Cutting Off Your Nose to Spite Your Face: Policy and Immigration

• In Event: Immigrants, Ethnic Identity and Political Participation

Abstract

This project asks whether White Americans are willing to incur a personal cost or loss if it means that immigrants are also likely to incur the same or greater subjective cost or loss. While there is a rich literature showing little evidence of a connection between the attitudes White Americans hold toward immigrants and their own economic circumstances, we believe there remains fertile ground to cover when examining White attitudes towards immigrants. We do this by examining the degree to which White Americans endorse policy positions before and after the policies are understood to benefit immigrants in the U.S., regardless of status. Specifically, we not only test whether Whites are less likely to endorse a policy position once it is understood to benefit immigrants, but we also test whether White Americans are so vehemently opposed to immigrants benefiting from any policy that they would be willing to lose out on the benefits of the policy themselves so long as immigrants did not benefit. In other words, are White Americans willing to act against their self-interest and forgo benefits they would enjoy if it meant that immigrants would not enjoy them either? To answer this question, we focus on how support for public and private goods in the U.S. depends on who is believed to benefit from them. Using a series of experiments fielded on four nationally representative surveys, including a CES panel, we find that support for benefits among White Americans is high when there is no mention of any outgroup benefit. Still, more importantly, we find that White Americans are willing to forgo benefits, including direct monetary benefits, if immigrants are seen as benefiting from them. In other words, White Americans, on average, act against their self-interest, even when the benefit to them is made clear, to ensure that immigrants do not get to enjoy the benefit.

Authors

• Roberto Carlos, University of Texas, Austin

• Geoffrey Sheagley, University of Georgia