Misperceptions of immigrant flows and their associations with anti-immigrant attitudes

ABSTRACTResearch has documented that misperceptions about the size and characteristics of immigrant populations are associated with anti-immigration attitudes. In the United States, immigration from Asia began to outpace immigration from Latin America starting in 2010, but public discourse about immigration remains focused on the latter. This study seeks to understand to what extent the public misperceives not just the sizes of immigrant populations, but the relative flows of subgroups. I further ask whether misperceptions of immigration flows can be corrected, and whether these misperceptions – and corrected perceptions – affect beliefs about immigration's impacts and policy attitudes. I address these questions using a nationally-representative survey experiment, in which participants read accurate information about current immigration patterns. Findings reveal that while this information raised the overall accuracy of respondents' perceptions of the share of immigrants coming from Latin America versus from Asia, it did not change their perceptions of immigration's impacts, nor did it alter policy attitudes. Changing attitudes by addressing common misperceptions likely requires more targeted approaches.KEYWORDS: ImmigrationAsian AmericansLatinx Americanssurvey experimentchanging attitudes Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Sentiment that could be characterized as anti-China can have spillover effects on Asians in the U.S., as demonstrated by studies showing associations between anti-China rhetoric and anti-immigrant sentiment (e.g., Hswen et al. Citation2021).2 Here, I differentiate fact-based interventions from frame-based interventions, which examine whether issues are articulated in ways that resonate with people's beliefs, values, and ideas (Benford and Snow Citation2000; Bloemraad, Silva, and Voss Citation2016).3 The research protocol was approved by the Columbia University Institutional Review Board (#IRB-AAAS3018). All participants provided informed consent before proceeding with the study.4 No respondent completed the survey faster than one standard deviation below the mean completion time, suggesting that 'speeders' (i.e., those who complete a survey impossibly quickly) are not a data quality concern.5 Surveys using Qualtrics' panels also include a number of quality checks. These include matching participants' responses to demographic questions to information in their preexisting profile information and deleting straight-line responses and gibberish in open-ended questions.6 Ten imputed datasets were generated. Missing income values were imputed using the full set of demographic and dependent variables used in the multivariable analyses.7 Appendix A, Table A2 provides unadjusted values for key variables by experimental condition.8 Results are substantively similar when removing respondents who incorrectly answered a question at the end of the survey asking about the topic of their paragraph (not shown).Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by Southern Poverty Law Center [grant number 2018-01-Intervening in Attitudes About Immigration].