, non-random subset received additional questions. This analysis only uses the common questions, so that hopefully the sample will be more representative. The four options examined are listed above, but essentially represent attitudes towards amnesty, border patrols, the DREAM Act, and deportation. The second set of questions, also listed above, measure attitudes towards race. Each of these questions had 5 levels of responses (strong agree, somewhat agree, neither agree nor disagree, somewhat disagree, strong disagree). For purposes of analysis, these responses were grouped into agree, neutral, and disagree; some subtlety may have been lost by combining response categories but doing so made it easier to compare general trends across geographic units. The most directly applicable question of these 4 was “I often find myself fearful of people of other races”, which was used as a stand-in for a racial-threat mindset. However, it is notable that this question only asks about other races, and not Latinos specifically. Thus, any respondent who had feeling of fear about either Asian or Black people would also be grouped into this statistic. However, if anything, this should give an overestimate of racial threat response, whereas we are expecting a small overall response. The other three questions are not directly applicable to my predictions and are instead used to offer context for alternative explanations.

The first prediction, that natives in LA-3 did not feel threatened by Latinos, seemed to be corroborated. Or, to be more precise, they did not seem significantly more threatened than residents of Louisiana in general, nor the US at large. The second prediction was more difficult to evaluate.  Firstly, there was not a direct measure of public opinion towards Latinos/immigrants in the CCES dataset. Instead, the aforementioned questions on domestic policy were used as an analog for general sentiment towards immigrants in particular. The findings here were split. On the one hand, Whites in LA-3 appeared to be less amenable towards the granting of legal status than either the national or state sample (10% fewer voted in favor of amnesty, and 13% fewer supported the DREAM Act). On the other hand, Whites in LA-3 were less in favor of stricter enforcement (e.g. more border patrols and deportation of undocumented immigrants) than the state average, though still slightly more than the national average. It is therefore difficult to draw conclusions about the general attitude towards immigrants, at least relative to the rest of the state. But in absolute terms, the data would seem to contradict the prediction: a majority of LA-3 residents oppose amnesty for immigrants and support greater enforcement against illegal immigrants, despite the fact that there are hardly any immigrants in their locale.

The results of this analysis are somewhat perplexing, as we observe negative attitudes towards immigrants, yet are left without a mechanism that would cause this, as both racial threat and demographic shifts were not relevant. This poses the question of what causes anti-immigrant attitudes in LA-3. There are a few possible mechanisms that could be responsible. Craig and Richeson found that the salience of national demographic change could be pushing White Americans towards more conservative policy positions, including restrictionist/anti-immigrant stances. The mechanism proposed is that Whites may feel that their status as the majority group is threatened by increasing populations of immigrants/Latinos/minorities, and thus embrace policies that are more favorable to the ingroup. Notably, this mechanism would not require any direct contact with immigrants, meaning that it could still apply in LA-3. In support of this theory, Whites in LA-3 recognize the existence of racial problems as much as Whites throughout the US, but they are on average less angry that racism exists, and less likely to believe that White privilege exists. This could suggest some degree of indifference towards disadvantaging minority populations, including Latinos and Latino immigrants. An alternative theory would be priming via elite cues. A large body of research demonstrates that political leaders and the media can influence attitudes towards immigrants (Abrajano and Singh, 2009; Jones and Martin, 2017; Dunaway et al., 2010). While studies generally focus on the intersection of various factors (demographic shifts, distance from border, etc.) with elite cues, it is generally understood that to some degree people take on the views of their political representatives. In Assignment 1 I found that the Congressman of LA-3, Clay Higgins, was extremely vocal and consistent about his restrictionist stance. In such conditions, where the media and political elites may tout anti-immigrant policies, and there are few local immigrants to contradict this perception, it is not unreasonable to believe that Whites in LA-3 developed a negative affect towards immigrants using the only information they had available. While this claim is unsupported by empirical data, it is a promising avenue for future research.

While much of the literature in class thus far has focused on areas where there are large or rapidly growing immigrant populations, LA-3 has remained stagnant, at least in the past 10 years. Across all ethnic categories, the largest change between 2007 and 2017 was ~4 percentage points (decrease in Black population). Our populations of interest experienced even less change, with the Latino population growing only 1.1 percentage points. As a point of comparison, the White population actually grew twice as many percentage points, so it is safe to assume that LA-3 is not a district where minorities are threatening the existing ingroup, at least not by force of numbers. This is particularly true when we examine the size of the Latino population, which is just 3.8% of the district as of 2017. The numbers for immigrants are similarly small and constant, composing just 3.13% of the population, and growing 0.73 percentage points. Thus, in context of immigration, the most salient characteristics of LA-3 are that populations of interest (Latinos and immigrants) are small and relatively unchanging.

With respect to public opinion, most research on immigrants has centered on how demographics lead to hostility or backlash against outgroups. For instance, in White Backlash, Abrajano and Hajnal describe a theory of racial threat, where a large outgroup begins to take the resources (political, material, etc.) of the ingroup, thus sparking retaliation (2015). Notably, the ingroup must be aware of the outgroup, which requires some proximity/contact between the groups. The American public tends to conflate Latinos with immigrants in general, so this racial threat mindset against Latinos would effectively result in the same treatment of immigrants in general, at least according to the authors. Hopkins actually disagrees with the application of racial threat to immigrants, and instead explains hostile attitudes towards immigrants as the result of intersecting national salience and demographic shifts (2010). For instance, immediately after 9/11, fear of immigrants was at an extreme high; any observed growth in immigrant populations at this time would result in retaliation against immigrants. For the purposes of this analysis, its worth noting that national salience has probably been high since the beginnings of the Trump campaign, and thus analysis of present-day attitudes surrounding immigration probably will depend primarily on demographic shifts. Under this assumption, Abrajano and Hajnal and Hopkins lead to the same conclusion: large and/or fast-growing Latino/immigrant populations will be met with backlash. While this backlash is almost certainly linked to the experiences of immigrants, I choose to focus on two more measurable areas of study. In multiple papers, Wong examines the effect of constituency composition on voting patterns in Congress. One paper examines the effect of Latino population size on Congressional votes for a policy of interior enforcement (287(g) of the IRIRA), finding that Latino population size negatively correlates with votes for greater enforcement (2014). Another paper finds that having a large foreign-born population correlates with votes for expansionist policies, so this correlation seems to work in both directions (2017). On a more micro-level, Fernandez-Kelly’s study of immigrant youths in New Jersey and their ability to cope with adverse conditions examines some of the factors that determine whether immigrants can integrate successfully into new environments (2018). One factor that Fernandez-Kelly emphasizes is the importance of the local context of reception, and in particular the presence of an existing community. While this can take many forms (e.g. joining either an existing Latino community or merging with the local Black community), the point remains that context of reception can affect outcome regardless of what material resources may or may not be present. Finally, in the realm of media coverage, Abrajano and Singh examine the skews observable in Spanish and English-language media, on the topic of immigration (2009). The authors find that, somewhat unsurprisingly, Spanish-language media is more sympathetic to pro-immigration causes and legislation. Thus, with the combination of these factors, we can begin to predict how the immigration landscape in LA-3 might look.

Application of literature on public reception to LA-3 is somewhat complicated by the fact that the literature focuses on locales with either large Latino or immigrant populations or rapidly growing ones. However, LA-3 is neither of these. Instead, we can try to make inferences by applying the inverses of these authors’ conclusions. For instance, Abrajano and Hajnal and Hopkins see either large or fast-growing populations as a predictor of backlash. Since LA-3 features neither of these, we can instead predict that there will be minimal hostility towards immigrants, as they pose no threat to the ingroup. Making predictions about the immigrant experience is somewhat easier: based on Wong’s findings, we can easily predict that the small foreign born and Latino populations of LA-3 will enable representatives to vote for restrictionist policies. Similarly, the tiny Latino/immigrant population and relatively small Black and Asian populations offer little opportunity for solidarity, predicting poor mental health among Latino immigrants. Media coverage requires one further step: first we assume (admittedly without evidence) that the small Latino population would be inadequate to support a Spanish-language media outlet in LA-3. If we take this to be true, then we would predict news coverage to generally be negative towards immigration, as per Abrajano and Singh, as only English-language sources would exist.

Researching any aspect of immigration in LA-3 is a challenge, as the small population of immigrants doesn’t seem to attract much attention. With this limitation in mind, I chose to further examine my prediction about mental health in immigrants, as a relatively small number of interviews would suffice for a qualitative description. While there are not many immigrant advocacy groups, I was able to find two within LA-3. I plan to contact these organizations to find interviewees. Even if these organizations are unable to provide interviewees directly, I am hoping that they can provide a snowball sample of sorts, as both organizations offer referrals to other organizations for immigrants; if I can track down other organizations that serve immigrants, my odds of finding enough interviewees should be adequate. While I would love to additionally research what material supports are available to immigrants, research thus far has been unfruitful. Instead, I will try to get as much information about the local context from the interviewees. The questions I ask will aim to examine many of the same areas as Fernandez-Kelly’s study, including outcomes (such as educational attainment, or categorization as achievers, stayers, insurgents, and skidders), outlook, sense of belonging (to their own culture, as well as their geographic locale), and public reception. Once I have collected enough interviews, I will try to code responses in these main categories to establish the general orientation of outlook, outcome, community, and public reception and report on any surprising or expected features.