Moved by Illegality? Experimental Approaches to Public Opinion on Immigration

In the United States, immigrants and immigration policy are complex and multi-faceted, with persons of different legal status, visa categories, and national origins. Despite this complexity, media coverage and Congressional debate has focused inordinately on the issue of undocumented (or illegal) immigration. Even with the topic of illegal migration, there is vigorous debate among advocates over whether the term undocumented or illegal favors one side over the other. In this paper, we rely on survey experiments to determine if the American electorate makes meaningful distinctions between legal and illegal immigration when it comes to attitudes and opinions on policy. Importantly, we also test for whether the public makes any distinctions between family visa and work visa holders among legal immigrants, and between those who are labeled as undocumented or unauthorized, as opposed to illegal.