Research – Page 3 – Immigration Politics, Policymaking in the U.S.

Category: Research (page 3 of 4)

NY-13

March 7, 2019 / Jake Brzowsky / 0 Comments

District NY-13 (Adriano Espaillat): Initial Research

New York’s Thirteenth Congressional District has for decades been one of the most stable and solidly Democratic seats in the country. Though referred to by different numbers over the years, the district, comprised primarily of Manhattan’s Harlem neighborhood, has been represented by only three individuals since 1945: Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Charlie Rangel, and now Adriano Espaillat. (I consider NY-15 to be the immediate predecessor of NY-13 prior to the 2011 redistricting, as 80% of the new 13th district was previously in the area of the 15th.) Espaillat was elected following Rangel’s retirement from Congress in 2016 and cemented his hold on the district in the 2018 elections with nearly 95% of the vote. The strong Democratic character of the district and its remarkable stability will prove relevant in our analysis.

Recent scholarship has repeatedly examined the district-level characteristics that may predict a member of Congress’s votes on immigration. I focus here on two articles that prove especially relevant regarding our district, that of Tom Wong (2014) as well as Jason Casellas and David Leal (2013). From regression analysis of past votes, both show partisanship and district Hispanic population to be among of the most consistently associated variables with immigration legislation. Both agree that partisanship (i.e. the partisanship of the representative, but to a lesser extent the partisanship of the district as well) is the primary factor underlying the MC’s voting record. However, both similarly note an influence of the district Latino population in which greater numbers associate with support for more permissive policies toward immigrants. Given the presence of both partisanship and significant Latino population in our district, we expect both of these articles to be relevant to our analysis as well.

If partisanship is the biggest predictor of immigration policymaking, it would be no surprise that Espaillat would support permissive immigration legislation. In addition to his own partisan ideology (at the 89th percentile among Democrats alone, according to Govtrack) NY-13 had one of the highest partisan margins in the country in the 2018 election, coming in above the 95th percentile. Furthermore, the district’s Hispanic population is also among the highest in the nation, at approximately 55 percent. This particular pairing of factors amounts to a strong indicator that Espaillat will be a supporter of permissive immigration legislation, if the models of Wong (2014) and Casellas and Leal (2013) hold true. The following slide examines the empirical data to support this premise.

Since his campaign for the House, Espaillat has been outspoken on the topic of immigration. In his campaign platform, he stressed his Dominican heritage in influencing his thoughts on the topic. Today, immigration continues to be a central part of Espaillat’s agenda, as one of nine priorities listed on his House website. There he lists actions that he has taken on the issue of immigration, including seven immigration-related bills that he co-sponsored. These and one other reflect more than twenty percent of the bills that Espaillat has sponsored while in Congress. The congressman’s focus on immigration is shared by his Twitter page, on which approximately 14 percent of his tweets since the start of the year have had some focus on immigration-related matters. Between his actions and his rhetoric, it is clear that the issue of immigration will continue to occupy an important place within Espaillat’s agenda, alongside his concerns for his home district.

FL9 Darren Soto

March 7, 2019 / Allice Park / 0 Comments

FL9 Darren Soto slides

Slide 1:

Representative Darren Soto has represented Florida’s 9th district since 2016. Since the district’s creation in 1963, the representative’s party has switched from Democratic to Republican or vice versa four times, with the most recent party switch being Representative Alan Grayson’s (D) defeat of Todd Lang (R) in 2012. While the margin between candidates were much wider in the 2008 and 2010 elections when incumbent Gus Bilirakis won, after the seat was won by a Democratic representative in 2012, the margin between the Democratic and Republican candidates have grown closer. FL9 has a large Latino population of 46.5% and smaller African American and Asian populations, at 9.7% and 4.2%, respectively.

Slide 2:

According to Tom Wong in The Politics of Immigration: Partisanship, Demographic Change, and American National Identity (2017), Republican legislators are significantly more likely than Democratic representatives to vote for restrictive immigration policies and Republican legislators are significantly less likely than Democratic representatives to vote for permissive immigration policies. Wong also points out the strength of partisanship in “The Politics of Interior Immigration Enforcement” (2014), as Republican partisanship is the most consistent predictor of support for strict immigration bills. Additionally, he finds the Latino population of an area goes up, the likeliness of the representative to vote for strict immigration bills goes down. In “Partisanship or Population? House and Senate immigration votes in the 109th and 110th Congresses” (2013), Casellas and Leal writes that there is growing partisan divide, as party voting is consistently predictive of bill support or opposition.

Slide 3:

As a Democratic representative, I predict that Soto is less likely to vote for restrictive immigration policies and more likely to vote for permissive immigration policies, as explained in Wong 2017, Wong 2014, and Casellas and Leal 2013. And because his district has a high Latino population of 46.5%, he is less likely to vote for strict immigration policies.

Slide 4:

These predictions appear to be correct as immigration is a policy priority for Soto. He writes on his website that his policy priorities include “comprehensive immigration reform that would allow people to pay any taxes they owe, get right with the law, and when that’s done, get on the path to citizenship,” “protecting DREAMers,” and “modernizing the guest worker and visa systems that are vital for our agriculture and tourism industries.” Two of his proposed bills and three of his co-sponsored bills are immigration-related, and between 2017 and 2018, Soto voted against restrive immigration bills in 8 out of 11 votes and for permissive immigration bills in 3 out of 3 votes. However, his social media does not discuss immigration as much; between an 1, 2019 Mar 1, 2019, only four of his tweets were related to immigration, and they were specifically only about the border wall.

NJ 10 – Mikie Sherrill

March 7, 2019 / Selam Bellete / 0 Comments

Here is a link to my full presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1pNI-cZc1k_FTp0H0fMUvWCtKKPq3Gq3BeM6dhi-ijOk/edit?usp=sharing

Slide 1: Election Results for NJ – 11

From 1995 to 2018, New Jersey’s 11th Congressional district was represented by Rodney Frelinghuysen, a moderate Republican who also served as chairman of the House Appropriations committee before retiring in 2018. Interestingly, two of his lowest vote totals and margins of victory over the last ten years occurred in the same years as the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, which Democratic candidates won. In 2008 Frelinghuysen won with a 24.8% margin, and in 2012 he garnered an 18.8% margin. In the 2018 elections, Mikie Sherrill won with a 14.7% margin of victory over her opponent Jay Webber. Taxes, healthcare, and gun control reform were major issues for her during the campaign. Sherrill also had strong showings leading up to the election and at the county level. She won the Democratic primaries for NJ – 11 with 77.5% of the vote and won the majority of the votes in 3 of 4 counties falling within the district’s borders (Morris, Essex, and Passaic).

Partisanship, personal background, and a district’s political climate impact the types of policies representatives are willing to support. In their paper, Casellas and Leal argue that polarization caused partisanship is a strong predictor of votes: the Democratic Party became more liberal and the Republican party became more conservative during the last two decades. They also argue that foreign-born populations are related to support for permissive policies. Wong finds a racial rift within the Democratic party, as white Democrats were more likely to vote against such policies than minority Democrats. He also finds that the distance of a state relative to the South is inversely related to the chances of the representative supporting restrictionist policies. This may happen because any negative effects of illegal immigration would be felt more strongly in these states, which are closer to the border. Casellas and Leal also found that newly elected representatives were more likely to vote “yes” on enforcement bills regardless of party affiliation, since voting “no” could be used against them by their conservative constituents. Lastly, Wong’s median voter theorem predicts that candidates in districts that are evenly split across party lines will be most successful by campaigning for centrist or moderate immigration policies.

I predict that Mikie Sherrill will take a moderate stance on immigration policies by supporting a mix of permissive and restrictionist policies. She is a Democrat, and Casella and Leal’s analysis found partisanship to be significant across all four of their models. Her supporters expressed disillusionment with Frelinghuysen, which suggests that mirroring his views on immigration – which reflected Trump’s views on the subject – would alienate her from NJ -11’s Democratic voters. Her district is located in a state relatively far north, meaning that immigration is not as polarizing of an issue as it is for border states. When Sherrill supports permissive policies, she may not upset as many of her Republican constituents. However, the median voter theorem suggests Sherrill’s election results will cause her to support some restrictionist policies as well in order to balance the interests of and remain favorable among her supporters and the sizable Republican voter base in NJ – 11. Her opponent Jay Webber had secured 42.1% of the votes, meaning a little less than half of the population voted Republican and most likely has conservative views on immigration.

Mikie Sherrill’s online and political presence indicate mixed attitudes on immigration. Her website lists issues such as the economy, veterans, and healthcare, but is mainly devoid of immigration-related content. In two tweets from 2019 (out of 60 total) she expresses her frustrations over the government shutdown’s negative effects on efficient policymaking and people’s economic conditions. In the single immigration-related tweet of her campaign, Sherrill uses the impracticality of a border wall as a lead-in to make a point about the Gateway Tunnel. This is important to NJ -11 because the Trump administration had refused to provide federal funding for its estimated $11-billion budget. The tunnel would expand the currently overcrowded and old tunnel system that links Newark to Manhattan, which many NJ-11 residents rely on for their daily train commutes to work. In support of partisanship being a strong predictor of viewpoints on immigration, she stated abolishing DACA was wrong because it tore children from their families and created a loss of job growth in New Jersey. However, Mikie Sherrill’s support of ICE, expanding CBP, and upgrading the current border wall demonstrate her support for restrictionist policies. Despite her low activity on immigration policymaking, Sherrill believes in the importance of immigration reform for her constituents regardless of their citizenship.

FL 26 – Debbie Mucarsel-Powell

March 7, 2019 / Daniela Alvarez / 0 Comments

Here is the link to the other slides: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/my-drive

Slide 1:

As a result of redistricting following the 2010 Census, parts of Florida District 25 became part of a new district—Florida District 26. The new congressional district stretches from the southern tip of Florida to the western Miami suburbs, including the Florida Keys and all three of the state’s National parks (the Everglades, Biscayne and the Dry Tortugas) and encompassing portions of Monroe and Miami-Dade County. In 2012, the first election served as a rematch between Republican David Rivera, the former Representative of District 25 before it’s renumbering, and Democrat Joe Garcia. Both previously ran in District 25, which had always elected a Republican representative, but now they were running in a battleground district that equally splits between Democrats and Republicans. Garcia defeated Rivera by a 10% margin. The following election (2014), Republican Carlos Curbelo beat then-incumbent Garcia by a 3% margin, flipping the seat red. Then, in 2016, it is important to note that Curbelo managed to win his reelection campaign by 11.8%, while his district voted 56.7% in favor of Clinton and 40.6% in support of Trump. He once again faced Garcia as an opponent. Recently, in one of the most watched races of the 2018 election cycle, Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell beat the two-term incumbent by 1.8% of the votes, showing once again how close the elections in the district are. In my opinion, what tipped the scale in favor of Mucarsel-Powell was Healthcare and Curbelo’s vote to repeal Obamacare. Also, important to note, is that both Curbelo and Mucarsel-Powell are Hispanic, Curbelo is the son of Cuban exile parents and Mucarsel-Powell is an immigrant herself from Ecuador, and the district is majority Hispanic.

*The above election results were accessed from the New York Times.

Slide 2:

As a lens for analyzing the characteristics that influence immigration policymaking, I will refer to scholarship from Jason Casellas, David Leal and Tom Wong. In “Partisanship or population? House and Senate Immigration votes in the 109th and 110th Congress” Casellas and Leal offer insight into how partisanship, constituency composition, and the characteristics of the member of Congress influence how the member of Congress votes on immigration bills. In the article, Casellas and Leal conclude that partisanship is the only consistent factor of influence and more specifically, that partisanship of the member has a larger role in shaping immigration voting than the district partisanship. They also concluded that district demographics and the personal attributes of the member of Congress were not consistently associated with votes, which personally I am a bit skeptical of this conclusion. Additionally, their results showed that the newer a representative is to Congress and given the framework that will be up for reelection very shortly, the representative will be worried that voting against restrictive measures now might come back to hurt them electorally later on. Regarding district composition, they reason that the percentage of African-Americans in the district does not increase the likelihood of a representative supporting either comprehensive or restrictive immigration. Wong’s article on “The Politics of Interior Immigration Enforcement” provides additional scholarship on the influence of the district population. Specifically, that the size of the Hispanic/Latino percentage of the total population in a district is significantly related to a decreased likelihood of supporting legislation that tightens interior immigration enforcement for both Republican and Democratic Representatives. These are the themes that we will see at play in the next slide.

Slide 3:

Debbie Mucarsel-Powell is the first Ecuadorian-American and the first South American immigrant elected to Congress and is currently serving her first term in Congress. She represents a district that according to American FactFinder is 69.7% Hispanic or Latino of any race and 10.7% Black or African American. Also, according to American FactFinder, 47.8% of the population is foreign-born, with a little more than half being Naturalized U.S. Citizen and the other half not. Furthermore, she is a Democrat, and thus far she has voted only 2/106 times with the Republicans. With these characteristics in mind (an immigrant herself, first-term in Congress, large Hispanic/Latino district population, closely aligned with the Democratic party), Congresswoman Mucarsel-Powell will vote against restrictionist policies and support immigration reform legislation because there will be more pressure from her district given that 47.4% of her constituents are foreign-born and 69.7 are Hispanic/Latino. I also predict that although immigration reform will be a big part of her agenda, given her background and district composition, her immigration proposals will advocate for policy approaches that are conditional on the immigrant or host country meeting specific criteria. I think we will see that she will not personally promote the Democratic agenda that typically supports more comprehensive and broader-applied reform, especially when it comes to “amnesty” oriented legislation. I think this will be the case given that FL District 26 is a battleground district will an equally split population of Republicans and Democrats, where she won by a tiny margin.

Slide 4:

So far Congresswoman Mucarsel-Powell has not voted or (co)sponsored any immigration bill directly, but she has voted to terminate Trump’s national emergency declaration. She has only sponsored two pieces of legislation; the first would provide humanitarian assistance to the Venezuelan people, including Venezuelan migrants and refugees in the Americas. Here, we see her pursuing one of her campaign proposals on immigration and appealing to her Venezuelan constituency, which is growing due to the crisis in Venezuela. On her campaign website, Mucarsel-Powell listed eight priorities with immigration being #4 on her list. In the subsection she provided for each of her priorities, each section had about the same amount of content, maybe 1 or 2 sentences more on immigration over another critical priority, but nothing significant. Additionally, I would argue that under the immigration subheading, she establishes clear and straightforward policy goals, which she does not do for the other sections. One of her policy proposals is that she wants to protect the asylum process for those who need it most, including those who have recently arrived from Venezuela and Nicaragua. Hence, some connection to her first sponsored bill. She also expresses her support for a path to citizenship for DREAMers and allowing TPS holders to become permanent residents. This goes back to my earlier policy predictions on how the representative will approach immigration policymaking. She is in favor of immigration reform, but we can see how she differs from the Democrats. She does not want to establish a comprehensive path to citizenship, at least not explicitly; what she wants is to create a path to citizenship for DREAMers. Her policy proposals are very targeted and inclusive of the immigrant communities of her district. On the other hand, on her official House of Representatives website, she only lists six issues and excludes immigration and gun safety, another of her key policy priorities. However, on both sites, she highlights her personal connection to immigration. After examining her twitter feed, it appears that Representative Mucarsel-Powell has not been very active with only 61 total tweets since beginning her term and only four of those are immigration related. However, I would like to point out that recently there has been a few tweets from the representative addressing Temporary Protected Status and with the word “migrant,” that I did not factor in but are immigration-related. She has signaled that her #1 priority in Congress is Healthcare, which she has only tweeted about once since taking office. Therefore, I do not think the low percentage (6.6%) of immigration-related tweets signal that it is no longer a top priority now that she is in Congress. Comparably, she also only had four tweets during her election campaign out of more tweets then I could calculate, but the percentage would have been significantly lower. Some of her immigration-related tweets have called out President Trump for utilizing the government as a bargaining chip and called the wall “wasteful.” Her tweets tend to push forth this message that she is open to addressing border security, but that the wall is not a solution. She also expressed this sentiment publicly when interviewed by Freebeacon on January 10th, where she stated “I can tell you that the homeland security bill includes billions of dollars for border security. What we cannot do is fund something that does not make sense.”

GA-1 Buddy Carter

March 7, 2019 / Ogechi Adele / 0 Comments

GA-1 Slides

Slide 1: In this slide, I’ve detailed the history and electoral margins of the past 10 years of elections. Jack Kingston was a 13-term representative, winning by percentages above 60 and a few uncontested primaries. After he retired to run for Senate in 2014, Buddy Carter became his successor narrowly winning primaries in the only runoff within these 10 years. The past two elections have had very interesting results. In 2016, Carter won the Republican primary without opposition from either side until Nathan Russo wrote-in as a candidate, garnering very little support at the voting polls. Last election, Carter won by the narrowest margin by any candidate since before Kingston’s reign as representative. This is an extremely significant and stark difference from the circumstances of the previous election.

Slide 2:The table details breakdowns of the native and foreign-born communities. This district has a very small immigrant population, but of this population, there are noteworthy statistics. Even though Hispanics constitute 5.0% of the extremely large native-born population, they make up over half of the non-citizen immigrants. Out of all the four groups, non-citizens have the highest percentage of people without a high school degree and of working individuals making the lowest income on the table. I found it particularly interesting that while almost a third of working non-citizen immigrants make low incomes, naturalized citizens have the highest percentage of people making the largest incomes, even more so than the native population. As mentioned on the title slide, GA-1 is not a very rural area and is, in fact, quite urbanized. Therefore, in this slide I’ve emphasized that there are many other sectors that more significant to the region than agriculture. Finally, another notable statistic is the large growth within the Hispanic immigrant population in 2017 compared to just one year before.

Slide 3:I’ve pulled important arguments and points from various pieces of literature that correspond with relevant facts and statistics about the district and Buddy Carter. The words colored in red are meant to emphasize when the research is identifying a factor that is positively correlated with restrictive stances and actions, while the green-colored words are meant to do the same but for factors positively correlated with permissive or less restrictive stances and actions. Based on characteristics from the slide before, I make predictions using the relevant finding. There was not much definitive research on correlations between income brackets or employment levels of immigrant groups and the policymaking of Congressmen, but there was enough research about other characteristics for me to be able to make a firm prediction.

Slide 4:The overall tone and agenda of Carter, based on the types of immigration bills he supported and content of his website and twitter, is outwardly restrictive and focused on securing the border. The language he uses on his website and during interviews illustrates a grave threat beyond the Southern border that needs to be addressed through tougher law enforcement. Immigration is not a large part of his policymaking or platform, but he still makes his position very clear and in accordance with most members of his party in this era of hyperpartisanship.

CA 46 – Lou Correa

March 7, 2019 / Samantha Liu / 0 Comments

Link to slides: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xanOebTJB8x-X5v_7CVzkKtVqAtdki0c/view?usp=sharing

Slide 1: This slide details the current and past representatives for the 46^th congressional district of California. Current representative Lou Correa was elected on January 3, 2017. In his 2016 election, he ran against fellow Democrat Bao Nguyen and won by 70% of votes, with a margin of D+40. In 2018, Correa ran against Republican Russell Lambert, beating him by 69.1% with a margin of D+38. Prior to Correa, Democrat Loretta Sanchez served for two terms, first winning the 2012 election after beating Republican Jerry Hayden with 63.9% and a margin of D+27.8, and later beating Republican Adam Nick in 2014 with 59.7% of votes and a margin of D+19.4. In the 2008 election, Republican Dana Rohrabacher became the new representative after beating Democrat Debbie Cook and both Green Party Thomas Lash and Libertarian Ernst Gasteiger. In this election, Rohrabacher won by 52.2% of votes and had a margin of R+9.4 He went on to also win the 2010 election, beating Democrat Ken Arnold and Write-in Jay Shah with 62.2% and a margin of R+24.4.

Slide 2: In this slide, I focus on three main sources to summarize the effects of local electorate context and Congressional members’ characteristics immigration policymaking. In research done by Casellas and Leal (2013), they found that partisanship increasingly structures Congressional voting on the issue of immigration. The party affiliations of Congressional members as well as the measure of partisanship within districts and states had a significant effect in all House votes and most Senate votes (Casellas and Leal 2013). Republicans tended to favor more restrictive and enforcement approaches, while Democrats had an opposite approach. Within the House, Casellas and Leal (2013) found that a district’s Latino population is most associated with votes on immigration; the larger the population, the more likely a member will support comprehensive immigration reform and oppose restrictionist proposals. In addition, the House is also characterized by a “re-election dynamic,” meaning representatives facing electoral threat follow a risk-averse path by supporting enforcement efforts. In the Senate, however, state poverty had a large effect on immigration votes, as greater poverty led to more support for enforcement bills. On the topic of interior enforcement, Wong (2014) found that the percent of Latino and Asian populations in a state are negatively correlated to support for the issue, while none-white district representatives are less likely to be supportive. Wong (2012) found that Republican majority counties are 5.8 times more likely to support 287(g) federal enforcement partnerships than Democrat counties are.

Slide 3: Using the research summarized in the previous slide, I predict the effects of some of these characteristics on CA 46’s policymaking activity on immigration. Given that the district has had a Republican representative for seven years and a Democratic one for the same number of years from 1992-2019, it is difficult to gauge its partisanship. However, by analyzing current representative Correa’s election history, specifically how he won about 70% of votes in both of his elections, we can assume that CA 46 is majority Democratic. Furthermore, data from the 2017 census shows that 66.3% of the district’s total population is Hispanic or Latino, with 60.4% being Mexican. In addition, almost 40% of the population is foreign-born, with another 15% as naturalized U.S. citizens. This high percentage of Latino and foreign-born population, coupled with the district and Correa’s Democratic partisanship, lead me to predict that the representative is most likely to oppose restrictive, enforcement policies, including interior enforcement and 287(g) partnerships, and support comprehensive immigration reform policies.

Slide 4: This slide details some of Correa’s activity surrounding the issue of immigration. 18% of the bills he has sponsored are related to immigration, and more recently in January he sponsored H.R. 656: DREAMers, Immigrants, and Refugees (DIRe) Legal Aid Act which “require[s] the Attorney General to make grants to nonprofit organizations to offer legal assistance to certain aliens lawfully admitted for permanent residence, DACA recipients, and refugees, and for other purposes.”[1] On his website, immigration is listed under the “Issues” section and includes the description, “As a Member of Congress, Congressman Correa fights to protect individuals and families of all backgrounds. Congressman Correa supports DREAMers and understands the importance of protecting new Americans. Following the president’s Executive Orders on the travel ban, Congressman Correa introduced legislation to ensure that refugees, immigrants, and DREAMers have access to legal advice from immigration experts. Congressman Correa continues to advocate for comprehensive immigration reform.”[2] Correa does have nine other issues listed under this section and five of them have longer content than immigration. While Correa is not extremely active on Twitter, he does frequently tweet about immigration, with 35% of his tweets from January 1^st to March 1^st focusing on immigration. The content of these tweets included criticism towards Trump’s wall, commentary on the Family Separation Policy, and overall support for immigrants and DREAMers. Correa’s ongoing support for immigration was covered by the media when he invited Marco Villada, an LGBT former DACA recipient, to Trump’s State of the Union Address.[3]

[1] https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/hr656.

[2] https://correa.house.gov/about/issues.

[3] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/state-of-the-union-2019-lgbt-dreamer-attending-sotu-as-a-guest-sees-an-opportunity-to-share-my-story/.

NY14 – Samantha Goerger

March 7, 2019 / Samantha Goerger / 0 Comments

Introduction Slide

New York 14 is situated in the upper Bronx and northwestern Queens of New York City. It is currently represented by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Slide #1

NY14 has had consistent Democratic representation for at least two decades. Joseph Crowley represented the area from 1999-2018, with a redistricting in 2012 from NY7. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) unseated the incumbent Democrat in the 2018 New York primary election and proceeded to win the house seat with 78.2% of the vote. She ran as a Democratic-Socialist with progressive policies aimed at mobilizing the minority constituents. As depicted in the left-hand graph, it was not uncommon for Democrats to win over 70% of the vote in NY14, situating it as an unquestionably Democratic district.

Slide #2

Academic literature surrounding immigration politics focuses primarily on variables pertaining to area demographics and to local political representation. Specifically, Wong (2017) theorized that a larger foreign born population would shift the median voter to the left. Wong (2014) also found that increased LatinX representation is negatively correlated with support for strict enforcement policies. Additionally, districts with large minority populations are less likely to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement (Wong, 2012), and larger numbers of recent arrivals are positively correlated with pro-immigrant policies (Ramakrishnan & Wong, 2010). That said, the most salient variable in most immigration literature is political party representation. Specifically, Republican representatives, both locally and nationally, are more likely to favor restrictive immigration policies (Wong, 2017; Casellas & Leal, 2013; Ramakrishnan & Wong, 2010).

Slide #3

NY14 is highly diverse with native born constituents comprising only 53% of the population. 57% of constituents self-identify as non-white, with 48% identifying as Hispanic or LatinX of any race. As seen in the introduction slide, the average adult education level trails the national average, with few having obtained a Bachelor’s degree or higher. According to the US Census Bureau, 11% of the population falls under the poverty line. Given the aforementioned literature on local demographics, the median voter in NY14 is expected to be more liberal than the general public. The district representatives are, therefore, expected to favor less restrictive policies and not support strict internal enforcement.

Slide #4

Because AOC has only been in office for three months, it is difficult to analyze her policy preferences directly through voting records. In fact, vote tracking websites do not list any votes pertaining to immigration except to overturn the recent national emergency declaration. Because of this increased difficulty, I relied on AOC’s campaign website and Twitter feed. When discussing the issue on social media, she is vehemently against ICE and immigration enforcement, often invoking intense language such as “hostage” to describe President Trump’s intention to build a wall and detain families. That said, immigration is not a central focus of her campaign. Immigration is listed as the seventh key issue of fifteen on her website. Additionally, only 5.66% of recent Tweets and 2.95% of election month Tweets reference immigration. Conducting a basic analysis of words used in her Twitter feed, I found that most prominent issues mentioned were taxation and climate change. Therefore, while AOC is passionate about pro-immigration policies as predicted by the aforementioned literature, it falls short of the most important issue in her platform.

CA 51: Juan Vargas

March 7, 2019 / Amy Jeon / 0 Comments

LINK TO SLIDES

CA 51: Juan Vargas

Amy Jeon

Slide 1:

This slide shows the election results for Congressional District CA 51 from 2008 to 2018. CA 51 contains Imperial County and the southernmost parts of San Diego County along the US-Mexico border, and is represented by Juan Vargas. Vargas has been in this office since the 2012 election, after former Democrat incumbent Representative Bob Filner resigned in order to run for (and become) San Diego mayor. CA 51 is a safely Democratic district, and has not had a Republican representative since 2003. In fact, Vargas has won each of his elections with a supermajority, thrice with over 70% support and once with 68.8% support. This is Representative Vargas’s sixth year and fourth term in office.

Slide 2:

I have chosen to focus on 3 main findings from existing literature about how local electoral context and MC characteristics generally affect immigration policymaking. The first is that a district with a higher Hispanic population has a higher likelihood of pro-immigrant policies (Wong 2014). Following the delegate model, in which the public’s views are delegated to representatives to carry them out, a Hispanic population is likelier to be Democrat and be foreign-born themselves, and thus would support policies welcoming to immigrants. The second point is that partisanship is one of the strongest indicators of voting on immigration policy (Wong 2012; Ramakrishnan and Wong 2010; Casellas and Leal 2013; Wong 2017). Democrats are likeliest to consistently vote for less restrictive and more pro-immigration policies, while the opposite is true for Republicans. Depending on the district and MC’s party, even the mobilization of Hispanics can differ. Lastly, a higher foreign-born population is linked to a MC that is less likely to vote for a restrictive immigration policy (Wong 2017).

Slide 3:

Using the literature from the previous slide, we can now make some predictions about Representative Vargas’s voting on immigration policy, given the characteristics we know about him and his congressional district. CA 51 is 71.5% Hispanic, which is an overwhelming proportion of the district, and so Vargas will likely vote pro-immigration. The district has a 31.48% foreign born population, which is roughly half the size of the native born population (68.5%), which would probably make Vargas lean more pro-immigration, though a larger proportion of foreign born constituents would yield more definite support for pro-immigration policies. In addition, Vargas is a Democratic representative in a safely Democratic district (in the sense that it has not been Republican in the last 10 years) and this partisan influence would likely lead to pro-immigration voting. Moreover, Vargas himself is Hispanic and the child of immigrants, which would lead him to a pro-immigration stance.

Slide 4:

After making our predictions, we now test their veracity by examining Vargas’s voting and sponsorship record, tweets, interviews, and website. Overall, we can see that pro-immigration policy is indeed a priority for Vargas. 19% of his sponsored bills have been immigration related, which is the largest percentage of any topic he has sponsored. Moreover, he voted against the 2019 Government Funding Bill (HJRes 31) that would continue federal appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security and border control (Massey 2019). Turning to his public image and social media, we can see this photo of the front of his website, which reads, “Deported veterans fought for us, we must fight for them,” again demonstrating Vargas’s commitment to the immigrant community. His website does not explicitly list what issues he is currently pursuing, but his bill sponsorship and signaling paint a good picture. 15% of his total tweets from January to March 2019 were related to immigration, and 100% of them were positive, expressing frustration at Trump’s border wall and decrying the separation of children from their parents at the border. In news media, the San Diego Union Tribune quotes his statement that “comprehensive immigration reform will improve border security while treating immigrants with human decency,” which is quite self-explanatory. Lastly, though a minor point, his entire website is also available in Spanish, which is a nod to the 69% of his constituents that speak a language other than English, and the 28% that speak English “not very well,” again showing his commitment to inclusivity of the Spanish-speaking community and immigrants.

Abigail Spanberger (D-VA-07): Immigration Representation

March 7, 2019 / Morgan Bell / 0 Comments

Abigail Spanberger represents Virginia’s seventh congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. The district is located in the suburbs of Richmond, VA its representative is a member of the Democratic Party.

Map from: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/VA/7

Photo from: https://abigailspanberger.com/

This slide highlights the electoral history of VA-07 over the last decade which is actually quite interesting. The bold red and blue indicates the candidate who won the general election, and the asterisk indicates a candidate is the incumbent. It is clear then that the district is heavily Republican given the decade of Republican congressional representation, however the extent of the district’s Republican lean needs to be noted. In 2014, Rep. Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader and thereby the #2 Republican in the House of Representatives, was beaten out in the primary election by newcomer Dave Brat. Brat was even more conservative than Cantor, and he came to power as part of the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party. However, after Donald Trump carried the district by 6 percentage points in 2016, a shift seems to have occurred. Democrat Abigail Spanberger claimed victory in the 2018 midterm election for the U.S. House of Representatives by framing herself as a different kind of Democrat. Brat won in 2014 by being an outsider who would create the change the district needed, but after serving his constituents, they deemed him ineffective and instead shifted to the left, choosing newcomer Abigail Spanberger. By framing herself as a different kind of Democrat — one who would work across the aisle to create positive change — she was able to overcome the district’s Republican lean and proved to be what the people of VA-07 were looking for in the 2018 midterm elections.

Election info from: https://www.politico.com; https://www.newyorktimes.com

As existing literature has shown, partisanship is the greatest consistent predictor of how a representative in Congress will vote on immigration issues (Casellas and Leal 2013). However, there are other factors that can impact a member of Congress’ decision-making on the issue of immigration. One of which is the size of the immigrant population in the representative’s district as the larger the immigrant population is, the less likely the representative will be to support restrictive immigration policies (Wong 2017). Looking at the bar chart on the right of the slide, VA-07 is largely comprised of native-born citizens (90%). The remaining 10% of the population are immigrants, and of these immigrants, about half are naturalized citizens and the other half are not citizens. Despite the fact that immigrants are the minority in this district, its representative’s action on immigration-related policies is important to study. Immigration has been one of the toughest areas to create effective policy in given the past policy failures and difficult negotiations (Tichenor 2009). These are only two of the four challenges Tichenor lists in immigration policy with the other two being trouble defining the problem of immigration and inadequate policy alternatives, but past policy failures and difficult negotiations are the most relevant for the current study of VA-07 (Tichenor 2009). Given this and the hyper-partisan voting behavior on immigration issues since H.R. 4337 passed in 2005 and the increasingly entrenched party polarization, it is difficult for any policy to pass let alone an effective policy (Wong 2017). Another factor more specific to the representative is the number of terms that the representative has served in Congress. Members of the House of Representatives are more likely to support restrictive immigration policies the fewer terms they have served (Casellas and Leal 2013). These characteristics can then be used to predict how a legislator behaves in Congress.

Population data from: https://factfinder.census.gov

Taking into consideration the various characteristics included in scholarship and information about Abigail Spanberger herself, there are several predictions that can be made. Spanberger is a wife and mother of two daughters who has never held public office before. She worked as a law enforcement officer for the U.S. Postal Inspection service and as a CIA Operations officer. Spanberger grew up in VA-07, and she and her husband decided to move back there to raise their family. Relating these facts about Spanberger to the characteristics discussed in existing literature, it is likely Spanberger will use past policy failures to learn from past mistakes to create effective immigration policy with an emphasis on border security and national security. However, this is difficult given the extreme polarization in Congress. In this way, partisanship and party polarization are working against each other. Spanberger is a Democrat, which allows for the prediction that she will side with fellow Democrats on policy, which in turn means she would side with immigrants. However, her district is heavily Republican, so this in conjunction with the difficult negotiations surrounding immigration policy, Spanberger will likely try to work across the aisle to create measured and effective policy solutions. Although, with such a small immigrant population in her district and the fact that she is only in her first term, it is also likely that Spanberger will be more supportive of restrictive policies than her Democratic colleagues. Partisanship though remains the strongest indicator of representative behavior on immigration and will likely drive her decision-making on the issues, meaning she will be less vocal in her support for more liberal immigration policies since she may also support some restrictive policies as well and does not want to draw attention to herself for her liberal leanings with her conservative constituency.

Spanberger bio from: https://abigailspanberger.com/

Despite the fact that immigration is an important issue to Spanberger, it is not an issue she is particularly active or vocal on. Immigration is listed sixth out of 15 total issues listed on her campaign website, which at first indicates that the issue is not of particular importance, yet it has one of the longest paragraphs — along with health care, jobs and the economy, gun violence prevention, and good governance —showing that it actually is one of the representative’s priorities. Consistent with her law enforcement background, the paragraph’s substance focuses on border security, and with the district’s heavy Republican lean, it also emphasizes the need for bipartisan solutions. She explicitly states that she opposes “safe havens” like sanctuary cities, which is a bit more restrictive than some of her Democratic colleagues. However, she has consistently voted in support of immigrants as she opposed funding for the Department of Homeland Security to build a border wall and most recently voted to end President Trump’s national emergency declaration. Spanberger’s Twitter account reveals she is quiet on issues of immigration but also that she is cautious about how she discusses immigration in her conservative and majority-native district. Only about 10% of the representative’s tweets focus on immigration-related issues, and in particular, these tweets focus on the government shutdown and the need to reopen the government with a bipartisan solution which prioritizes border security. This is consistent with her past law enforcement and CIA experience as well as her voting as she consistently voted to reopen the government during the shutdown. In terms of bill co-sponsorship, Spanberger has not been an active sponsor on immigration legislation. Only about 18% of her sponsored bills have related to the issue in some way, but since she is only in her third month in office, there is plenty of room for her to grow in this area. Taking all of this into consideration, Abigail Spanberger is a quiet supporter of immigrants, consistently voting with fellow Democrats to support immigrants while also being vocal about the need to come up with bipartisan solutions and framing the issue around border security to appease her conservative constituents.

Voting info from: https://www.spanberger.house.gov/

Bills info from: https://www.congress.gov/member/abigail-spanberger/S001209

Issue info from: https://www.abigailspanberger.com

Twitter info from: https://twitter.com/SpanbergerVA07?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Honor Code:

This assignment represents my own work in accordance with University regulations.

– Morgan Bell

CA27 – Judy Chu

March 7, 2019 / Doris Li / 0 Comments

Link to Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jtf2NLJmqmaf7_6FAn3ervp9WYMEFYEzyYm2G_d9SPM/edit?usp=sharing

Slide 1:

Former congressman Brad Sherman served (officially) from 1997-2013. As a congressman, he advocated strongly for issues regarding taxes, the economy, and education. While he does not prioritize immigration as one of his main issues, he explicitly expresses his support to defund President Trump’s agenda and attacks his travel ban. From 2008-2013, Sherman has been able to win re-election fairly easily, with a wide margin of roughly 30-40% each time. Following Sherman in office, Congresswoman Judy Chu is district 27’s current representative and the first Chinese American elected to Congress. Chu tends to focus on education, the environment, and immigration. She, as opposed to Sherman, is very vocal about her outlook on immigration, as she expresses her desire for immigration reform. Since 2013, Chu has won re-election by a wide margin of victory: around 30-60%.

Slide 2:

The median voter theorem acts as basis for the how different compositions of a district’s population affects the way a representative votes on immigration policies. The “median voter” is measured on a right-left political scale and represents how the majority of the district will vote. Wong argues that a Member of Congress will try and appeal to the median voter in order to gain the most votes and win an election. Wong then proceeds to predict how percentages of the foreign born population affect the median voter, and effectively, how the MC will vote. He concludes that a high foreign born population will lead to a lower likelihood that the MC will support restrictive immigration bills. Similarly, a high naturalized citizen population will also lead to the same result. Regarding interior enforcement, Wong states that population with high percentages of Latinos and Asians in a district will lead to a lower chance that the representative will support interior enforcement. He admits, however, the one of the strongest indications of how a representative will vote depends on partisanship. Wong delves deeper into analysis and hypothesizes that in particular, a high Latino population even decreases a republican MC’s chance of voting against interior enforcement, while a high Asian population has the opposite effect on republican representatives.

Slide 3:

Using the theories from the previous slide, we can predict how members of congress in California District 27 will vote. The foreign born population in CA27 is 38.6%, a higher percentage than the national percentage (17.8%) and state percentage (27.0%). Thus, we can expect that the MC will be less likely to support restrictive immigration policies. Similarly, the Latino population and Asian population (28.0% and 38.%, respectively) in the district is fairly high and is also greater than the national statistic (17.6% and 5.4%, respectively); thus, we can predict that an democratic MC will be less likely to vote for interior enforcement. Ultimately, partisanship also affects how a MC will vote. For the past 18 years, those who have held the house seat in CA27 have been democratic, so one would expect that the district is fairly liberal (also, based off the election results from the slide 1, democrats have won by a large margin). We can also predict this with Wong’s prediction about the median voter theorem. Chu is more liberal than 86% of the house and has an ideology score of -0.488. Thus, we can reaffirm that the median voter in this district is also just as liberal.

Slide 4:

Chu’s voting record is consistent with her party, in that she typically votes in accordance with however the democratic party votes. Regarding immigration, she tends to sponsor bills that support immigration or block presidential actions that restrict immigration flow and votes for bills that support immigration reform. Both her website and twitter handles reinforce Chu’s backing for immigration, in which they clearly outline her opinions on this subject. For example, her website lists the immigration policies she supports, including DREAM Act and POWER Act and recent press articles on Chu’s interactions with immigration policy, including blocking President Trump’s National Emergency. Since January of 2019, roughly 67% of all her tweets address immigration. She criticizes republicans and President Trump for “falsely insisting that immigrants are dangerous” (Feb 11) and rebukes with tweets defending immigrants (“Immigration is not a threat” (Jan 29)). Her social media and voting record reinforces the prediction made previously that she tends to vote against restrictive immigration policies.