Fear of Illegal Immigration

Illegal immigration has continuously been a hot topic, and the American population has obsessed over what measures should be taken with these people, if any. In a qualitative study, the fear of illegal immigration is going to be analyzed based on various independent variables such as ideology, party identification, and media, based on results from the Fear 2020 survey. The Chapman Survey of American Fear began in 2018, analyzing people’s different fears nationwide, and how those might be related to other characteristics. Previous research analyzes attitudes towards illegal immigration; however the fear component will be a new addition to this topic. While illegal immigration has been studied for decades, most of these studies seem to be outdated, through this data we will be able to see effects of more recent events such as Trump’s presidency and framing of the media. Among the interesting findings is the importance of framing of media and how that directly translates to who will be the “face” of illegal immigration, usually leading to a negative stereotype. While we head into a new presidential election, I want to take a look at the affects these variables have on individuals fear, and how this plays out in policy, allowing us to make possible predictions following these trends. This paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the study of the fear of illegal immigration.