Immigration
Perhaps no issue presents the contradictions within Americans’ thinking more strongly than immigration. Americans struggle to find the right mix of policies that would both protect our national interests and welcome newcomers accordingly. Our research answers the following questions: How do Americans think about immigration, why do they think what they do, what consequences does that have for immigration advocates, and how might they best engage Americans in a discussion about immigration reform?
Funders for this Project
This project has been generously supported by the following: the California Endowment and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Our Recommendations
**NEW** Framing Immigration: A FrameWorks Message Memo (2010). This important report synthesizes our research findings and recommends strategies to communicate more effectively about immigration with the American public.
Research
**NEW** Valuing Immigration: How Frame Elements Contribute to Effective Communications (2010). Findings from several survey experiments with registered voters demonstrate that immigration advocates ought to be very careful in how they sequence issues of race and ethnicity in the conversation about immigration policy reform. We find that communications about policy reforms that remind the public that the primary beneficiaries of reform are likely to be racial or ethnic minorities fail to successfully elevate policy support, while frames that emphasize mutual benefits across groups and interconnectedness prove far more effective in building support for immigration policies. We present empirical evidence from alternative frames that do elevate support for immigration reform and provide examples from our Talking Disparities Toolkit about how advocates can structure more effective frames.
