Whites respond more negatively to immigration news about Hispanics than about Europeans

White Americans are more likely to feel negatively about immigration if news stories portray immigrants in a negative light, but are even more inclined to respond in a negative manner if the immigrants are Hispanics, not Europeans, Scott Clement reports for The Washington Post. "What immigrants look like – and where they come from – changes how we see the issue. When immigrants are Hispanic, white Americans worry a lot more."

One of reason is that Americans often only think of Hispanics as immigrants, said Nicholas Valentino, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, who did the 2003 study about which Clement writes. Valentino told him, "Latinos trigger an anxiety in some Americans that other ethnic groups simply do not trigger. It changes both attitudes and behaviors on immigration policy.”

Valentino's study had white participants read fake stories about immigration, with half the stories showing immigration in a positive light and the other half in a negative light, Clement writes. Stories also altered the ethnicity of some subjects, telling the exact same story, except changing the name and origin of a subject from Mexican to Russian. While participants who read negative stories were more likely to say the story lessened their support of immigration, "the impact of seeing a negative story featuring a Mexican immigrant was double the size of a negative story about the Russian immigrant."

"Valentino and his colleagues investigated the differing reactions, and found that negative news featuring a Latino immigrant raised whites’ worries and anxieties about increasing immigration, but not for those about Russian immigrants," Clement writes. "Whites who read a negative story featuring an Hispanic immigrant had a strong political reaction. In addition to higher opposition to immigration, they became more supportive of an 'English-only' law, asked for more information about the issue and were more apt to send an e-mail  to their congressional representative advocating reduced immigration levels when asked in the survey. Negative news about a Russian immigrant had little impact on political motivation."

"Just 26 percent of respondents chose to e-mail a member of Congress advocating a reduction in immigration after reading a positive story featuring a Latino immigrant," Clement writes, but "45 percent sent congressional e-mails when the Latino-focused story was negative. But the negative stories had no impact when the subject of the story was Russian." Valentino said a separate study using Mexican and Dutch subjects in the fake stories had similar results. (Read more)