Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

This study explores U.S. citizens’ attitude toward immigration and investigates the patterns of attitude change from 1996 to 2014. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 43.7 million immigrants are living in the United States today, accounting for 13.5 percent of the total U.S. population (Zong et al., 2018). However, its public and political attitudes towards immigrants have always been ambivalent and oscillated between perceiving immigration as both a valuable resource and as a major challenge (Edwing, 2012). Particularly nowadays, U.S. immigrants face the constant threat of deportation, and their human rights have been inadequately protected.

The three individual year data sets of General Social Survey (1996, 2004, and 2014), which included a specific topical module on immigration, were used for this study. Total sample size was 1,248. To address how immigration attitudes change over time among U.S. citizens, one CFA model and latent growth model were tested using a maximum likelihood estimation. U.S. citizens’ attitude toward immigration was set as a latent variable composed of five observed variables. Each observed variable was measured by a five-point Likert scale ranging from 0 to 4, and a larger number means a more positive attitude. The findings showed the general attitude toward immigration has significantly been changed for the worse (Intercept= 2.510, Slope= -.025, p< .001). It means social conflicts over immigrants and immigration policy have been increased in the U.S. This study encourages greater attention towards U.S. immigrants’ isolation and exclusion for promoting social cohesion.