The polls--Trends: American Public Opinion on Immigrants and Immigration Policy

Since the issue of immigration and its effects on the United States persists and discussions on the topic continue to intensify, this article reviews public opinion trends on immigrants and immigration. We review Americans’ overall assessment of immigrants and immigration-related issues such as immigrant impact on the U.S. economy, perceptions of elected officials’ performance on handling immigration issues, and preferred approaches to immigration policy. We draw our framework from Lapinski et al.’s 1997 Public Opinion Quarterly review of public attitudes and beliefs regarding immigrants and immigration. This study updates the trends presented in 1997, beginning in many cases with the final time point presented in that earlier article and including current national public opinion trends of questions not previously documented but which have become relevant to the current immigration debate. The current review reveals mixed attitudes, dualities in Americans’ thinking, and splits on immigration issues. In the current review, public opinion is at times ambivalent, espousing certain attitudes that challenge others. In addition, less extreme attitudes are revealed in the public’s view of certain policies as compared with Lapinski et al.’s piece. Spanning what will now be over a decade, public opinion indicates an increasing concern over immigration issues in addition to a lack of confidence in the ability of the country’s leaders to address them. More than half of today’s immigrants came to the United States in the 1990s, and their share of the population is at historically peak levels. Estimates indicate that between 1990 and 2000, the U.S. foreign-born population grew by more than 11 million. As the rise in the immigrant population has increased, so have debates over how best to handle immigration issues. Although policymakers have suggested a variety of possible solutions, public opinion seems deeply divided on how best to handle immigration.