The Influence of Social Protests on Issue Salience among Latinos

The intractability of comprehensive immigration reform is reflected in the Congress' inability to successfully pass leg- islation to address this issue for more than a decade. One reason for the lack of legislative action on this issue, besides the obvious partisan dissension regarding the appropriate remedies for undocumented immigration, has been the absence of widespread public pressure for con- gressional action. Undocumented1 immigration was not perceived as a major issue in the United States until the spring of 2006. Prior to that spring, undocumented immi- gration was far down the list of salient issues on the pub- lic's agenda (Brader, Valentino, and Suhay 2008; Dunaway, Branton, and Abrajano 2010). It did not even make the top five ranking of problems among Latino immigrants, who are arguably the segment of the population most closely associated or affected by undocumented immigration (Pew Hispanic Center 2004). However, the lack of public atten- tion would change with the protests of 2006.This paper examines the impact of temporal and spa- tial exposure to the immigration rallies on Latinos' per- ceptions of undocumented immigration as the most important problem (MIP) for the Latino community. In addition, we consider the conditioning effect of political awareness, generational status, and media sources. We combine data from the 2006 Latino National Survey (LNS) with Bada et al.'s (2006) protest data to predict undocumented immigration as the perceived MIP facing Latinos. The results indicate that temporal and spatial exposure to protest activity influenced the likelihood of perceiving undocumented immigration to be the MIP facing the Latino community. Furthermore, there is a conditional relationship between exposure and the aforementioned individual-level characteristics. Substantively, the findings indicate that foreign-born Latinos, politically knowledgeable Latinos, and Spanish- language media users were more likely to perceive the issue to be the MIP facing the Latino community. Furthermore, this effect is elevated among those with temporal and spatial exposure to protest activity. We believe the continued relevance of our findings is evi- denced by the lingering debates over immigration reform. Our results suggest that efforts to impose more restrictive immigration reforms might incite further social protests and, in turn, raise Latinos' awareness of the potential threat posed by such reforms.Salience of Immigration Issues among LatinosWhile many Latinos viewed immigration as an important issue before the protests, it was not a priority or even a concern for the vast majority. In fact, the 2004 Pew Hispanic Center's National Survey of Latinos (NSL) revealed that Latinos perceived education, the economy, and health care to be the most important issues facing the nation. Immigration was ranked eleventh in the list of issues identified by NSL respondents as most important (Pew Hispanic Center 2004). However, the introduction and eventual passage of House Resolution (H.R.) 4437 created a public outcry, particularly within the Latino community, and placed immigration reform on the public agenda of the country. H.R. 4437 (The Border Protection and Anti-terrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005) proposed to increase sanctions on undocumented immigrants and persons who assisted or employed them. Before the Senate considered the bill, a series of protests were organized around the country to oppose its passage and encourage less draconian immigration reform.We argue that the 2006 immigration protests height- ened the saliency of immigration issues, particularly the hardships for undocumented immigrants, within the Latino community. Although issue salience has been studied among political scientists for quite some time (Behr and Iyengar 1985; Berelson, Lazarfeld, and McPhee 1954), there are different definitions and inter- pretations of the origins of political salience (Petty and Krosnick 1995). …