Abstract
In this chapter, we utilize data from scholarly sources like the American National Election Studies, the General Social Surveys, the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, as well as important survey organizations that specialize in religion research, the Pew Research Center and the Public Religion Research Institute, to compare and contrast lay opinion across religious groups. We show that white evangelicals are the most opposed to evangelical reform of any religious group, while their Hispanic co-religionists are in the camp that most favors reform, with black evangelicals more or less in the middle. Although white evangelicals lead the mass opposition to progressive immigration policies among religious groups, white mainline Protestants and Anglo-Catholics are not far behind. This suggests that race and political factors may be more important than religion in forming immigration attitudes.
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- 1.
Asians are left out of the tables in this chapter due to the small N’s in the various surveys. We will examine this group in Chap. 5. At times, the N’s for Latinos are small as well, but for the most part, they are large enough for analysis purposes.
- 2.
Surveys by other research organizations show a similar pattern (CBS News; New York Times; Fox News as reported in PollingReport.com. 2017).
- 3.
Other survey organizations report parallel findings (Monmouth University Poll, CBS News/New York Times, as reported in PollingReport.com. 2017).
- 4.
Variation in question wording can make a difference in findings. The 2016 PRRI survey adds a phrase “they mostly take jobs Americans don’t want” that might decrease the proportion of respondents that feel that immigrants take jobs away from the citizenry.
- 5.
For some less educated Hispanic citizens, new immigrants might contribute to wage depression. George Borjas has found that an immigrant increase of 10% in labor force results in a 2%–5% wage drop for native high school dropouts, with native Hispanic high school drop outs hit the hardest (Center for Immigration Studies, 2013).
- 6.
Scholars differ about the significance of immigrant influx and the growth of the crime rate. Most argue that some proportion of newcomers will commit crimes, but that the immigrant and undocumented immigrant crime rate is lower than that of the non-immigrant citizenry. (Cf. Adelman et al. 2017). For an in-depth newspaper account, see Flagg (2018).
- 7.
This finding is also found in a series of recent surveys from Quinnipiac University, Monmouth University, CNN, CBS News, the Pew Research Center, ABC News/Washington Post, Politico, all reported in PollingReport.com. 2017.
- 8.
Cited in PollingReport.com. 2017. Page 1.
- 9.
The 2017 results are reported in PollingReport.com from the following organizations: Quinnipiac University, CBS News, CNN, the Pew Research Center, and Bloomberg Politics Poll (all cited in PollingReport.com. 2017).
- 10.
In 2016 and 2017, survey organizations posed a variety of questions concerning policies for undocumented immigrants. Deportation percentages ranged from a low of 13 to a high of 44. Percentages favoring a path to citizenship varied from 46 to 90 with the latter specifying that the undocumented had been in the United States for a number of years, had a job, spoke English, and agreed to pay back taxes. See PollingReport.com 2017 for these results.
- 11.
The two Pew surveys from 2016 show how slight wording changes make a great difference. The deportation percentages do not change much and, in fact, show a slight decrease in the latest survey. In the earlier Pew surveys, the follow up question probing for either legal residence or citizenship was not asked in 2016. As a result, the 2016 percentages are for legal residence without a breakdown for either residence or citizenship.
- 12.
For example, 34% of this second hybrid group favored building a wall on the Mexican border compared to 16% for the pure citizenship category. Figures for the pure deportation category and the first hybrid group were 78 and 61% respectively.
- 13.
In data not shown, from the 2016 PRRI survey, cross tabulations with age and both the threefold item (deport, residence, citizenship) and the four category measure in Table 4.9 show that the percentage of the youngest respondents (18–29) favoring residence or citizenship drops from 86 to 66 when the four category measure is used compared with the threefold item. Similar declines were found among the highly educated and Democratic partisans.
- 14.
Available from the authors is a document that lists the items in each survey, correlations among the items, factor loadings for each item in the scale and a reliability measure as well.
- 15.
It could well be that the California limitations on immigration in 1994 solidified opinions on the subject that had not been present before.
- 16.
However, note the more liberal attitudes in the most recent surveys as partisan polarization in the country has increased.
- 17.
New evidence from the Gallup Organization, the Quinnipiac University Poll, and from the Pew Research Center suggest that public opinion on immigration is moving in a “liberal” direction. A June 2018 Gallup Poll finds that Americans are evenly divided in responses to a question about whether to increase or decrease immigration levels (Gallup 2018). The Pew Research Center finds even stronger support for increasing immigration. For the first time in their polling history, Pew finds that support for an increase is higher than for a decrease—32%–24% (Pew 2018). Quinnipiac University results suggest that the Trump administration policy of separating families at the border may be the major cause of these findings. However, evidence from both Gallup and Pew show that the percentages favoring increased immigration have risen over time since the low point after 9/11.
References
Adelman, Robert, Lesley Williams Reid, Gail Markie, Saskia Weiss, and Charles Jaret. 2017. Urban Crime Rates and the Changing Face of Immigration: Evidence Across Four Decades. Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice 15 (1): 52–77.
Borjas, George. 2013. Immigration and the American Worker. Center for Immigration Studies, April 9. https://cis.org/Report/Immigration-and-American-Worker.
Djupe, Paul. 2013. Evangelicals and Immigration. Public Religion Research Institute, March 22.
Flagg, Anna. 2018. The Myth of the Criminal Immigrant. The New York Times, March 30.
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Melkonian-Hoover, Ruth. 2011. Evangelical Views on Immigration Policy: Why Are and Aren’t the Laity Following Leaders? Paper Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. Chicago, March 31–April 3.
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Melkonian-Hoover, R.M., Kellstedt, L.A. (2019). Immigration Attitudes Among American Religious Groups. In: Evangelicals and Immigration. Palgrave Studies in Religion, Politics, and Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98086-7_4
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