PUBLIC OPINION ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: A TEST OF SEVEN CORE HYPOTHESES

Recently, the United States has witnessed massive numbers of illegal immigrants who have entered the country. As a result, illegal immigration issues have begun to enter the political arena as a substantive policy concern for national and state legislators. The issue of illegal immigration has also emerged as a policy concern for practitioners in the criminal justice system as legislators have increasingly attempted to further criminalize illegal immigration and use criminal justice resources to respond to these concerns. Thus, public opinion toward controlling illegal immigration and illegal immigrants has become or substantive interests for policy-makers and practitioners. This research used the 2004 National Election Study data to test seven core hypotheses (the economic threat hypothesis; the culture threat hypothesis; the core American values hypothesis; the culture affinity hypothesis; the racial/ethnic affect hypothesis; the contact hypothesis; and the group threat hypothesis) concerning public opinion toward illegal immigration. The study found support for the economic threat hypothesis, the core American values hypothesis, the race/ethnic affect hypothesis, and the contact hypothesis. But the data also suggested that a more nuanced understanding of public opinion is needed that distinguishes between views about policy to control illegal immigration and affective evaluation of illegal immigrants as a population. Implications for the criminal justice system are discussed