Who Should Be Provided with Pathways toward Citizenship? White and Black Attitudes toward Undocumented Immigrants

Abstract

Existing studies on attitudes towards immigrants center White public opinion and do not account for the diversity within the immigrant population. I seek to fill these gaps by testing how an undocumented immigrant’s country-of-origin shapes immigrant attitudes among White and Black Americans. Through an experimental survey to 180 Black and 694 White Amazon Mechanical Turk users, I find that White respondents had significantly negative reactions to Nigerian undocumented immigrants relative to Germans, South Koreans, and Mexicans. Yet, this negative sentiment dissipated once the model controlled for cultural similarity. The results demonstrate that cultural attitudes mediate White attitudes towards immigrants, citizenship, and belonging. This study adds to the literature on White and Black attitudes towards immigrants and highlights the enduring role of racialization in influencing both legal and ascriptive notions of citizenship.