Who Should Be Sent Home? Experimental Analysis of Attitudes Toward Deportation

• In Event: Immigrant Detention and Deportation

Abstract

A significant body of academic research examines how different immigrant attributes influence support for admission into a country or subsequent naturalization, but less attention has been given to the attributes influencing citizens’ support for deportation. With limited resources to pursue the estimated 10.5 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, successive presidential administrations have sought to prioritize for (or protect from) deportation different groups of immigrants based on various traits. Presidents from both parties have prioritized the deportation of convicted felons, for example, whereas the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program protects from deportation some undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. As U.S. policymakers return to the question of immigration reform under a new president, should some undocumented immigrants be prioritized for deportation or for protection? This study examines how different immigrant traits influence respondents’ support for deportation. We conducted two experiments in which respondents read descriptions about a series of hypothetical immigrants with randomly-selected values for several attributes: mode of entry, age at entry, country of origin, education level, gender, family connections to U.S. citizens, military service, and criminal record. In one experiment, administered to a nationally representative YouGov sample (n=1,000) in November 2019, respondents were shown descriptions of individual immigrants and asked to determine whether the person should be deported, allowed to stay in the country without citizenship, or granted a path to naturalization. In the second experiment, administered to a convenience MTurk sample (n=1,000) in May 2020, respondents were shown pairs of undocumented immigrants and forced to choose which one should be prioritized for deportation. This approach allows us both to examine the specific immigrant attributes that influence support for deportation and to compare results between the single vignette and forced choice experimental designs. Preliminary analysis shows similar findings for both designs, with support for deportation influenced more by an immigrant’s legal status (mode of entry, age at entry) and personal record (military service, criminal history) than by their economic and cultural characteristics (country of origin, education, family connections in the United States). These findings are consistent with the idea that deportation is seen as a punishment for illegal or improper behavior.

Authors

• Beth Elise Whitaker, University of North Carolina, Charlotte

• John Doces, Bucknell University