Once Hated Now Loved? Attitudes Towards Asian Immigrants: The U.S. and Australia

• In Event: Migration: Causes and Consequences

Abstract

This study examines what has led to the change in views on Asian immigrants in the U.S. and Australia. Recent studies suggest that immigration from Asian countries is less opposed than other groups such as Blacks, Muslims and/or Latinos. This is a drastic change in public opinion on Asian immigrants given the hostile attitudes reflected in historical polls and legislations designed to prevent Asian immigrants in the two countries. What explains the changes in the attitudes towards a certain group of immigrants in traditional immigrant receiving societies? I argue that such change takes place when economic consideration overrides a sense of cultural threat. Though Asians are still perceived as a culturally distinctive racial group, there has been a growing consensus that Asian immigrants are generally beneficial for the national economies, positively affecting the natives’ attitudes towards Asian immigrants. Examining 4,757 newspaper articles from 4 newspapers and 11 national surveys, I find that (1) the newspaper coverage that discusses Asian immigrants in the context of economy is more likely to increase and to present more positive sentiment when the governments began admitting a large number of skilled Asian immigrants, that is the mid/late 1990s for the U.S. and the late/1990s-early 2000s for Australia; (2) During the early 2000s, the individuals who are more educated and more conservative about government spending are more likely to prefer Asian immigrants to Latinos(in the U.S.) or Middle Easterners(in Australia) than those who are less educated and less opposed to government spending. The results are consistent with past existing research, emphasizing public sensitivity to fiscal burdens that immigrants may bring to the host nation as well as varying degrees of attitudes towards immigrants based on the origin of the immigrant, rather than on general ethnocentrisms, argued by the group-specific attitude hypothesis.

Author

• Jieun Park, University of California Los Angeles