Undocumented Immigrants and Support for Deportation

• In Event: Experimental Approaches to Immigration Backlash Politics

Abstract

As political debates continue over the deportation of undocumented immigrants from the United States, questions emerge about whether some should be allowed to remain in the country or be granted a path to citizenship. Media attention has focused especially on beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program who were brought to the United States by their parents as children and, to a lesser extent, on immigrants who have served in the U.S. military. This experiment tests whether Americans’ support for deportation is influenced by an immigrant’s age at entry to the United States and/or past service in the U.S. military. Instead of asking respondents to choose between hypothetical immigrants for admission to the country, the experiment presented a description of a fictional undocumented immigrant already living in the United States and asked the respondent to select whether the individual should be given a path to citizenship, allowed to stay without getting citizenship, or deported. Respondents also assessed whether the described immigrant was contributing to the U.S. economy, national security, and society. Treatments included childhood entry to the United States and past service in the U.S. military. The experiment was administered to a nationally-representative YouGov sample of 1,000 respondents in November 2018. Preliminary analysis of the data shows that respondents were more likely to see positive contributions to the United States from an immigrant who served in the U.S. military; the effect of past military service was especially pronounced for Republican respondents. Respondents were also more likely to support a path to citizenship and oppose deportation for an undocumented immigrant who served in the U.S. military. Again, the effect was especially strong among Republicans, who were significantly less likely to deport and significantly more likely to grant a path to citizenship to an undocumented immigrant with past military service as compared to an immigrant without such a record. Interestingly, though, the childhood entry treatment did not have a significant effect on respondents’ assessments of contributions to the country or on support for deportation, even among Democratic respondents who are assumed to be especially sympathetic to DACA beneficiaries. The lack of treatment effect could be a result of overwhelming support among Democrats in the sample for granting a path to citizenship to the hypothetical immigrant regardless of the immigrant’s age at entry or past service in the U.S. military. Overall, our findings have implications for ongoing debates about the DACA program and about attitudes toward deportation more broadly.

Authors

• John Doces, Bucknell University

• Beth Elise Whitaker, University of North Carolina, Charlotte