Sanctuary or Noncooperation? Framing Effects on Immigration Policy

• In Event: Public Opinion on Immigration

Abstract

In Framing Immigrants, we examined how news coverage frames immigration policy and the effects that such frames may have on public opinion. While undocumented immigration is a salient and controversial topic, the American public has, until recently, largely been unfamiliar with the particulars of immigration policy. This knowledge gap provides significant opportunities for issue framing, as public officials and interest groups alike have sought to shape opinion through favorable news coverage.

This article extends that research by examining news framing and framing effects pertaining to state and local “sanctuary policies” vis-à-vis undocumented immigrants. First, we analyze original survey experiment data from the 2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, to assess the extent to which Republicans, Democrats, and Independents are consistent in their preferences for uniform federal standards across three policy domains: environment, immigration, and health. We randomize the order between environment and health questions—the former is worded in a way where greater state autonomy favors Democratic issue positions, while the latter is worded in a way where greater state autonomy favors Republican issue positions. We also randomize treatment on whether state policies are described as “sanctuary policies” or “noncooperation policies.”

We expect the effects of both our federalism primes and our policy frames to vary by strength of partisanship, with the greatest effects among weak party identifiers. We also expect the effects to be stronger among low-information voters, suggesting a relatively narrow slice of the electorate that is persuadable on so-called sanctuary policies.

Authors

• Karthick Ramakrishnan, University of California Riverside

• Jennifer L. Merolla, University of California, Riverside

• Chris S. Haynes, University of New Haven