The Effect of Wartime Escalation on Immigration Attitudes in the United States Anthony Ramirez and Dylan Smith Professor LaFave Econometrics Spring 2015 Abstract Immigration Policy is a highly divisive issue in the United States, most notably recently with the Obama Administration’s executive order on immigration reform and subsequent injunction by Texas Judge Andrew S. Hansen. Major influences on immigration opinion and policy include international political conflict. For example, surrounding the tragic events of 9/11 there was a large increase in xenophobic attitudes according to polls taken in the beginning of 2001 and 2002: a Gallup poll demonstrated that those wanting less immigration increased from 36% in 2001 to 52% in the following year (Gallup, 2015). The goal of this paper is to observe the effect of wartime escalation on xenophobic attitudes and immigration opinion in the United States, as measured with survey data from the above referenced poll, among other similar ones. The hypothesis is that increased wartime activity or publication of wartime activity will increase the public negative attitudes towards immigration. We can examine the effects of this, controlling for various national demographic characteristics, domestic political attitudes, and international policy. Towards this end, we have collected data including a series of polls on immigration opinion from 1990 to 2015 as well as data from mostly U.S. government databases on various controls as discussed in the Data Analysis. US Immigration Opinion over our time set of 1990 to 2014 is plotted below. US Immigration Opinion Over Time Motivation, Previous Literature Data Analysis and Results The “Percent Reporting Immigration is Good” is taken from a Gallup Historical Trends poll with a randomized sample of n = 5,000. The [military] spending values and immigration values above are per $1 billion and per 100,000 people, respectively. The above regression analysis suggests an inverse association between total military spending and positive opinions on Immigration. Specifically, the data suggests that a $1B increase in total defense spending is associated with a 16.5% predicted decrease in PRIG. It additionally suggests that a 100,000 person increase in the unauthorized immigrant population is associated with a ~56% predicted increase in the PRIG. We believe that the inverse relationship between military spending and PRIG can be explained by sociological/ cultural factors that influence public attitudes towards immigration. By the inherent nature of war, there is a foreign country with which the U.S. is in conflict and this may skew perceptions towards that specific demographic negatively. Additionally, national media outlets influence public opinion through portrayal of major conflict coverage according to their ideological framework (e.g. NBC vs. Fox News). We also looked at the effects of growth in authorized immigrant population on PRIG. This analysis suggests that a 100,000 increase in growth of the authorized immigrant population relates to a 114% predicted increase in the PRIG. Finally, according to the second restricted OLS analysis, unemployment rate holds an inverse association with PRIG. Namely, a one percent point increase in the unemployment rate relates to a 34263% decrease in the PRIG. We believe this drastically high magnitude relationship can be explained by economics and self-interest of U.S. citizens; specifically, the more optimistic a person may be about the U.S. economy, the more supportive they may be of permissive immigration policy. On the other hand, the more pessimistic a person about the U.S. economy, the less supportive they may be of permissive immigration policy, especially as individuals who are most likely to be in direct competition with immigrants tend to be less supportive. In order to implement immigration policy that is productive and forward-looking, it is useful to take into account underlying trends and factors that could influence upward or downward personal opinions towards such policies. Specifically, finding the relationship between the same and increased hostile foreign involvement, we can be more educated as to the extent of war-induced domestic xenophobia. Policy implications of a strong war-induced domestic xenophobia are wide-ranging, from counter- effect programs in military training need for cultural education in middle schools. Other relationships explored in the paper, notably between immigration attitudes and foreign populations can be informative to psychology and sociology. Although there is not visibly much research covering the exact relationships that this paper is attempting to establish, there is a good amount of documentation covering other possible reasons for differing immigration opinion. This informs our own analysis in the form of additional considerations. As follows: Harwood (1986), “American Public Opinion and U. S. Immigration Policy” : escalations of hostile foreign relations have an effect on immigration opinion. Espenshade and Hempstead (1996), “Contemporary American Attitudes Toward U.S. Immigration” establishes a strong positive relationship between unemployment rate and percent of population wanting less immigration. We conclude from this need for an additional control: National Unemployment Rate. A series of polls and associated study by Pew Research Center in 2011 (see "Illegal Immigration: Gaps Between and Within Parties.") establishes a deep divide in immigration opinion between Republicans and Democrats. For example, 47% of Republicans versus only 22% of Democrats surveyed supported the harsher viewpoint, suggesting that dominance of a political party would affect immigration attitudes. We conclude from this need for an additional control: Presidential Political Party. Chandler and Tsai (2001), "Social Factors Influencing Immigration Attitudes: An Analysis of Data from the General Social Survey,” establishes that exposure with and positivity of opinion towards foreign languages were negatively correlated with immigration views. Although we would like to create a control for this, the data needed for this is beyond publicly available information. We thus incorporate into our Data and Regression Analysis these above results in the form of controls for our target relationships. (Regression variables Unemployment Rate, Republican).