The data on white anxiety over Hispanic immigration

*This comes as no surprise to Latinos. Many U.S. whites are OK with immigration, unless it’s immigration from Latin America. This is a very telling study, especially the revelations between the lines:  White anxiety is named and legitimate when The Washington Post reports about it. VL

By Lydia DePillis, Washington Post

What immigrants look like – and where they come from – changes how we see the (immigration)  issue.

When immigrants are Hispanic, white Americans worry a lot more.

“Americans think of immigration in an ethnically specific way at this point,”Nicholas Valentino, a political scientist at the University of Michigan who studied the impact of news coverage on immigration attitudes, said in an interview. “They think of immigrants as Latino. Latinos trigger an anxiety in some Americans that other ethnic groups simply do not trigger. It changes both attitudes and behaviors on immigration policy.”

Valentino’s view is backed up by a study he conducted with Michigan colleagueTed Brader and Elizabeth Suhay (now of American University) using a high-quality national survey in 2003*. White participants in the study read mock Associated Press news stories about increasing immigration. Half of respondents were randomly assigned to read a positive-themed story (“Immigration heartens governors”) and half negative (“Immigration concerns governors”).

In addition to positive and negative stories, the survey randomly assigned each story to focus on either Jose Sanchez from Mexico or Nikolai Vandinsky from Russia, who were described in identical ways besides their name and origin. After reading the story, subjects were asked a series of questions on immigration policy.

Unsurprisingly, those who read a negatively-toned immigration story expressed less support for immigration. But the impact of seeing a negative story featuring a Mexican immigrant was double the size of a negative story about the Russian Immigrant.

Click HERE to read the full story.

[Photo  by Stephen D. Melkisethian/Flickr]

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