Beyond Cheap Talk? City-Level Immigrant Policy Adoption in Trump's America

• In Event: Defining Communities: The Politics of Immigration in Cities

Abstract

In the absence of federal clarity on immigration issues, cities in many ways started creating, adopting and enforcing immigrant-related policies. In 2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump made claims that his administration would defund cities that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities in its first 100 days. The anti-immigrant platform of the current administration has prompted pro-immigrant responses from mayors and many other local officials. But are their reactions just cheap talk? This paper relies on an original dataset of municipal level immigrant policies of the 1000 largest U.S. cities, which includes data on mayors and city counselors as well as municipal level demographic and institutional electoral characteristics. This paper aims to understand what conditions are present when cities strategically pose themselves as welcoming or unwelcoming toward immigrants in Trumps America? While some cities were already progressive or conservative on immigration, others decided to act on immigrant related issues only after a federal threat and yet others have waited longer still. I argue the timing in which municipalities enact policy is strategic as they engage in reactionary policy adoption when they perceive minimal public and electoral backlash.

Author

• Ana Luisa Oaxaca Carrasco, University of California- Los Angeles