Public Opinion on Refugee Policy in the United States, 1938-2019: Increasing Support for Refugees and the Sympathy Effect

Abstract

Eight decades of opinion polls (1938–2019) on US refugee policies show that most Americans have historically opposed admitting refugees but this trend has been reversed in the twenty-first century. An examination of the questions pollsters asked reveals that when respondents were offered a middle response choice (e.g. “the number of refugees is about right”), their opposition often morphed into approval of the admissions status quo. Findings also show some evidence of a fait-accompli effect: The public tended to be more supportive of refugees when welcoming policies were enacted and when refugees were already on US soil. Furthermore, the United States public reported more supportive attitudes toward refugees when asked about any type of policy — welcoming or restrictive — and when asked questions concerning the context of reception of admitted refugees. I label this pattern a “sympathy effect,” whereby respondents revealed more support for refugees when answering contextualized rather than abstract questions. This finding implies that pro-refugee policies might have more popular support than often assumed and that the extremely restrictive policies toward refugee admissions of the current US government are out-of-sync with both historical trends and current American public opinion.