Do immigrants ever oppose immigration?

Abstract

This paper analyzes immigrants’ views about immigration, contributing to the behavioral literature on the subject. In particular, it explores the role of statistical discrimination as a cause of possible opposition to immigration in the absence of stringent immigration policies and a large amount of undocumented immigration. We test this hypothesis using US data from the seventh wave of the World Value Survey, finding that economically successful immigrants in the United States (i.e., those who are in the top quintile of the socioeconomic classification), who may benefit the most from being perceived as unrelated to unskilled undocumented immigrants, have negative views about immigration, especially with respect to its contribution to unemployment, crime, and the risk of a terrorist attack. This effect does not arise in the case of countries that apply stricter controls than the United States on immigration, like Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, or do not attract as large a number of undocumented immigrants. We interpret these results as evidence that immigrants’ attitudes toward other immigrants respond to the lack of a selective immigration policy: namely, if successful immigrants run the risk of being perceived as related to undocumented or uncontrolled immigration, they respond by embracing an anti- immigration view.