Approval to Exclude Unauthorized Immigrants Declining Prior to 2016 Presidential Election: A Multilevel Logistic Regression Analysis

Background/Purpose:Several analyses of post-election survey data suggest that fears of cultural displacement and racial resentment due to increased immigration were among the strongest predictors of voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Given the current administration’s aggressive attempts to categorize unauthorized immigrants as a national security threat in order to justify harsh immigration policies, understanding what has led up to this precarious time for American immigrants is of the utmost importance to social work practitioners, researchers and advocates alike.

This study examined three influential years of the General Social Survey (GSS), 1996, 2004 and 2014, to examine the relationship between the year of survey data with approval of stronger measures to exclude unauthorized immigrants. These three years are valuable to our understanding of exclusionary attitudes given that two monumental pieces of legislation were passed in 1996 that have served as the legal foundation for the deterrent and punitive immigration control measures in place today. 2004 is a key survey year as it follows the terror attacks of 9/11 and predates the nation’s first black president, Barrack Obama. 2014 nears the end of Obama’s final term, at a time when Donald Trump was preparing a presidential campaign largely based on an anti-immigrant agenda.

Methods:The GSS is a nationwide cross-sectional survey conducted annually, but exclusionary attitudes towards unauthorized immigrants were only collected in 1996, 2004, and 2014.  Multilevel Logistic Regression analyses were used to examine respondents’ likelihood to approve of increased exclusion of unauthorized immigrants.  Approval was indicated by agreement with the following statement: “America should take stronger measures to exclude illegal immigrants.” The model also included covariates for race, political party, age, sex, county population density and subjective class ID.  Individual survey respondents (n=3,683, level 1) are nested in US regions (n=9, level 2) with an average 404 respondents per region.

Results:Results indicate that the likelihood of favoring stronger exclusionary methods of unauthorized immigrants was decreasing prior to the 2016 presidential election. Respondents in 2004 and 2014 were 37% and 59% respectively less likely to approve of implementing stronger exclusionary methods toward unauthorized immigrants (1996 reference group). Overall, White respondents were 38% more likely than non-whites, self-classified Strong Republicans were nearly 4 times more likely than their Strong Democrat counterparts, and rural residents were over 2 times more likely than residents in large metropolitan areas to approve of increased exclusionary methods. 

Conclusions and Implications:These findings suggest that tensions toward the unauthorized immigrant community were on a decreasing trend, as opposed to increasing, prior to the 2016 presidential election.  This potentially indicates a drastic change of opinion among voters at a time when anti-immigrant rhetoric escalated following the Trump campaign’s official bid for the presidency in June of 2015. Results also indicate a need for additional research on attitudes toward unauthorized immigrant exclusion as it pertains to the increasingly aggressive immigrant threat narrative present in political and mainstream discourse as well as informing approaches to immigrant advocacy.