What does a nation of immigrants think and feel about immigration? Recent accounts of immigration policy routinely cast Americans as divided into two warring camps – one fueled by threat to livelihoods and way of life, the other by a fervent cosmopolitanism that sees the nation-state as passé. This counter-intuitive book shows that these accounts miss the mark. First, almost all Americans hold a mix of ""pro-"" and ""anti-immigrant"" opinions. Their views are pragmatic and flexible rather than dead-set. Second, opinions about immigration are more powerfully influenced by liberal values and concerns about the well-being of American society as a whole than by identity politics. Third, the assimilation Americans demand from immigrants matches patterns of integration that Hispanic and Asian immigrants overwhelmingly follow. Finally, American attitudes toward immigrants are ""exceptional"" for their openness and respect for cultural pluralism. In Citrin, Levy, and Wright's view, long-elusive comprehensive immigration reform can win in the court of public opinion – but only if leaders heed their constituents rather than the polarized activists who claim to speak on their behalf. This expert analysis rethinks the role of public opinion in immigration matters: its insights will be welcomed by all interested in immigration debates and public policy.

In the past few years, liberal and mainstream outlets have tended to frame immigrants lacking legal status as "undocumented" (rather than "illegal") and to approach the topic of legalization through human-interest stories, often mentioning children. Conservative outlets, on the other hand, tend to discuss legalization using impersonal statistics and invoking the rule of law. Yet, regardless of the media's ideological positions, the authors' surveys show that "negative" frames more strongly influence public support for different immigration policies than do positive frames. For instance, survey participants who were exposed to language portraying immigrants as law-breakers seeking "amnesty" tended to oppose legalization measures. At the same time, support for legalization was higher when participants were exposed to language referring to immigrants living in the United States for a decade or more.

While undocumented immigration is controversial, the general public is largely unfamiliar with the particulars of immigration policy. Given that public opinion on the topic is malleable, to what extent do mass media shape the public debate on immigration? In Framing Immigrants, political scientists Chris Haynes, Jennifer Merolla, and Karthick Ramakrishnan explore how conservative, liberal, and mainstream news outlets frame and discuss undocumented immigrants. Drawing from original voter surveys, they show that how the media frames immigration has significant consequences for public opinion and has implications for the passage of new immigration policies. The authors analyze media coverage of several key immigration policy issues—including mass deportations, comprehensive immigration reform, and measures focused on immigrant children, such as the DREAM Act—to chart how news sources across the ideological spectrum produce specific “frames” for the immigration debate. In the past few years, liberal and mainstream outlets have tended to frame immigrants lacking legal status as “undocumented” (rather than “illegal”) and to approach the topic of legalization through human-interest stories, often mentioning children. Conservative outlets, on the other hand, tend to discuss legalization using impersonal statistics and invoking the rule of law. Yet, regardless of the media’s ideological positions, the authors’ surveys show that “negative” frames more strongly influence public support for different immigration policies than do positive frames. For instance, survey participants who were exposed to language portraying immigrants as law-breakers seeking “amnesty” tended to oppose legalization measures. At the same time, support for legalization was higher when participants were exposed to language referring to immigrants living in the United States for a decade or more. Framing Immigrants shows that despite heated debates on immigration across the political aisle, the general public has yet to form a consistent position on undocumented immigrants. By analyzing how the media influences public opinion, this book provides a valuable resource for immigration advocates, policymakers, and researchers.

Although ambivalence characterizes the stance of scholars toward the desirability of close opinion-policy linkages in general, it is especially evident with regard to immigration. The controversy and disagreement about whether public opinion should drive immigration policy are among the factors making immigration one of the most difficult political debates across the West. Leading international experts and aspiring researchers from the fields of political science and sociology use a range of case studies from North America, Europe and Australia to guide the reader through the complexities of this debate offering an unprecedented comparative examination of public opinion and immigration. part one discusses the socio-economic and contextual determinants of immigration attitudes across multiple nations part two explores how the economy can affect public opinion part three presents different perspectives on the issue of causality – do attitudes about immigration drive politics, or do politics drive attitudes? part four investigates how several types of framing are critical to understanding public opinion and how a wide range of political factors can mould public opinion, and often in ways that work against immigration and immigrants part five examines the views of the largest immigrant group in the U.S. – Latinos – as well as how opinions are shaped by contact with and opinions about immigrants in the U.S. and Canada. An essential read to all who wish to understand the nature of immigration research from a theoretical as well as practical point of view.

Political turmoil surrounding immigration at the federal level and the inability of Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform have provided an opening for state and local governments to become more active in setting their own immigration-related policies. States largely dictate the resources, institutions, and opportunities immigrants can access: who can get a driver’s license or attend a state university, what languages are spoken in schools and public offices, how law enforcement interacts with the public, and even what schools teach students about history. In States of Belonging, an interdisciplinary team of immigration experts – Tomás R. Jiménez, Deborah J. Schildkraut, Yuen J. Huo, and John F. Dovidio – explore the interconnections among immigration policies, attitudes about immigrants and immigration, and sense of belonging in two neighboring states – Arizona and New Mexico – with divergent approaches to welcoming newcomers. Arizona and New Mexico are historically and demographically similar, but they differ in their immigration policies. Arizona has enacted unwelcoming policies towards immigrants, restricting the access of immigrants to state resources, social services, and public institutions. New Mexico is more welcoming, actively seeking to protect the rights of immigrants and extending access to state resources and institutions. The authors draw on an original survey and in-depth interviews of a cross-section of each state’s population to illustrate how these differing approaches affect the sense of belonging not only among immigrants, but among the U.S.-born as well. Respondents in Arizona, regardless of whether they were foreign- or native-born or their ethno-racial background, agreed that the state is unwelcoming to immigrants, and they pointed to Arizona’s restrictive policies as the primary factor. The sense of rejection perceived by Latinos in Arizona, including the foreign-born and the U.S.-born, was profound. They felt the effects of administrative and symbolic exclusions of the state’s unwelcoming policies as they went about their daily lives. New Mexico’s more welcoming approach had positive effects on the Latino immigrant population, and these policies contributed to an increased sense of belonging among U.S.-born Latinos and U.S.-born whites as well. The authors show that exposure to information about welcoming policies is associated with an improved sense of belonging across most population groups. They also find that the primary dividing line when it came to reactions to welcoming policies was political, not ethno-racial. Only self-identified Republicans, Latino as well as white, showed reduced feelings of belonging. States of Belonging demonstrates that welcoming policies cultivate a greater sense of belonging for immigrants and other state citizens, suggesting that policies aimed at helping immigrants gain a social, economic, and political foothold in this country can pay a broad societal dividend.

Who controls American immigration policy? The biggest immigration controversies of the last decade have all involved policies produced by the President policies such as President Obama's decision to protect Dreamers from deportation and President Trump's proclamation banning immigrants from several majority-Muslim nations. While critics of these policies have been separated by a vast ideological chasm, their broadsides have embodied the same widely shared belief: that Congress, not the President, ought to dictate who may come to the United States and who will be forced to leave. This belief is a myth. In The President and Immigration Law, Adam B. Cox and Cristina M. Rodríguez chronicle the untold story of how, over the course of two centuries, the President became our immigration policymaker-in-chief. Diving deep into the history of American immigration policy from founding-era disputes over deporting sympathizers with France to contemporary debates about asylum-seekers at the Southern border they show how migration crises, real or imagined, have empowered presidents. Far more importantly, they also uncover how the Executive's ordinary power to decide when to enforce the law, and against whom, has become an extraordinarily powerful vehicle for making immigration policy. This pathbreaking account helps us understand how the United States ?has come to run an enormous shadow immigration system-one in which nearly half of all noncitizens in the country are living in violation of the law. It also provides a blueprint for reform, one that accepts rather than laments the role the President plays in shaping the national community, while also outlining strategies to curb the abuse of law enforcement authority in immigration and beyond.

Introduction: Birth of a Public -- President in the Maelstrom: FDR as Public Opinion Theorist -- Twisted Populism: Pollsters and Delusions of Citizenship -- A Consuming Public: The Strange and Magnificent New York World's Fair -- Radio Embraces Race and Immigration, Awkwardly -- Interlude: A Depression Needn't Be So Depressing -- Public Opinion and Its Problems: Some Ways Forward.