Slide 1

My research discusses the impact of demographic change on views on immigration, and particularly looks at views on immigration in PA-11 (PA-16 during the time period I am investigating) and factors that might cause more negative immigration policy preferences. Slide 1 outlines the theories I am using and the predictions I am making. While the foreign-born population has only increased by 1.76pp, the Hispanic/Latino population has increased by 10.70pp. Since the Hispanic/Latino population has increased and the white only population has decreased by almost the same amount, due to theories that establish a relationship between demographic change and exclusionary attitudes by the white population, I argue that areas with more white residents will hold more exclusionary attitudes, and have more negative immigration policy preferences. In contrast, Hispanics, immigrants, and first generation citizens will have more positive views and policy preferences.

Slide 2

In order to measure public opinion, I am using the Cooperative Congressional Election Survey from 2016, which measures public opinion both pre- and post- 2016 election. One of the limitations of this resource is the relatively small number of people surveyed in PA-16 at the time. A series of questions on the CCES survey asks about views on immigration, asking, “what do you think the US government should do about immigration?” It utilizes both positive question, such as regularizing undocumented migrants who are without a criminal record and who have paid taxes and lived in the US for 3 years, as well as negative questions, such as asking if we should identify and deport undocumented migrants. I will compare the survey results in PA-16 and Pennsylvania. I will then look at various independent variables including race, immigration status, fear caused by people of other races, and party identification to identify any trends in the data. Because there is such a small number of samples in PA-16, I will not utilize a regression, but simply identify trends.

Slide 3

I first analyzed the percentages of people who showed support for the various policy preferences asked on the survey and compared them between PA-16 and Pennsylvania. I also compared the views of white residents and Hispanic + first generation residents, but there were only 3 results for Hispanic, immigrant citizen, or first-generation immigrants combined, so these results are very tenuous. For the first comparison, I found that generally, PA-16 is less exclusionary than Pennsylvania as a whole. This can particularly seen in the answers to two questions – while only 42% of participants in Pennsylvania as a whole said that they would legalize US high school graduates who arrived illegally as children, 60% of participants from PA-16 supported this policy. In addition, while almost 50% of participants in Pennsylvania said they would deport undocumented migrants, only 42% of participants in PA-16 supported this policy. In terms of the second comparison, there were again only three respondents who identified as Hispanic, immigrant, or first generation. However, the one result I declared initially interesting is that while 71% of white respondents said they would fine US businesses that hire illegal immigrants, 33% of Hispanic, immigrant, or first-generation respondents (so 1 out of 3) said they would fine businesses. This is not a conclusive result, but it is something to explore in a further research project.

Slide 4

In this slide, I show the percentages in Pennsylvania and PA-16 of respondents in each identifier of my independent variables. While the sample in PA-16 was too small to run a logistical regression and get reliable results, I showed how Pennsylvania and PA-16 differ in each variable. Pennsylvania had more white respondents, less Hispanic and immigrant respondents, and the respondents expressed less disagreement with the statement, “ I often find myself fearful of people of other races.” Although future research is needed to isolate these variables, it is clear that more respondents in Pennsylvania held favorable views of negative immigration policies like deporting undocumented migrants. This supports my hypothesis – Pennsylvania, with a higher proportion of white respondents, supported negative immigration policy more heavily. I cannot show support for my second hypothesis because of the sample size.