Attitudes toward Immigrants and Partisan Differences in Information Evaluation

Abstract

Attitudes about immigrants, though related, are not interchangeable with attitudes about immigration. Much research has examined the latter, yet our knowledge regarding what Americans think about immigrants is lacking. Drawing on an original national survey conducted by NORC (n = 2,132) in 2021, I address shortcomings in the literature by illuminating distinct partisan attitudes about immigrants, revealing that Republicans tend to agree with both anti- and worthy-immigrant narratives while Democrats tend to embrace worthy- and reject anti-immigrant narratives. Further, I show how differences in information evaluation are related to the observed phenomena. That is, Republicans tend to interpret prototypical anti-immigrant political rhetoric as commentary about unauthorized immigrants and prototypical pro-immigrant discourse as messaging about immigrants in general and legal immigrants in particular. Democrats, however, interpret anti-immigrant and pro-immigrant narratives to be about immigrants in general. The results complicate understandings of immigration polarization by showing how social psychological mechanisms may facilitate commonality and divergence on attitudes about immigrants.