The American Immigrant Policy Portal

INTERGROUP RELATIONS

Diversity is a major feature of modern societies. To reap the benefits of diversity and avoid unnecessary conflict, citizens must not leave intergroup relations to chance. Governments and non-profit organizations should create opportunities for immigrants and native-born residents to learn from each other and to work together to achieve common goals. Our leaders must also confront the forces of hatred and bigotry that try to poison the atmosphere of social relations. And they should promote the shared values and traditions that bind together the entire society. These studies illuminate the challenge of intergroup relations and discuss promising practices in the area.

Arranged in order of publication date with the most recent on top. Scroll down for all entries. We regret that we may not be able to repair broken links promptly. The conclusions and recommendations of the authors are not necessarily endorsed by Diversity Dynamics and its partner organizations.

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Transforming Together: Practices and Possibilities from the First Belonging Innovation Lab,
Center for Inclusion and Belonging, American Immigration Council, 2025, 29 pp.
Authors:  Ximena Escalante et al
This report highlights the efforts and outcomes of the Belonging Innovation Lab Fellowship, an initiative of the Center for Inclusion and Belonging of the American Immigration Council. This fellowship was designed to support local nonprofit organizations in fostering a sense of belonging within their communities. The Fellowship provided 12 organizations with an 18-month program that included funding, collaborative learning opportunities, and access to a curriculum focused on building social connections, ensuring psychological safety, and enabling co-creation. The fellowship aimed to bridge social, economic, and political divides by bringing together diverse groups to work towards common goals. The report features profiles and case studies of participating organizations, such as the Sycamore Collaborative, Global Detroit, and the Needham Resilience Network, showcasing their innovative approaches to building belonging. These organizations utilized various strategies, including community gardens, storytelling, and resilience networks, to bring people together and address local challenges. The lessons learned from the Belonging Innovation Lab Fellowship (there are nine “takeaways” discussed in the report) provide guidance for other organizations seeking to foster belonging and social cohesion in their communities.

 

The Belonging Barometer: The State of Belonging in America (Revised Edition)
Over Zero and The American Immigration Council, 2024, 105 pp.
Authors: Nichole Argo & Hammad Sheikh
This report is a revised version of one first released in March of 2023. The report discusses the concept of belonging and introduces a new measure called the “belonging barometer.” The barometer was used to conduct a national survey regarding the relationship between belonging and health, democracy, and intergroup dynamics in the U.S. The report also discusses the state of belonging across five life settings: family, friends, workplaces, local communities, and the nation as a whole. Among the report’s findings are the following: a majority of Americans experience non-belonging in the workplace, local communities, and the nation, with significant percentages also reporting non-belonging among family and friends. The survey also found that socioeconomic status and other demographic factors, such as age, gender, and sexual orientation, are strongly associated with belonging. The report concludes that investments in belonging are more urgent than ever, given the increasing diversity and polarization in the United States. It highlights the need for tailored interventions to improve belonging and suggests that the Belonging Barometer can be used to measure and track belonging over time, helping to identify effective interventions. The report includes a list of resources in various fields for individuals and groups interested in promoting belonging as an important national goal.

 

Emigration and Radical Right Populism,
American Journal of Political Science, March 27, 2024, 16 pp.
Author: Rafaela Dancygier et al
This study attempts to understand why populist radical right (PRR) parties have gained traction in certain localities in Europe, particularly among voters opposed to immigration and globalization. Rather than focusing their attention on immigration, the authors examine the impact of emigration, both domestic and international, on the home communities of those who leave. Two mechanisms link emigration to PRR success: compositional and preference-based. Emigrants are typically young, educated, and economically motivated, leaving behind a population that is less educated and more rooted -- attributes linked to PRR voting. This compositional change can boost PRR success without altering voting behavior. Additionally, emigration can change voter preferences by deteriorating the quality of life in emigration locales, leading to school and business closures and straining public services. This decline fosters grievances that PRR parties exploit, convincing voters that they have been abandoned by both their fellow citizens and incumbent parties. Most of the research for this study was conducted in Sweden. According to the authors, the Social Democrats, once dominant in Sweden, have failed to address emigration issues. This research shifts the focus from immigration to emigration, showing that internal migration in high-income countries can also lead to political changes, undermining liberal democracy.

Advancing Welcoming Through Community Foundations,
Charles Stewart Mott Foundation & Welcoming America, 2023, 24 pp.
Author: Larry McGill
Based on interviews with 24 staff members at 17 community foundations located in 13 different states, this report explores the potential of enlisting community foundations as key partners in advancing the work of welcoming newcomers into U.S. communities.  According to the author, “ensuring that newcomers are welcomed – via intentional practices, policies, and norms that advance equity and inclusion – is critical to building secure, vibrant, and resilient communities that enable all residents to thrive, live, and contribute fully.”  The dialogue with foundation staff focused on the “seven benchmarks” developed by Welcoming America, as well as the 17 “sustainable development goals” adopted by the United Nations, for creating welcoming communities.  Although many foundations provide support to immigrant-serving organizations, few foundations approach welcoming work in partnership with local governments or other cross-sector stakeholders or have staff members with specialized knowledge of immigration-related issues. In addition, few foundations have robust, long-term funding in place for welcoming work. However, the author does see the potential for greater attention to welcoming work, as community foundations around the country reassess their programming based on a new-found appreciation for the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion. The report concludes with nine recommendations for community foundations to have a stronger impact in the welcoming field, including joining the Welcoming Network of 300 nonprofits and local governments working to build more inclusive and welcoming communities and championing a local effort to become a Certified Welcoming place

 

Righting Wrongs: How Civil Rights Can Protect Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Against Racism,
Stop AAPI Hate, May 2023, 33 pp.
More than 11,000 acts of hate against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have been reported to the national coalition Stop AAPI Hate since March 2020 and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this nationally representative survey of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders entitled “Righting Wrongs: How Civil Rights Can Protect Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Against Racism,” the authors investigate the nature and extent of the problem. They find that nearly half of AAPIs nationwide have experienced potentially illegal discrimination, which can lead to harmful mental health effects. Only 20 percent of these civil rights violations are reported and 60 percent of AAPIs want to learn more about how to protect themselves. Stop AAPI Hate believes that new and more comprehensive civil rights laws are needed to address the “ongoing, pervasive, and unchecked discrimination” against AAPI communities. The report offers policy recommendations for federal and state governments to address the discrimination that plagues all communities of color and other historically marginalized groups, as well as reflections and recommendations for researchers looking to study diverse communities. (The Immigrant Learning Center’s Public Education Institute)

 

Imagining Better Futures for American Democracy,
Better Futures Project & Democracy Funders Network, 2022, 73 pp.
Authors: Suzette Brooks Masters & Ruby Hernandez
A more promising future for Americans requires bold, disruptive thinking, resolve and action. However, in order to get to that positive future, many obstacles need to be overcome, including the despair and defeatism that seems to grip many Americans today. These conclusions appear in a report from the Better Futures Project titled Imagining Better Futures for American Democracy, which draws on input from dozens of “visionary thinkers and doers…including futurists, activists, thought leaders, creatives, artists, religious leaders and funders.”  The report explains why positive visioning matters, how those visions of better futures relate to democracy and governance systems, and how we can inspire more Americans to “dream bigger and develop a sense of agency to bring those ideas to fruition.” Only in this way can we break out the present “cycle of reaction and opposition, which entrenches polarization and shrinks the realm of possibility.”  This type of visioning also enables us to build a unified society that combats racism and nativism. The report is intended to “encourage a wide range of civil society actors to want to become part of a burgeoning positive visioning community – one capable of mobilizing and engaging growing numbers of people to realize better futures, including a robust, effective and healthy democracy” The authors describe creative work being undertaken in Europe that might serve as a model for the U.S. They also make a number of recommendations, including “strengthening the positive visioning ecosystem by investing in infrastructure and relationships” and funding innovative efforts, especially at the state and local level, to strengthen democracy.

 

Rhetoric and the Creation of Hysteria,
Cornell Law Review, December 2, 2022, 60 pp.
Authors: Ediberto Román & Ernesto Sagás
Claiming that immigration has become “the civil rights issue of our time,” this study explores how nationalist politicians in the United States, the Dominican Republic, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile are following similar anti-immigrant scripts in order to secure and retain power. One strategy is to give the appearance of stern enforcement of existing immigration laws. However, “without virtually anyone realizing it, purposefully mediate the extent of deportations—effectively making the overall numbers of deportations appear to be much greater than they are, thereby making the total numbers of deportations actually insignificant because of the vital economic roles of the undocumented in each country. This phenomenon creates a permanent subject to blame for the country’s ills, gives the appearance of a dedicated leadership creating policies to address the problem, and further silences a shadow segment of society.” The authors trace the futile efforts of the Trump administration to speed up deportations, and how the expansion of the 287(g) program, which mobilized local police departments to enforce immigration laws didn’t really lead to more deportations, but only to a “state of siege” among undocumented immigrants. The authors show how this type of extremist political behavior (welcoming immigrant and then vilifying them) has occurred repeatedly in U.S. history. They also show how this kind of political rhetoric plays out in Latin America, with special attention to politicians in the Dominican Republic, who assert that Haitian immigration is a “silent invasion” that is “destroying the nation.”  However, the authors conclude on a positive note -- pointing out that the resurfacing of these dangerous ideas out of the “dustbin of history” has mobilized millions of people to “expose baseless hate” and to reaffirm the values of equality and democracy.

Systemic Racism in the U.S. Immigration Laws
Indiana law Journal, Summer 2022, 23 pp.
Author: Kevin R. Johnson
Murderous violence, economic boycotts, and anti-Chinese political agitation in western states during the 1880s were manifestations of concerted efforts of white citizens to purge Chinese residents from the United States. These campaigns culminated in the passage of the federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The Act commenced a long period of racist immigration policies that included bars on immigration from China and later all of Asia, as well as the discriminatory national origins quota system of 1924. While flagrant racial discrimination in immigration laws ended in 1965, the Supreme Court ruling from 1889 that upheld the Chinese Exclusion Act is still the law in the U.S. In the Chinese Exclusion case, the Supreme Court determined that Congress had “plenary power,” or absolute authority, over immigration matters, and that courts could not review the constitutionality of immigration laws. This report analyzes the roots and consequences of systemic racism in U.S. immigration policy and highlights that lack of ordinary constitutional review that enabled President Trump to implement controversial and restrictive policies such as the Muslim ban and migrant family separations. As the nation confronts systemic racism in the criminal justice system, it must also, according to the author of this report, reconsider the plenary power doctrine as the first step to the elimination of systemic racism in immigration law. (Jasmina Popaja for The Immigrant Learning Center’s Public Education Institute)
 

Cultivating Contact: A Guide to Building Bridges and Meaningful Connections Between Groups,
American Immigration Council, 2022
Authors: Linda R. Tropp & Trisha A. Dehrone
The United States faces many forms of social division, but the country has also developed ways to communicate and collaborate across lines of division. In Cultivating Contact: A Guide to Building Bridges and Meaningful Connections Between Groups, Dr. Linda R. Tropp and Trisha A. Dehrone, in partnership with Welcoming America and the Intergroup Relations and Social Justice Lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, describe how to create spaces for people from different backgrounds to meaningfully engage with one another. The authors also advise on how to draw on people’s similarities and differences to help solve problems in the community. Tropp and Dehrone discuss strategies to help people from different groups collaborate as equals, in order to share their ideas and perspectives and successfully create new initiatives across group differences. The authors provide materials to help organizations evaluate their contact programs’ effectiveness, while also offering advice for making cross-group interaction and collaboration more meaningful and sustainable over time. The authors hope that the guide will provide “helpful evidence-based recommendations on how to structure contact programs effectively, along with useful tips and best practices for implementing and facilitating these programs.” These types of programs, the authors contend, will strengthen the social fabric of the U.S., helping build more resilient and healthy communities for future generations. (Erika Hernandez for The Immigrant Learning Center’s Public Education Institute)

Computational analysis of 140 years of US political speeches reveals more positive but increasingly polarized framing of immigration,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (119:31), July 31, 2022, 25 pp.
Authors: Sarina Chang et al
As a nation of immigrants, the United States has a complicated history of immigration that is both celebrated and deplored. Resistance to newcomers has been central to public discourse, but there has been a rise in pro-immigration attitudes over the past century. According to Gallup, 77% of Americans answered that immigration was a good thing in 2019, up from the lowest point of 52% in 2002. In the mid-1990s, 65% said that immigration should be decreased; in 2020, that number fell to just 28%. This comprehensive quantitative analysis, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looks at how attitudes toward immigrants and political debates in the U.S. have changed over the last 140 years. The study analyzes 200,000 congressional speeches and 5,000 presidential communications related to immigration since 1880. It finds that political speech about immigration is now more positive, with a noticeable shift occurring between World War II and the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1965. However, since the late 1970s, political parties have become increasingly polarized on the issue. Modern Republican speeches are as negative as congressional speeches from the 1920s, and are more likely to use metaphors such as “animals” and “cargo.” Nationality and geography also remain important factors in which immigrant groups are considered historically desirable (European) and undesirable (Chinese and Mexican) to U.S. politicians. (The Immigrant Learning Center’s Public Education Institute)  

 

“Immigration Will Destroy Us” & Other Talking Points: Uncovering the tactics of anti-immigration messaging on YouTube,
Define American, 2022, 26 pp.
This study analyzes the communication tactics of the anti-immigrant groups propagating “the Great Replacement Theory.” The authors seek to “map the landscape of anti-immigration content on YouTube” -- considered the most influential site for far-right radicalization on the internet -- and test the best approaches for pro-immigration counter-narratives. The study is premised on the assumption that there is a large “moveable middle” of the American electorate, whose views on immigration are relatively unformed and open to influence, and who constitute – according to some estimates -- roughly 18% of the American population. The researchers analyzed a group of 23 of the most watched anti-immigrant videos on YouTube produced during the period from 2007 to 2020. Collectively, the authors consider these videos to be the Great Replacement Network, or the GRN. The two largest producers of these videos were PragerU (eight videos) and the Tanton Network channel (six videos). Although PragerU is not a university, this group, like other groups on the anti-immigrant far right, portray themselves as voices of reason who understand the facts of the situation and whose policy-recommendations are evidence-based. Seeking to legitimize positions that might be considered racist by their opponents, such as the importance of preserving “white culture” and “western civilization,” they accuse pro-immigrant advocates of allowing emotion, and the desire to remain in power, interfere with their policy judgments. The authors also conducted randomized controlled trial tests with over 5,000 people to test various approaches to truth-sharing on immigration. Oddly enough, they found that the “packaging” of the anti-immigrant videos, e.g. use of an “educational tone” and a “semi-realistic animation style” were the most effective techniques for persuading the target population. Another conclusion of the study was that “professional credentials do not necessarily increase trust…both the highly qualified professor and journalist were trusted at almost the same level as someone with no credentials.” A companion piece to this study is a toolkit for content creators.

Misperceptions about Immigration: Reviewing Their Nature, Motivations and Determinants,
British Journal of Political Science, May 2, 2022, 16 pp.
Authors: Phillip Lutz & Marco Bitschna
According to the authors of this paper, misperceptions about immigration in Western democracies could undermine democracy itself. Often, polarized views, frequently rooted in misinformation, erode the ability for people to develop informed views on immigration matters, with direct consequences on public policy. In the review article “Misperceptions about Immigration: Reviewing Their Nature, Motivations and Determinants,” authors Philipp Lutz and Marco Bitschnau focus on three issues concerning immigration-related misperceptions: their nature, what motivates them, and what individual and contextual factors contribute to their spread. The authors ground their findings in a review of the existing literature on the subject from the fields of political science, sociology and psychology. Among the common types of misinformation are: overestimations in the number of immigrants, misrepresentations about their origins and background, and conspiracy theories about their intent to replace native populations. Driving these misperceptions are perceived threats to cultural values and to public/personal security, as well as worries over competition for economic resources. Finally, the authors identify ring-wing ideology and low education levels as factors that explain their prevalence. Through these findings, the authors hope to increase our meta-knowledge of immigration-related misperceptions, a key first step in combating them. (Sonali Ravi for The Immigrant Learning Center’s Public Education Institute)
 

‘Migrants’? ‘Refugees’?  Terminology Is Contested, Powerful, and Evolving,
Migration Policy Institute, March 24, 2022, 8 pp.
Author: Rebecca Hamlin
Over the last decade, the rise in international migration has increased focus on how to refer to people crossing borders. Should they be called "migrants…refugees” or some other term? Research demonstrates that opinions can be swayed by variations in terminology and framing. In this Migration Policy Institute report, Rebecca Hamlin reviews debates about migration terminology and how these discussions have played out over the last decade. According to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey, people in multiple immigrant destination countries are more likely to support admitting people described as “refugees” than “immigrants.” In Hamlin's book, Crossing: How We Label and React to People on the Move, a similar experiment found that respondents in the United States were more likely to say their country had an obligation to help people described as “vulnerable refugees” rather than “vulnerable migrants.” Efforts to push language in a more inclusive direction have achieved success but also triggered opposition. Migration is an issue that speaks deeply to people’s beliefs about who is deserving of humanitarian protection, how governments should respond, and the merits of diversity. Labels, however, can only do so much to change attitudes. Moreover, people cross borders for multiple reasons, which might change throughout their journey. Both law and terminology can often fail to encompass these nuanced motivations. (The Immigrant Learning Center’s Public Education Institute)
 

Do Anti-Immigration Voters Care More? Documenting the Issue Importance Asymmetry of Immigration Attitudes,
British Journal of Political Science (Forthcoming), February 2022, 15 pp.
Author: Alexander Kustov
According to 2020 Gallup polls, more Americans said that they would prefer to see immigration increased rather than decreased; yet despite such positive public opinion, the U.S. government has failed to enact comprehensive immigration reform. In this study, Alexander Kustov examines why politicians and policymakers neglect to prioritize pro-immigration reforms even when public opinion towards immigration is positive. Kustov looks at a previously overlooked explanation for this phenomenon: that anti-immigration individuals tend to consider immigration a more important political issue than pro-immigration individuals. To assess this relationship comprehensively and empirically between personal immigration issue importance and policy preference, Kustov uses cross-national and longitudinal surveys from many immigrant-receiving contexts. Kustov finds that in comparison with pro-immigration voters, anti-immigration voters feel more strongly about the issue, while also being more likely to consider immigration a personally and nationally significant issue. He finds this phenomenon true across virtually all observed countries, survey periods, and different survey measures of immigration preferences and their significance. These results suggest that public opinion towards immigration demonstrates great “issue importance asymmetry.” Even though the issue is more contextually salient, such asymmetry of immigration attitudes systematically advantages anti-immigration causes. (Erika Hernandez for The Immigrant Learning Center’s Public Education Institute)
 

Does the Scale or Speed of Immigration Generate Nativism? Evidence from a comparison of New Zealand Regions,
Journal on Migration and Human Security, December 14, 2021, 22 pp.
Authors: Chris Wilson et al
In this article, the authors look at differences in the prevalence of nativism within New Zealand. Reviewing the literature, they discuss two broad explanations for nativism: concern about economic competition, and perceptions of cultural threat. But the authors are interested in answering the question of what level of immigration triggers anti-immigrant sentiment. They test two hypotheses: 1) Nativist sentiment is strongest in areas where immigrants make up a high proportion of the population; and 2) Nativist sentiment is strongest in areas with high increases in the immigrant population. Analyzing responses from a nationally-distributed survey to gauge the level of nativism, and data from the 2013 and 2018 New Zealand censuses, the authors found a strong correlation between nativism and the rate of growth of the immigrant population between the two censuses. Conversely, the proportion of immigrants in the population was not a strong predictor of nativism. The authors conclude with the observation that nativism may be on the rise in areas of New Zealand experiencing rapid demographic change, but in the long run, nativism may decline as the immigrant population grows and becomes more distributed throughout the country. (Maurice Belanger, Maurice Belanger Associates)

 

The ‘Great Replacement’ Theory, Explained

National Immigration Forum, December 1, 2021, 6 pp.
This report warns against the spread of the “Great Replacement Theory,” defined as the belief that “welcoming immigration policies — particularly those impacting nonwhite immigrants — are part of a plot designed to undermine or ‘replace’ the political power and culture of white people living in Western countries.”  The report identifies Tucker Carlson of Fox news as a leading proponent of this theory.  While the study of American history reveals clear antecedents to this kind of thinking, the report focuses on more recent manifestations, especially the role of French nationalist authors like Renaut Camus, fringe alt-right figures, and more mainstream channels like Fox News. The authors trace a trail of violence resulting from this form of thinking, including the 2018 attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue that killed 11 people. The report calls attention to people and groups that are working to counter this kind of extremism, including former President George W. Bush and the Anti-Defamation League. The report ends with a number of recommendations including carefully studying the history of nativism and extremism in American history.

 

Study Reveals Shortcomings and Opportunities in U.S. Immigration Coverage,
Internews, 2021, 6 pp.
Authors: Daniela Gerson et al
Published over the course of four years, Migratory Notes was a newsletter that tracked shifting immigration news and policy developments. When the newsletter ceased publication in 2020, the co-founders of the newsletter worked with an independent researcher to produce a report analyzing more than 4,500 stories selected for inclusion in the newsletter from January 2017 to August 2020. One key finding was that there was a preponderance of reporting on detention, enforcement, border issues, and asylum. Although these themes were related to the policy priorities of the Trump administration, the authors see a continuation of an historical trend to focus on criminality and exclusion in immigration coverage. The authors also see a geographic imbalance in reporting, with states like Arizona and Texas tending to dominate news coverage to the neglect of developments elsewhere in the country. The authors conclude with a number of recommendations, including enlisting the help of foreign language media to probe developments in local immigrant communities and focusing greater attention on the role of immigrants in the economy, and the process of their integration into American society.

Centering Race and Structural Racism in Immigration Policy Research,
Urban Institute, December 2021, 21 pp.
Authors: Hamutal Bernstein et al
This brief from the Urban Institute spotlights the deep intersections between the US immigration system and racism. It also calls attention to the neglect of this troubling reality in both policy and policy research circles. The paper draws on the outcomes of a September 2021 workshop with researchers and policy advocates, as well as a scan of recent policy research conducted at think tanks and policy-focused research institutes to assess gaps in the policy research space. The authors focus on how race and structural racism influence the immigrant experience, which immigrant groups have been understudied, and which policies and issues demand research attention. Noting the gaps in policy research around the centrality of racism to immigration policy and the distinct racialized experiences of diverse segments of the immigrant population, the brief emphasizes how overlooking immigrant racial diversity obscures the experience of key groups and hides from policy debates the structures and systems generating racialized outcomes. Immigration policy researchers, the authors write, have a responsibility to be intentional about highlighting racial equity issues, in particular the experience of immigrants of color and anti-Black racism, including the overlap of the immigration enforcement and criminal justice systems and the racial context of exclusionary immigration policies. The authors conclude with recommendations for areas where policymakers, policy research organizations, philanthropies, and advocacy organizations can work together to address these challenges, including addressing gaps in data sources, building capacity for multilingual data collection, elevating immigration and language concerns in equity measures, analyzing structures in addition to individual outcomes, cultivating trained research teams, and creating more collaborative settings to set research agendas. (Jeffrey Gross, Ph.D.)

How We Talk about Migration: The Link between Migration Narratives, Policy, and Power,
Migration Policy Institute, Metropolitan Group, the RAND Corporation, and the National Immigration Forum, October 2021, 46 pp.
Authors:  Natalia Banulescu-Bogdan et al
This report looks at various narratives by which people view migration in five countries that have experienced increased immigration in recent years: Columbia, Lebanon, Morocco, Sweden, and the United States. The goal of this report—and future related research—is to try to understand how certain narratives about migration become dominant. The authors believe it is urgent, especially in an era in which more people are on the move than ever before, to better understand how narratives form and spread — something that cannot be done with traditional public opinion research, which measures public attitudes, but does not provide context in which people are exposed to different messages about migrants.  After conducting a literature scan, the authors identified eight common themes. For example, both positive and negative narratives use a moral framework tapping into values held by society—compassion, for example, in the case of welcoming narratives, and the rule of law, in the case of restrictive narratives. The authors observe that negative narratives are particularly “sticky” or persistent—especially when alleging threats to safety, economic security, and cultural traditions. The report includes an appendix with a selection of the most salient migration narratives across the five countries studied, organized by theme (For example, narratives related to competition and scarcity). The authors provide an agenda for future research, to include field work to better understand where the public gets information, and how it decides which messages and messengers are the most credible. (Maurice Belanger, Maurice Belanger Associates)

Building Bridges on Immigration: A Report from Carnegie Corporation of New York,
Carnegie Corporation, October 2021, 19 pp.
Author: William H. Woodwell, Jr.
In this report, the author reviews the efforts of the Carnegie Corporation of New York to promote alliance-building on immigration, the history of this work, and opportunities for related work in the future. Among the initiatives discussed in this report are the research and organizing work of New American Economy, the “Bible, Badges, and Business” network of the National Immigration Forum, and the business mobilization efforts of the American Business Immigration Coalition.  Carnegie also supports a number of bipartisan and conservative-leaning organizations that conduct research, polling, outreach, and advocacy based on the premise that immigration is a good thing for the U.S. economy and society. Among these organizations are the Bipartisan Policy Center, the Niskanen Center, and the Cato Institute. The author also appeals to philanthropy to invest in alliance building as an essential strategy toward shifting U.S. policy, politics, and culture in the direction of advancing and protecting the rights and opportunities of U.S. immigrants. The report concludes with a chronology dating back to 1965 of Carnegie’s work in promoting bipartisan solutions to the nation’s immigration challenges.

 

The Four Freedoms Fund: A Philanthropic Partnership Helps Build A Movement
Carnegie Corporation of New York, April 2021, 27 pp.
Author: William H. Woodwell, Jr.
In 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave the Four Freedoms speech detailing fundamental freedoms all people should be able to enjoy including freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. This speech inspired the name of the Four Freedoms Fund, a public charity and funder intermediary founded in 2003 and housed at NEO Philanthropy, which has the aim of growing and strengthening local and state networks of immigrant rights organizations in the United States. The Carnegie Corporation of New York’s report, “The Four Freedoms Fund: A Philanthropic Partnership Helps Build a Movement” details the Fund’s history, mission, and recent achievements. The number of participating funders has grown from the original five foundations to some 20 today. The report notes how the Fund has several strategic priorities including: building movement infrastructure on the state and local level, combating the criminalization of immigrants, and increasing immigrant civic participation. The Fund also aims to support capacity-building for grantees, provide rapid response funds to grantee organizations, and encourage strategic communication on immigration-related issues. In 2020, the Fund distributed 214 grants to 144 organizations in 30 states and the District of Columbia, as well as national support organizations, totaling approximately $16.4 million. Through the report, Carnegie seeks to encourage more funders to join this grassroots “movement for dignity, opportunity, and equal rights.” (Erika Hernandez for The Immigrant Learning Center’s Public Education Institute)

Creative Placemaking & Welcoming: Tips and Tools for Integrating Arts, Culture, and Immigration,
Welcoming America & Artplace America, 2021
Author: John C. Arroyo
Rifts in public attitudes toward immigration policy underscore the need to understand changing demographics as an asset, not a threat. The migration experience can teach us more about unity than differences. Bridging Divides, Creating Communities: Arts, Culture, and Immigration is a field scan that highlights how arts and cultural strategies are effective tools in achieving immigration-related outcomes. The author lists four immigration priorities (goals): building welcoming and inclusive communities, empowering new Americans through relevant service provision, expanding alliances to build collective capacity, and establishing infrastructure in immigrant destinations. Each goal is paired with an arts and culture strategy so that artists and stakeholders can develop a shared language and mutual objectives for local communities to benefit from cross-sector collaboration and synergies. The field scan is based on an analysis of 140 creative placemaking projects, and semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 30 practitioners working in the immigration and/or arts and cultural sectors. Arroyo provides detailed case studies from across the country that offer successful and replicable models regardless of whether a locality is a traditional gateway city or new immigrant or refugee destination.  (The Immigrant Learning Center’s Public Education Institute)
 

E Pluribus Unum: Findings from the Cato Institute 2021 Immigration and Identity National Survey,
Cato Institute, April 27, 2021, 83 pp.
Authors: Emily Ekins & David Kemp
This report contains the results of a public opinion survey conducted by the Cato Institute and YouGov, with a large sample of 2,600 U.S. adults. The survey explores how Americans think about immigration and immigrants, as well as the beliefs and values underlying their opinions. The report separated responses by partisan leanings, by immigration “Restrictionists” and “Expanders,” by first- and second-generation immigrant (as well as native-born not second-generation), by liberal vs. conservative, and by other characteristics. The data reinforces the findings of other public opinion surveys of the past decade, i.e. that there is a wide partisan divide on the issue of immigration. Nearly two-thirds of immigration Restrictionists—those who think immigration should be decreased— are Republicans. Immigration Restrictionists are far more concerned about losing their place in society due to immigration. For example, 69 percent of Restrictionists worry about becoming a minority in this country, and 82 percent fear greater discrimination against whites over time. There was also a racial element to the fears of Restrictionists—they believed, for example, that immigrants from Africa and Latin America, as opposed to Europe and Asia, were more likely than Americans overall to collect welfare and commit crimes. The report also plumbs some of the feelings of first- and second-generation Americans, noting that these individuals feel they are “not seen as being American enough” by more established Americans. There is a lot more to explore in this report. While all public opinion surveys present merely a snapshot in time, this one does provide some insight into why people feel the way they do on immigration. (Maurice Belanger, Maurice Belanger Consulting)

What Immigration Issues Do Americans Hold Sacred? A Psychological Journey into American Attitudes Towards Immigrants,
American Immigration Council, February 18, 2021, 45 pp.
Authors: Nichole Argo & Kate Jassin
This report examines public beliefs about immigration, going beyond superficial public opinion polling, which merely identifies which Americans are pro- or anti-immigration. Instead, this study examines how deeply the public holds specific views on immigration. Based on a sample of 1,370 U.S. citizens, researchers asked respondents how they felt about 14 immigration issues, all of which were considered “sacred” to varying degrees by a significant percentage of respondents. If an issue were classified as “sacred,” respondents were not willing to negotiate their views on these issues, and this rigidity helps to explain why the immigration debate has become so uncompromising. Interestingly, a greater percentage of respondents who viewed one or more issues as “sacred” were pro-immigrant, perhaps reacting to Trump’s attacks on immigrants. Researchers found that the factor most strongly associated with holding an immigration stance sacred was a perception that the stance was central to the respondent’s party identification. Another strong predictor was the degree to which social and political identities were aligned (i.e. the degree to which one’s social life was confined to those with the same political affiliation). Demographics were least predictive of strongly held beliefs. Persons with restrictive stances tended to feel marginalized in today’s America, and felt threatened by immigration. The report concludes by noting that a response to immigration arguments in cases where a value is held sacred will likely backfire if the counterargument focuses on cost-benefit factors. Instead, a better approach is to find common ground among the core values held by opposing camps, and begin the dialogue from that starting point. (Maurice Belanger, Maurice Belanger Consulting)

Diversity and Prosocial Behavior,
Science, 369:6508, 04 September 2020, 13 pp.
Authors: Della Baldassarri & Maria Abascalz
(Full article only available to subscribers or by purchase)
Is it possible to have an ethnically diverse society that is cohesive and egalitarian? This study, published in Science, seeks to answer this question. The authors posit that most scholarly research on this topic has tried to determine whether diversity negatively affects trust and social capital. However, this prior research has relied on a narrow definition of “prosociality,” or behaviors that are intended to help others. The type of prosociality that helps heterogeneous societies function is different from the in-group solidarity that glues homogeneous communities together. Ethnically diverse societies can only be cohesive if prosocial behavior is extended to members outside of close-knit groups. The authors state that social differentiation and economic interdependence can help to accomplish this goal. They also argue that the effect of diversity on a society, whether towards integration or division, depends on the economic and social positions that its minority members occupy. (Deb D'Anastasio for The Immigrant Learning Center’s Public Education Institute)

The Extremist Campaign to Blame Immigrants for U.S. Environmental Problems,
Center for American Progress, February 1, 2021, 9 pp.
Authors: Jenny Rowland-Shea & Sahir Doshi
Environmentalism is generally seen as a movement to protect ecosystems and natural resources, but within certain right-wing groups, it serves both to cloak and fuel anti-immigrant sentiment. “The Extremist Campaign to Blame Immigrants for U.S. Environmental Problems,” published by the Center for American Progress, examines the so-called “greening of hate” and its negative effects on U.S. environmental and immigration policy. The article reports that certain right-wing pundits, politicians and policymakers point to immigrants as the primary cause of environmental degradation, despite the fact that immigrants are less likely to contribute to pollution than the U.S.-born. Identifying nine anti-immigrant groups funded, founded or supported by right-wing extremists to which almost every formal argument that claims immigrants are the cause of environmental degradation can be traced, the article analyzes historical and current uses of environmentalism and arguments purportedly couched in science to “greenwash” and disguise anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric and advocacy. The authors draw on scientific studies debunking the narrative that immigrants themselves are the cause of environmental degradation, pointing instead to reactive, xenophobic policies like the border wall, which has deeply scarred ecosystems and fragmented wildlife migration patterns, as true matters of environmental concern. A focus on anti-immigration measures, the article concludes, directs attention away from meaningful conservation policies, like the regulation of industry and the defunding of fossil fuel extraction, further harming those who already bear the brunt of environmental degradation, including Indigenous peoples, immigrants and people of color. (Kyla Schmitt for The Immigrant Learning Center’s Public Education Institute)

Immigration after Trump: What Would Immigration Policy That Followed American Public Opinion Look Like?
Public Religion Research Institute, January 20, 2021, 22 pp.
Authors: Robert P. Jones et al
When it comes to U.S. treatment of immigrants and refugees, the American public favors policies closer to those of President Biden than those of former President Trump. This is the conclusion of a large public opinion survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) in September 2020. The PRRI survey breaks down results by partisanship, age, religious affiliation, race/ethnicity, education, and whether respondents obtained their news primarily from Fox TV. Americans favor legal status for those brought to the U.S. as children, In addition, majorities are opposed to the Muslim ban, blocking refugees from entering the U.S. and constructing the border wall; and a large majority are opposed to family separation. Only one-third of Americans say that immigration is a “critical issue” -- the lowest proportion since PRRI first asked the question in 2013. Three in ten Americans agree with the statement “immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background.” In this, as with most of the questions, there was a significant partisan divide. The one group consistently taking the harshest view of immigrants were Republicans who trusted Fox News to provide accurate information. On the question of immigrants “invading” our country, 67 percent of Fox viewers believed this was true. The one question in which a majority of Americans saw immigrants as a threat was on the question of job competition. A majority (55 percent) think that immigrants “compete with hardworking Americans for jobs.” The upshot is that President Biden can proceed with reversing Trump’s immigration policies and know he will have the support of the majority of the public. (Maurice Belanger, Maurice Belanger Associates)

What Increases Public Support for Immigration? Results from a New Experiment
CATO at Liberty, December 29, 2020, 7 pp.
Authors: Emily Ekins & David Kemp
This article reports the results of an experiment measuring the impact of different messages on support for immigration. Researchers divided subjects into three groups, and had each group read a different newspaper clipping. When asked their opinion later, subjects who read an article emphasizing the history of immigrants adopting American customs and culture were significantly more likely to favor an increase in immigration compared to subjects who read an article emphasizing growing diversity and portraying diversity as an American strength. The “assimilation primed” subjects were also more likely to favor an increase in immigration compared to a control group who read an article about gardening. Researchers concluded that convincing people that immigration will not change the American way of life might increase their comfort with increasing immigration. This experiment comports with a growing body of work showing that messages emphasizing commonality between natives and immigrants may be more effective than those arguing the economic value of immigrants or of diversity in general. (Maurice Belanger, Maurice Belanger Associates)

The Political Effects of Immigration: Culture or Economics?
Harvard Business School Working Paper, November 2020, 50 pp.
Authors:  Alberto Alesina & Marco Tabellini
How do immigrants impact electoral politics in receiving countries? While many studies have examined the economic effects of immigration, only in the last decade have researchers focused on the cultural impact of immigration on electoral politics. After reviewing this emerging literature, the authors of “The Political Effects of Immigration: Culture or Economics?” argue that the traditional economic narrative, namely the claim that immigrants increase labor market competition, is not enough to explain the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment in electoral politics, particularly because immigration has proven to be economically beneficial to receiving countries. Instead, the study argues that cultural factors play an important role. These factors include stereotypes that native-born people hold about immigrants and misconceptions about the size, composition and cultural values of immigrant groups. These factors fuel narratives about immigrants as “outsiders” who pose a threat to the culture of receiving countries. Such narratives, the authors suggest, will likely intensify in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic as backlash against globalization grows and some fear their countries will be "infected," culturally and physically, by "outsiders." The study also examines how these economic and cultural forces together contribute to the political, and in turn electoral, effects of immigration, such as support for anti-immigrant parties and policies. The authors hypothesize that anti-immigrant sentiment also fuels the political right’s emphasis on limiting the role of government in economic redistribution (which could potentially benefit poorer immigrants) and protecting the cultural values and composition of the nation. In light of these findings, the authors suggest that future studies should examine this connection between anti-immigrant sentiment and far-right politics, as well as the link between the moral values of a society and the impact that immigration itself could have on these values. (Sonali Ravi for The Immigrant Learning Center’s Public Education Institute)

The Political Economy of Populism,
Social Science Research Network, March 19, 2020, 112 pp.
Authors: Sergei Guriev & Elias Papaioannou
This study seeks to understand the root causes of the rise of populism around the world. The authors use a definition of populism drawn from the work of Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde, who considered populism to be less an ideology and more a theory of society. He described populism as a “thin-centered ideology” that considers society divided into two homogeneous and antagonist groups: “the pure people” and “the corrupt elite.” The authors discuss the pervasiveness of populism both in the developed and developing world and trace milestones in the rise of populism culminating in the 2016 election of Donald Trump as president of the U.S. and the BREXIT decision in the U.K. The anti-elite thinking of populists means that they can dismiss the importance of independent institutions such as the media, and systems of checks and balances, as these institutions are tools used by the elite to maintain power. Science is also considered a bastion of elitism, which explains populist hostility to climate change theory. The balance of the paper reviews research that attempts to understand the conditions that give rise to populism. An overarching question is whether the main drivers of populism are economic or cultural, or some combination of the two. A separate section of the paper looks at the impact of immigration on populist movements. Their review of the research on this subject is rather inconclusive. Although immigration has a tendency to influence the populist vote, the size of the immigrant population may be less important than the pace of demographic change in a particular community. Moreover, some research suggests that the composition of the immigrant population, i.e. whether high-skilled or low-skilled, may also have some bearing on the growth of populist movements.

Immigration in the Era of Trump: Jarring Social, Political, and Legal Realities,
NYU Review of Law & Social Change, May 21, 2020, 19 pp.
Author: Engy Abdelkader
This interdisciplinary essay by Rutgers University Political Science professor Engy Abdelkader is adapted from remarks she delivered during a six-part webinar series sponsored by the American Bar Association in 2019-2020. She argues that Trump-induced xenophobia has led to disturbing realities for Muslim, Black, Latinx, and Jewish communities in the United States, as reflected in spikes in violence directed at these communities. These attacks, she writes, “overlap” and are “intersectional” in nature.  Moreover, “the causative relationship between inflammatory political rhetoric and discriminatory policies to hate-motivated violence is not merely a matter of popular perception.” Academic research also “bolsters claims that hateful speech incites lawless violence.” The balance of the paper examines the rationale for, and the impact on the separation of powers doctrine of, the President’s declaration of a national emergency to permit the diversion of funds for the construction of a barrier wall on the southern border. The author suggests that it might be time for Congress to reign in the executive branch through revisions to the National Emergencies Act, which was used to justify the president’s actions. Finally, the author looks at whether new domestic terrorism laws, either passed on the state or federal level, might serve to protect minority communities from future acts of violence.

Public attitudes toward immigration – Determinants and unknowns,
IZA World of Labor, March 2020, 11 pp.
Author: Mohsen Javdani
This report examines public opinion surveys across Europe and finds that concern about immigration has increased within many countries since 2005. Majorities across these countries favor tighter immigration policies. The author takes a look at motivations behind this concern and finds that anxiety related to the labor market and fiscal effects of immigration are less important than sociopsychological factors. Evidence for negative labor market and fiscal impacts of immigration are weak at best, so there is little objective reason for strong anti-immigration feelings springing from economic self-interest. Instead, perceived threats from immigrants are at least partly fueled by the cultural, religious, and ethnic differences of immigrants from the dominant population. In particular, the author notes, “prejudice is most prevailing when it is institutionalized by a dominant group,” which fears losing its superiority and privilege. The primacy of sociopsychological factors in anti-immigrant prejudice explains the limited effectiveness of policies meant to mitigate the economic impact of immigration. Policy makers interested in cooling anti-immigrant prejudices must address the sociopsychological concerns underlying them. (Maurice Belanger, Maurice Belanger Consulting)

Increasing Immigrant Inclusion: Family History, Empathy, and Immigration in the United States,
Immigration Policy Lab, Stanford University, March 18, 2020, 40 pp.
Authors: Scott Williamson et al
The United States, long considered a nation of immigrants, has in recent years experienced heightened polarization of opinions about immigration. While emerging research suggests that exposure or connection to migrants and their experiences increases the likelihood of positive attitudes, no study had explicitly tested whether “empathy,” or reminding people of their shared migratory experiences (even if occurring in earlier generations), could shift attitudes on immigration.  Increasing Immigrant Inclusion: Family History, Empathy, and Immigration in the United States published by the Immigration Policy Lab at Stanford University uses data from three separate survey experiments to show that priming Americans on their own family immigration histories can modestly increase support for immigrants and more generous immigration policies. Survey respondents included members of all major political parties and members of partisan subgroups generally perceived to have negative attitudes about immigrants. The authors suggest that, despite being small and short-term, those effects could be of value to election strategists and politicians as well as comparative studies of migration attitudes and larger-scale intervention efforts. (Jasmina Popaja for The Immigrant Learning Center’s Public Education Institute)

Rebuilding Community After Crisis: Striking a New Social Contract for Diverse Societies,
Transatlantic Council on Migration, January 2020, 29 pp.
Authors: Demetrios G. Papademetriou & Meghan Benton
This essay, prepared for the 20th plenary meeting of the Council in 2019, calls for a “fundamental rethink of what it means to live together amid diversity.” The European refugee crisis of 2015-16, the continuing migration crisis on the southern US border, and the backlash against immigration whipped up by populist politicians, have frayed the “social contract” of western societies and “diluted the idea of universal citizenship.” The authors suggest that we should strive for a new understanding of immigrant integration to replace the “by-now-trite conceptualization of integration as a two-way process…” This new understanding would produce “a new language of rights, duties, and fairness” applicable both to immigrants and native-born citizens. Instead of using civics or citizenship courses  “to impart static information about a particular set of values, countries can use them to encourage dialogue, manage conflict, and confront extremist views.” Integration efforts would be “community-driven,” taking advantage of a “swell of energy and enthusiasm among new actors eager to help newcomers settle in,” including immigrants and refugees themselves. Finally, integration would be a project that “extends beyond newcomers alone,” functioning  “as a tool to address broader social maladies, such as inequality.” This broader project may “paradoxically outgrow the language and governance of integration itself.” (Nicholas V. Montalto, Ph.D.)

Change is Hard: Managing Fear and Anxiety about Demographic Change and Immigration in Polarized times,
Welcoming America, January 2020, 22 pp.
Author: Suzette Brooks-Masters
The current great wave of immigration to the United States and the rapid demographic change the country is experiencing have transformed the immigration issue from one where, just a few decades ago, policy changes were left to a handful of experts and legislators to the hotly contested culture war battleground it is today. The author reviews research on important work being done to lower cultural tension and promote a sense of common purpose between immigrants and established residents. The paper cautions against the “immigrant exceptionalism” approach often taken by immigrant supporters, i.e. the tendency to emphasize the superior work ethic and entrepreneurial drive of immigrants and refugees compared to native residents. This approach can actually alienate members of a receiving community, who may feel their own needs and contributions are not sufficiently recognized. Instead, showing how immigrants are an integral part of the community may be a more effective approach. Research indicates that promoting empathy to combat resentment towards immigrants and racial minorities is most effectively done in one-on-one conversations, allowing people to feel they are being heard and respected. Such conversations are taking place in a number of promising “deep canvasing” projects across the U.S. The author makes a series of recommendations for building inclusion across our cultural divides, and suggests that organized philanthropy will have to shift its focus to scale up this enormously resource-intensive work. Government and employers can and should play a role as well. Our future, the author notes, will be determined by how well our communities and our nation manage the destabilizing reactions to demographic and other disruptive changes we are currently experiencing. (Maurice Belanger, Maurice Belanger Consulting)

Immigration Nation: Exploring Immigrant Portrayals on Television,
Define American & USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center, October 2018, 20 pp.
Immigrant characters on television do not accurately reflect the immigrant community in the U.S. and in fact are often depicted as undocumented, incarcerated and criminal. ”Immigration Nation: Exploring Immigrant Portrayals on Television,” uses content analysis of 47 television shows that aired in 2017-18 to examine how immigrants are represented in popular culture and the ways these depictions compare with the immigrant reality. The study found that female immigrants, Asian immigrants and Black undocumented immigrants were underrepresented on TV. For example, female immigrants comprise 52 percent of the foreign-born population in the U.S., but only 40 percent of immigrant characters on TV. This study also found that TV portrayals overrepresented immigrants as criminals, incarcerated and uneducated. While research has consistently shown that immigrants are less likely than U.S.-born individuals to commit a crime or be incarcerated, 34 percent of immigrant characters were associated with a crime. The study concludes with an analysis of widely used immigration terms in the sample of TV shows, the most common of which were “deportation” and “ICE.” (Deb D’Anastasio for The Immigrant Learning Center’s Public Education Institute)

Research Brief: Deep Canvass, Deep Change
The California Immigrant Policy Center, March 2019, 9 pp.
A new model of political canvassing based on holding in-depth and emotional conversations with voters is reshaping grassroots engagement on immigration and can be replicated in other areas and with other topics. “Deep Canvass, Deep Change” is a guide that chronicles the successful techniques of the California Immigrant Policy Center and its partner organizations, such as the Tennessee Immigrant and refugee Rights Coalition, in using a strategy called deep canvassing. The model, which solicits an emotional response from the interviewee to build connections between canvassers and voters, has been shown to be more effective than traditional canvassing scripts that focus only on repeating a list of talking points. The Center used data gathered from door-to-door canvassing teams in California and Tennessee to create a new script, which reshaped the voting decisions of eight percent of voters approached on the issue of undocumented immigrants and healthcare. The campaign also revealed that five percent of voters showed a measurable reduction in prejudice towards undocumented immigrants as a result of the deep canvassing conversation. The key element that canvassers identified as crucial to the success of their conversations was to invoke the memory of a time when the voter was shown compassion by others. The campaign found that this “real world persuasion tool” can be replicated by a variety of organizations and even builds the leadership skills of the canvassers. (Clare Maxwell for The ILC Public Education Institute)

Abolishing the Toxic “Tough-on-Immigration Paradigm,”
Harvard Kennedy School Journal of Hispanic Policy, May 17, 2019, 20 pp.
Author: Felipe De Jesus Hernández
In 2018, President Trump authorized the U.S. military to temporarily close sections of the U.S.-Mexico border, suspend asylum rights and fire tear gas and rubber bullets into migrants waiting on the Mexican side. These forceful actions were in keeping with decades of bipartisan, tough-on-immigration policy that have dominated U.S. action, particularly since the Reagan administration. This paper critiques the sociopolitical construct of the “undeserving criminal alien,” the basis of the tough-on-immigration paradigm, and offers an alternative “reparative justice paradigm for immigration policy.” The author asserts that both political parties still use that paradigm to shape immigration policies. For instance, both parties insist on maintaining the “deportation regime” in their immigration policy proposals, emphasizing security, enforcement and criminality. The writer claims that the U.S. approach to immigration “contradicts” and undermines the “mythical exceptional social vision” of the nation. The author, instead, proposes a new reparative justice model to replace the deserving-undeserving immigrant binary. In working toward a new paradigm, the author recommends that we strive for the abolition of for-profit detention, promote the ability of all workers to collectively bargain internationally, establish humane migration pathways, and “imagine a world beyond politically and economically constructed borders.” (Jasmina Popaja for The ILC Public Education Institute)

Social Cohesion Series,
Welcoming America, 2019-2020
Authors:  Susan Downs-Karkas & Rachel Peric
This series of four short papers, released to mark the 10-year anniversary of Welcoming America, updates the organization’s 2011 Receiving Communities Toolkit. The papers highlight innovations in “contact building, leadership engagement, and positive communication to foster greater belonging for all. The first paper (“Building Cohesive Communities in an Era of Migration and Change”) focuses on the political divisions and ethnic tensions that have intensified over the last decade and makes a number of broad recommendations, including taking “whole-of-community” approaches and working across the political spectrum. The second paper (“Innovations in Building Meaningful Contact Across Difference”) reviews the “proliferation” of contact building activities in recent years and profiles those programs that have produced encouraging results and that show potential for replication elsewhere. Among these programs are: The Welcome Table of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation and the Know Your Classmates program of the Beyond Differences organization.  The third paper (“Engaging Local Leaders to Foster Welcoming Communities”) identifies the various types of leaders, e.g. faith, local government, etc., who can set the tone for welcoming and belonging in a community and offers some recommendations to maximize their contributions.  The fourth paper will be released in early 2020.

The Language of Immigration Reporting: Normalizing vs Watchdogging in a Nativist Age,
MIT Center for Civic Media & Define American, 2019, 25 pp.
Authors:  Emily B. Ndulue et al
Terms such as “illegal immigrant” and “alien” are both dehumanizing and misleading, yet such phrases are increasingly used in media coverage of immigration. “Normalizing vs. Watchdogging in a Nativist Age” is a collaboration between researchers from Define American, the MIT Media Lab, and Harvard University that seeks to understand how news media have portrayed immigration during the years of the Trump administration. The authors found that, since 2014, there has been a “significant jump” in the use of derogatory language in major newspapers such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and USA Today. Not only was there an increase in the use of such language in reporting on the statements of politicians or commentators, the newspapers also used these terms in their original text at a higher rate. Furthermore, data showed that major newspapers increased their references to extreme anti-immigrant groups during that time frame. Over 90 percent of the time, for example, these newspapers treated the extremist Center for Immigration Studies as a neutral and legitimate source of information. The researchers cautioned that use of derogatory terms in media could reinforce anti-immigrant sentiment, and recommended that news agencies change their style guidelines to require more neutral terminology. According to the authors, “mirroring the corrosive language of this administration and of extremist groups is dehumanizing vulnerable populations and legitimizing hate speech.”
 

The Role of Contact and Values in Public Attitudes Towards Unauthorized Immigrants,
American Immigration Council, April 2019, 20 pp.
Authors:  Diana M. Orcés & Walter A. Ewing
Most assessments of public opinion towards immigration are based on polling data. This study argues that this approach prevents a thorough understanding of respondents’ sentiments towards unauthorized immigrants and how their views are formed. To address this shortcoming, the American Immigration Council paired its web-based, voluntary survey of 1,280 native-born U.S. citizens with an analysis of background information for these individuals, including personal values, political ideologies, socio-demographic variables, and opinions on social issues. Authors Diana Orcés and Walter Ewing sought to discover if a respondent’s personal values and prior contact with immigrants correlate with their views on unauthorized immigrants. One key finding was that positive, friendly contact with immigrants is associated with pro-immigration sentiments. Another important finding was that respondents who value empathy tend to have pro-immigrant sentiments whereas those who place a high value on authority have less favorable attitudes. These findings, the authors suggest, could help with the development of more effective strategies to improve the reception of immigrants in local communities. (Monica Leon for The Immigrant Learning Center’s Public Education Institute) 

In Search of a New Equilibrium: Immigration Policymaking in the Newest Era of Nativist Populism,
Migration Policy Institute, Transatlantic Council on Migration, November 2018, 35 pp.
Authors: Demetrios G. Papademetriou et al
This report from the Migration Policy Institute explores the connection between recent populist and far-right political successes and nativist sentiment within the European Union and the United States. The authors highlight the underlying economic insecurity in low- to middle-income groups and how their political and social grievances have played into the hands of extremists. After reviewing the drivers of public anxiety about immigration and the implications of seismic shifts in political systems, the report lays out a roadmap to forge more responsive policies that serve the interests of the broader society. Policymakers must determine how to respond to the forces that have driven support for populism, including concerns about cultural identity, rising income inequality, and pressures on limited public resources. They will also need to figure out how to build a new consensus on immigration, restoring public confidence in the integrity of migration management systems, including returning those without the right to stay,  and redressing the uneven costs of immigration, globalization and economic crises. To combat extremism and restore faith in democratic institutions, leaders should follow a “whole-of-government” approach, designing “mainstreamed services capable of meeting the needs of all vulnerable groups…”

More Latinos Have Serious Concerns About Their Place in America under Trump,
Pew Research Center, October 25, 2018, 54 pp.
Authors:  Mark Hugo Lopez et al
This report summarizes the key findings from a nationally representative telephone survey of 1,501 Hispanic adults conducted from July 26 to September 9, 2018. The authors compare the results of this survey with those from a similar survey conducted three years earlier. On just about all measures, attitudes have grown more negative. For example, half of Latinos say their situation has worsened over the past year, up from 32 percent three years ago. While assessments of personal finances among the general U.S. public have improved (50 percent now say “excellent” or “good”), the percentage among Latinos has dropped from 40 percent in 2015 to 33 percent in 2018.  Despite these attitudes, most Latinos (84 percent) say that they are proud to be Americans. The report also breaks down its findings by gender, age, educational background, and nativity, i.e. foreign-born vs. U.S.-born.

Introduction: Immigration and Changing Identities,
The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 4:5 (August 2018), 25 pp.
Authors:  Nancy foner et al
This is the introduction to a special issue of the Journal devoted to “Immigration and Changing Identities.”  All nine articles explore how immigrants and their children view themselves in racial and ethnic terms, how U.S.-born individuals view immigrants of various backgrounds, and how the artificial constructs of race and ethnicity may be changing based on the increasing importance of immigration in American life. Although racial and ethnic categories are often assumed to be fixed and unchanging, the authors observe that “the historical, sociological, and psychological evidence convincingly document their dynamics and flexible nature.” Complicating the analysis is the tendency of some people to shift their primary identities over the course of their lifetime, for gender to influence preferred identity, and for the ethnic composition of a particular locality to influence changing racial and ethnic hierarchy.  The article contains separate sections exploring historical and contemporary evidence regarding the changing boundaries and status of whites, Asians, Hispanics, and Blacks.  For whites, the authors discuss the feelings of insecurity that led to the election of Donald Trump, as well as the “downgrading” of whiteness in some communities where large numbers of educated Asian-Americans live. For Hispanics, they discuss the “confusion and debate” over whether Hispanics should be considered a race or and ethnic group.  For blacks, they explore the impact of African and West-Indian immigrants and their children (now 10 percent of all immigrants) on the meaning of African-American identity. The authors also explore the implications of growing rates of intermarriage on racial categories in the United States. Rather than assuming the people will fit into existing racial categories, we may see the emergence of new racial categories, such as a new “beige majority,” consisting of most Hispanics and Asians, or in another formulation, a tripartite division consisting of “whites, honorary whites, and collective blacks.” What is clear, according to the authors, is that we need more research to address the multitude of questions regarding changing racial and ethnic identity in the U.S. 

Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape,
More in Common, 2018, 156 pp.
Authors: Stephen Hawkins et al
This report discusses the findings of a large-scale national survey of Americans about the current state of civic life in the United States. Produced by More in Common, a new international initiative to build societies that show resilience against the growing polarization of modern political life, the survey reveals the “hidden architecture of beliefs, worldviews and group attachments” that are better predictors of political opinion than demographic factors like race, gender, or income. Rather than a binary left-right dynamic, the study identified seven groups of Americans (sometimes referred to by the authors as “tribes”) that are differentiated by their underlying beliefs. The authors assigned respondents to these tribes based on answers to a subset of 58 core belief and behavioral questions. Arranged from left to right on the political spectrum, the tribes are:  progressive activists, traditional liberals, passive liberals, politically disengaged, moderates, traditional conservatives, and devoted conservatives. While the progressive activists on the left (8 percent of respondents) and the devoted conservatives on the right (6 percent) have predictable and almost uniform views on a range of issues, including immigration, the other tribes are much more nuanced and flexible in their views. For example, 64 percent of Americans as a whole believe that people fleeing war and persecution should be able to take refuge in other countries, but only 27 percent of Devoted Conservatives hold that opinion. By segmenting the American electorate in this manner and analyzing underlying value and belief systems, the authors see the potential to generate creative solutions to the nation’s problems and to prevent political polarization from spiraling out of control. 

Out of Many, One: A Defining Moment for American Immigration,
National Immigration Forum in Partnership with More in Common, October 2018, 20 pp.
In the spring of 2018, the National Immigration Forum set out to engage in a series of “living room conversations” in 21 cities across the country. The purpose was to gain a greater understanding of the attitudes shaping perceptions of immigrants and immigration in the context of the nation’s deeply polarized politics. The Forum partnered with More in Common, which designed a discussion guide to use in these conversations. This report presents the insights gained from those conversations, and concludes that American identity is being reshaped as perceptions related to culture, security, and economy are shifting. These changes are not solely related to demographic change. Our changing demographics are taking place in the context of transitions in the economy, new technologies, and changing social norms. Many Americans focus their anxiety on demographic change, and question whether immigrants want to become part of the larger culture or whether they pose security or economic threats. On the other hand, those who develop personal relationships with immigrants are more understanding and appreciative. The challenge is to make the connection from the personal relationship with the immigrant next door to the perception of immigrants more broadly. Only when we assuage people’s fears on the issues of culture, security, and economy will we be able to accomplish long overdue policy reforms. To get there, we will need to engage specific audiences through a “diverse menu of constituency, communications, and advocacy strategies” that are touched on in the report. In the end, the report concludes, it will be the Americans in the “geographic and political middle of the electorate” who will decide whether “out of many, we can remain one.” (Maurice Belanger, Maurice Belanger Consulting)

Gifts of the Immigrants, Woes of the Natives: Lessons from the Age of Mass Migration,
Harvard Business School, Working Paper 19-005, 2018, 50 pp.
Author: Marco Tabellini
Over the past decade, increases in immigration to the United States and Europe have caused severe political backlash. Anti-immigrant sentiment is growing, and many right-wing movements have gained power by exploiting this situation. However, this is not the first time in U.S. history that immigration has been so controversial. This paper analyzes the economic and political impact of the so-called “age of mass migration” from 1880 to 1914, when millions of Europeans emigrated to the U.S. One of the main fears, then and now, was that immigrants would compete for available jobs and drive down wages in particular industries. The author’s analysis suggests that this fear was unfounded; immigrants had a significant and positive effect on native workers’ employment. In fact, for every 10 new immigrants, two more native-born Americans found a job. Nor is there any evidence that immigration drove down wages.  However, the mere presence of large numbers of immigrants, even in geographic areas benefitting the most from immigration, created a political backlash, suggesting to the author that “cultural fears,” rather than economic concerns, drove the restrictionist movement.  His findings are “consistent with a long-standing idea in the literature that diversity can be economically beneficial because of gains from specialization and complementarity, but may be politically hard to manage, resulting in lower preferences for redistribution, more limited public spending, and higher conflict.” (Deb D’Anastasio for The Immigrant Learning Center’s Public Education Institute)

The Dreamer Divide: Aspiring for a More Inclusive Immigrants Rights Movement,
Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, May 2018, 11 pp.
Author: Adrienne Pon
Since 2017, the Trump administration has advanced a series of anti-immigrant initiatives such as rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which had suspended deportation for about 800,000 young undocumented “Dreamers” – immigrant youth brought to the United States as children. This report argues that countering anti-immigrant sentiment and policies requires “inclusive strategies that avoid advancing the interests of some immigrants at the expense of other immigrants.” The authors utilize data from governmental, academic and news sources to show the importance of an inclusive immigrant advocacy strategy in the context of the Dreamer debate. The essay reviews past and present social movement strategies aimed at promoting the interests of some underprivileged groups at the expense of other similarly situated groups. For example, the majority of white women suffragists opposed the full inclusion of black women in their movement because they feared that resulting racial tensions would hinder the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. This example reminds us of potential hazards in the current Dreamer debate, which involves a divide between high-achieving youth considered blameless for their undocumented status and older undocumented immigrants whose image seems to suffer by comparison. If not bridged, legislation designed to aid DACA recipients could potentially harm other immigrants. To advance more inclusive immigrants’ rights strategies, the essay recommends that advocates scrutinize the impact of legislative efforts on all immigrants, stay attuned to the needs of their communities and collaborate with a variety of immigrant communities. This approach will “chip away at the systemic discrimination against immigrants in our society.” It might even be necessary, the author suggests, to drop the term “dreamer” altogether. (Jasmina Popaja for The Immigrant Learning Center’s Public Education Institute)

Economic Anxiety or Racial Resentment? An Evaluation of Attitudes Toward Immigration in the U.S. from 1992 to 2016,
Github, July 2018, 30 pp.
Author:  Steven V. Miller
The 2016 U.S. presidential election intensified the academic debate over whether anti-immigration attitudes are due to economic anxiety or racism. While many journalists suggested that it was due to economic anxiety, statistical analysis conducted by Steven V. Miller of Clemson University found that “racial resentment” is the main and most reliable predictor of attitudes toward immigration. In this study, Miller analyzed American National Election Studies data from 1992 to 2016 and Voter Study Group data from 2016 to determine whether anti-immigrant attitudes were caused by economic anxiety, i.e. a perceived or actual threat to the economic self-interest of the respondent, or racial resentment, i.e. the belief that immigrants or other minorities are violating core values of the white population. Miller’s findings indicate factors such as negative racial stereotypes, belief in Christianity and the English language as central to the American identity, perceived threat of the Spanish language and resentment towards the perceived lack of assimilation of immigrants were more likely to influence anti-immigration attitudes. In fact, Miller found no relationship between higher unemployment and an increase in votes for right wing, anti-immigrant candidates. Miller concludes that media outlets must be careful not to assume an economic basis for anti-immigrant attitudes. (The Immigrant Learning Center’s Public Education Institute)

Sources Shared on Twitter: A Case Study on Immigration,
Pew Research Center, January 29, 2018, 38 pp.
Authors: Galen Stocking et al
To investigate the spread of immigration-related "fake news," the Pew Research Center analyzed 9.7 million tweets containing immigration-related keywords and a link to an external website. The period of analysis was the first month of Trump's presidency. The researchers sought to understand the different types of immigration-related information sources accessed by people on Twitter. Limiting the analysis to 1,030 websites linked at least 750 times among 9.7 million tweets about immigration, the researchers found that 42 percent of links were to news organizations websites, 29 percent were to websites for other information providers (such as commentary blogs, nonprofits, or government officials), and 29 percent were to non-informational websites including spam. Further analysis revealed that 75 percent of tweets that included a URL linked to a news organization. The report also found that 56 percent of the tweets linked to "legacy" print- or broadcast-based news organizations, whereas only 19 percent of tweets linked to digital-native news organizations. The most frequently linked websites were The New York Times and The Hill, which each made up seven percent of the total number of links. They were followed by CNN and The Washington Post, which each made up four percent of links; and Fox News, which made up three percent. The findings suggest that "fake news" sites were not a major factor in the Twitter information stream about immigration. Although verifying the accuracy of all reporting was beyond the scope of this study, researchers found that few of the 1,030 sites carry the attributes of sites generally identified as publishers of "made-up" political news. (Tulane University, PHIL 3930)

A Two-Way Street:  How Immigration Shapes Everyday Life in Silicon Valley,
Migration Policy Institute, April 4, 2018, 11 pp.
Author:  Tomás R. Jiménez
This article is based on the author's research for his recently published book entitled, "The Other Side of Assimilation:  How Immigrants are Changing American Life," in which he explores the concept of "relational assimilation," described as a process of mutual accommodation whereby both immigrants and "established individuals" change as they adapt to one another over time. He defines "established individuals" as U.S. born people with parents also born in the U.S. Because of its large population of immigrants (37 percent compared to a national average of 13 percent), Silicon Valley is a fertile place to examine these trends.  The team of researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with 179 established individuals of varied socioeconomic and racial backgrounds. By living or working in close proximity to immigrants, U.S.-born persons become more familiar with the experiences, cultural practices, and challenges of immigrants. "Proverbial strangers are not so strange after all."  In fact, "the prominence of ethnic culture generated reflections among established individuals about their own identity and heritage."  In some communities in Silicon Valley, even the meaning of whiteness has changed, suggesting "academic mediocrity and a lackadaisical approach to school," whereas "acting Asian" stood for the opposite.  The author ends on an optimistic note, suggesting that the process of relational assimilation, with its potential to reshape the beliefs, identities, and attitudes of established residents, will create a "new sense of normal" that bodes well for the future of the country.

Status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 presidential vote,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, March 26, 2018, 10 pp.
Author: Diana C. Mutz
This study debunks the widely-held theory that the economic hardships experienced by working-class white voters largely explain Donald Trump's success in the 2016 presidential election. Using a nationally representative panel survey of just over 1,200 individuals (administered in both 2012 and 2016), matched with cross-sectional data supplied by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, the researcher found that the 2016 election was "more about dominant groups that felt threatened by change" and a candidate who hammered away at issues likely to appeal to this demographic, e.g. immigration, trade, and restoring America's standing in the world. "The rising sense of racial and global threat could not be more opportune for a candidate seeking to capitalize on status threat-based issues." While it is true that non-college-educated people voted for Trump in larger numbers, these are also the same people less likely to support international trade and more likely to display negative attitudes towards racial and ethnic diversity.  While "Trump's victory may be viewed more admirably when it is attributed to a groundswell of support from previously ignored workers," it would be a mistake to accept this interpretation of the election, even if the cause of displaced workers is an important one.  Moreover, as minority influence is likely to grow in the years ahead, "a sense of group threat is a much tougher opponent than an economic downturn, because it is a psychological mindset rather than an actual event or misfortune."

The Other America: White working class views on belonging, change, identity and immigration,
Centre for Trust, Peace, and Social Relations, Coventry University, UK, 2017, 63 pp.
Authors: Harris Beider et al
Throughout the 2016 presidential election cycle, campaign officials and members of the media used the term "white working class" to describe the supporters of Donald Trump. Through this qualitative study conducted during and after the election, the authors examine whether the definition and understanding of the "white working-class" are relevant to people who identify as white and working-class. The researchers conducted hundreds of interviews with community leaders and organized focus groups in five geographically diverse areas of the United States. They found that the criteria used to identify and analyze the white working-class-including education level, income and occupation-were too narrow and were adamantly rejected by individuals who self-identify as white working-class. Instead, study participants saw their group as characterized by a set of shared values, e.g. being honest, hardworking and providing for their families. Participants did not openly discuss "whiteness" but instead used coded language to lament changing demographics in their communities, which they associated with negative consequences like an increase in crime rates. They also felt that the value of "fairness" was being neglected, as some groups, they believed, received more favorable treatment than others. Finally, the study posits that one solution to this growing divide in America is organizing cross-racial coalitions so that white working-class and middle-class individuals can form relationships with immigrants and members of communities of color. For such coalitions to develop, however, will require investments in organizational capacity-building on the local level

Beyond Economics: Fears of Cultural Displacement Pushed the White Working Class to Trump,
PRRI and The Atlantic, May 9, 2017, 25 pp.
Authors: Daniel Cox, Rachel Lienesch, Robert P. Jones
The white working class voted for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. presidential election by a margin of roughly two to one. To illuminate the characteristics, attitudes and experiences that were most significant in predicting white working-class voters' support for Trump, researchers at the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) tested a variety of demographic, cultural and economic factors before and after the election that may have influenced these voters. Findings based on analysis of data from a national survey and focus groups were released in the joint PRRI and The Atlantic report Beyond Economics: Fears of Cultural Displacement Pushed the White Working Class to Trump. The researchers' multivariate logistic regression model identified four significant predictors of support for Trump among the white working class. They found that white working-class voters who identified with the Republican Party were 11 times more likely to support Trump. In addition, fear of cultural displacement was also a significant indicator of support for Trump, as white working-class voters who felt like "strangers in their own land" were more than three times more likely to support Trump. Similarly, those who favored deporting immigrants living in the country without authorization were 3.3 times more likely to express a preference for Trump. Economic concerns were less predictive of support for Trump, as white working-class voters who reported being in fair or poor financial shape were nearly twice as likely to support Clinton. The report also found that factors such as views on race and gender roles as well as degrees of civic engagement were not significant independent predictors. (Sarah Purdy for The ILC Public Education Institute) 

Muscular Public Relations Strategy to Paint Immigrants and Immigration as Negatives Embedded Deep Within Trump Executive Orders,
Migration Policy Institute, Policy Beat, March 22, 2017, 6 pp.
Authors:  Muzaffar Chishti, Sarah Pierce, & Jessica Bolter
This essay calls attention to an organized effort on the part of the Trump administration to produce and disseminate data designed to malign undocumented immigrants and to discredit those local governments providing "sanctuary" to them. Beginning in the rhetoric of the presidential campaign, this effort took concrete form in a series of presidential executive orders, including one requiring the Department of Homeland Security to provide weekly reports on criminal actions by noncitizens, quarterly reports "studying the effects of victimization by criminal aliens," and quarterly reports on the immigration status of noncitizens in the prison population. Another order requires Immigration and Customs Enforcement to issue a weekly "Declined Detainer Outcome Report," publicizing those states and localities that refuse to hold undocumented prisoners after having served their sentences. According to the authors, "such collection and use of governmental information to disparage other government entities is highly unusual, if not unprecedented." The thrust of this entire effort is to use the "public relations machinery" of the federal government to "build a perpetual news-generation mechanism that showcases instances where immigrants and refugees pose a threat to society or impose costs." The essay includes a table summarizing all of the new reporting, which if implemented, will produce at least 120 reports in the first year. "What use these reports will be put to beyond shaping public opinion remains to be seen."

Making America 1920 Again?  Nativism and US Immigration, Past and Present
Journal on Migration and Human Security, 5:1 (2017), 18 pp.
Author:  Julia G. Young
President Trump's America is looking increasingly like the America of the 1920s. This article examines the influence of nativism on immigration policy from the early 1870s to the present. President Trump has consistently appealed to nativist sensibilities, from promising a border wall between Mexico and the U.S. to proposing legislation banning travel from several Muslim-majority countries and cutting U.S. refugee admissions. The author suggests that Trump's campaign slogan of "Make America Great Again" is reminiscent of 1920s America, when immigration was restricted based on racist conceptions of culture. Nativism in the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries was predicated on the idea that certain immigrant groups were too culturally distinct to assimilate, too prone to criminality or revolutionary ideologies, or were taking job opportunities from working class whites. Such rhetoric resulted in severe immigration restrictions and quotas on Asian, eastern European, southern European and Slavic immigrant populations. While the nativism of 1920 is certainly similar in tone to the nativism of today, contemporary nativism is more likely to be directed towards immigrants from Mexico, Central America, Muslims and the undocumented than Asians or Europeans. While it may be impossible to eradicate nativism completely, the author proposes that advocates of immigration reform discuss the social and financial costs of nativism and do more to highlight the cultural and economic contributions of undocumented immigrants and Muslims. The author also recommends that opponents of nativism work to overturn nativist legislation in multifaceted and sustained efforts. (Sarah Purdy for The ILC Public Education Institute)

You are Not Welcome Here Anymore: Restoring Support for Refugee Resettlement in the Age of Trump,
Journal on Migration and Human Security, 5:2 (2017), 21 pp.
Author:  Todd Scribner
This essay analyzes one of the major forces that led to Trump's rise to the presidency: a strong anti-immigrant-and anti-refugee- worldview, shaped in part by Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations theory. This theory posits that conflicts around the globe are caused by clashes between cultures-not ideologies or nation states. Huntington believed that there are five major "cultural fault lines":  Western Christian, Russian Orthodox, Confucian (China), Islamic, and Latin American.  This belief system, shared and promoted by Steve Bannon and many of the President's advisors, fueled the hostility expressed during the campaign towards Muslim and Latin American immigrants and refugees.  Trump and his coterie of supporters worried that multiculturalism, would lead to the downfall of western, Christian civilization.  Huntington believed that the end of the Cold War would mark the end of ideological conflicts and the beginning of cultural conflicts, thus setting the stage for the upsurge of xenophobia in the U.S. In the remainder of the essay, the author discusses what can be done to firm up public support for refugee resettlement, especially in the face of this cultural worldview. He emphasizes "the centrality of culture in the legislative process," and calls for a rethinking of strategies for creating a more welcoming America. Traditional advocacy will probably yield limited results. Rather, reaching out to grassroots America with a different narrative about the U.S. place in the world will be crucial. (Deb D'Anastasio for The ILC Public Education Institute)

Unfit for the Constitution: Nativism and the Constitution, From the Founding Fathers to Donald Trump,
Robert Williams University School of Law, Legal studies Research Paper No. 174, February 24, 2017, 75 pp.
Author:  Jared A. Goldstein
While many Americans take pride in the "creedal conception" of American citizenship, i.e. the idea that devotion to the principles of the Constitution is the "glue" that holds together the nation despite our diverse backgrounds, many others have insisted that such devotion is not shared by people from certain ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds. Indeed, some historians have questioned whether this idealized notion of American citizenship ever really held sway in the United States. In this essay, Jared Goldstein explores a number of episodes in American history that tend to support this interpretation, including the Know-Nothing Movement in the pre-Civil War years that tried to exclude Irish immigrants on the basis of their loyalty to the pope and supposed antipathy to self-government; the anti-Chinese movement of the late 19th century that claimed that Chinese immigrants were incapable of supporting constitutional principles; the immigration restriction movement of the early 20th century that singled out southern and eastern Europeans as people incapable of embracing individualistic "Nordic" values; and the contemporary movement to exclude Muslim immigrants and to restrict Latino migration on the assumption that these groups cannot be trusted to support the Constitution. "All of these movements invoked allegations of hostility to the Constitution as the touchstone for identifying dangerous foreigners... To say that some people are hostile to the Constitution is simply a code for saying that they are hostile to the United States, that they are un-American." 

Welcoming America produces toolkits and other resources to build more accepting attitudes towards immigrants and refugees in local communities:
America Needs All of US: A Toolkit for Talking about Bias, Race and Change,
Welcoming America, 2015, 13 pp.
Neighbors Together: Promising Practices to Strengthen Relations with Refugees and Muslims,
Welcoming America, 2016, 17 pp.
Author: Mahvash Hassan
Stand Together: Messaging to Support Muslims and Refugees in Challenging Times,
Welcoming America, 2016, 25 pp.
Authors:  Claudette Silver & Amanda Cooper
Welcoming America (WA) promotes and supports a movement of more than 100 local governments striving to create more inclusive and welcoming communities. The organization addresses the fears and concerns of established residents, emphasizes the importance of face-to-face dialogue between people of diverse backgrounds, and publishes training materials to be used by local leaders working to build harmonious relationships between people. WA also stresses the connection between a welcoming environment for immigrants and refugees and the vitality of local economies. Over the last year, WA has produced a number of toolkits and resources that may prove especially valuable as the nation transitions to a new administration in Washington that appears to be less friendly to immigrants and refugees. America Needs All of Us: A Toolkit for Talking About bias, Race, and Change seeks to help people overcome the discomfort they may feel in talking about race and ethnicity. The target audience is the "moveable middle...those whose minds are not yet made up about immigration and the changes they may be seeing in their community."  The toolkit suggests a number of  "top-line messages" that may prove effective in changing people's attitudes, and offers some "talking points for tough questions" that may arise during such conversations. Neighbors Together: Promising Practices to Strengthen Relations with Refugees and Muslims focuses on communities around the country that have grappled effectively with tensions arising from demographic change and the fear-mongering of hate groups.  Funded by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (HHS), the publication is designed to build greater community support for refugees.  The report profiles projects that use strategies, such as: developing preventative relationships; promoting better information sharing; building intercultural alliances; participating in joint community projects; drawing on the arts as a way of connecting people; and encouraging greater civic engagement on the part of refugee and Muslim communities. A companion piece to this toolkit is Stand Together: Messaging to Support Muslims and Refugees in Challenging Times. Drawing on public polling data from the Public Religion Research Institute and The Brookings Institution, this publication highlights a number of "winning messages" that can help community members "break through the noise we are surrounded by." The authors also emphasize the power of story-telling and give examples of story themes that can sway people who are "unsure."

Explaining Nationalist Political Views: The Case of Donald Trump,
Gallup, August 11, 2016
Author: Jonathan T. Rothwell
Based on 87,000 interviews that the Gallup organization conducted over the last year, there is little evidence that Trump supporters have been disproportionately affected by foreign trade or immigration, compared to those who oppose him.  The results also suggest that his supporters, on average, do not have lower incomes than other Americans, nor are they more likely to be unemployed. These conclusions seem to fly in the face of the conventional wisdom about Trump's base of support. Although Trump supporters tend to have unfavorable attitudes towards immigrants, "they are also the least likely to encounter an immigrant in their neighborhood...those who view Trump favorably are more likely to be found in white enclaves - racially isolated Zip codes where the amount of diversity is lower than in surrounding areas."   However, Trump supporters do tend to live in areas of "low economic mobility," suggesting that their children may be struggling to gain a foothold in the economy or that they themselves may have suffered a decline in earnings, despite their relative privileged status. Trump supporters also tend to congregate in areas with poor health outcomes. "These findings suggest a need to understand how even seemingly affluent voters may take extreme political views when their health status and the well-being of their children fail to meet their expectations. The results also suggest that housing and social integration can moderate extreme political beliefs, consistent with contact theory."

How Immigration and Concerns about Cultural Change are Shaping the 2016 Election: Findings from the 2016 PRRI/Brookings Immigration Survey
Public Religion Research Institute, Brookings Institution, June 3, 2016, 60 pp. Authors: Robert P. Jones, Daniel Cox, E.J. Dionne Jr., William A. Galston, Betsy Cooper, & Rachel Lienesch
This paper reports on a survey of a large sample of Americans in all 50 states, conducted in the spring of 2016. The survey included questions on the direction of the country, the economy and personal financial well-being; levels of anxiety about terrorism, crime, and unemployment; and opinions on trade and taxation. The survey also asked Americans how they feel about immigration and cultural change, and about the upcoming presidential election. The survey also attempts to measure orientation towards authoritarianism. Regarding immigration and cultural change, the survey asked respondents about their level of comfort with immigrants who don't speak English, perceptions about discrimination against whites and Christians, and attitudes about Islam. The study also asked respondents to describe some traits of immigrants, and whether they think immigrants strengthen the U.S. or take jobs from Americans and drive down wages. There were also a number of questions focused on immigration policy-the perception of the number of deportations in recent years, whether undocumented immigrants should be allowed to stay (most say yes), whether the U.S. should build a wall on the Mexican border (most say no), and whether the U.S. should ban Syrian refugees (most say no again). Responses to this survey are broken out by race and ethnicity, party affiliation, educational attainment, and religious affiliation, providing a rich description of the differences in attitudes that Americans hold on these important issues. (Maurice Belanger, Maurice Belanger Consulting)

 

Understanding and Addressing Public Anxiety About Immigration
Transatlantic Council on Migration, Migration Policy Institute, July, 2016, 23 pp.
Authors: Demetrios Papademetriou & Natalia Banulescu-Bogdan
The authors begin with the assumption that anxiety about immigration is not inevitable and that governments can take action to reduce it. They note that anxiety around immigration is a complex phenomenon and that it cannot be attributed to any single factor. For example, the authors point out that there is no consistent correlation between the actual size of the influx of immigrants and the response of the public in the receiving nation. They suggest five contextual factors that set the stage for public anxiety about immigration- 1) Sudden flows of immigrants that outpace the ability of the country or local community to receive them, 2) The perception that immigrants are competing with the native population for scare resources, 3) The feeling that immigrants do not share the values or identity of a receiving community, 4) Security fears shaped by the media that lead to a generalized mistrust of a particular immigrant community, and 5) The perception that the government is not equipped to handle the flow of immigration. The authors discuss each of these factors, examining how perceptions of conditions may differ from what data suggests. However, they urge governments to not simply write off these potential misperceptions and instead to address existing concerns by taking action, including simultaneously framing immigration as part of the national narrative and treating concerns about immigration as legitimate. They repeatedly suggest that when anxiety about immigration is ignored, people are more likely to gravitate to anti-immigrant parties and movements. (Erik Jacobson, Montclair State University)

Playing the Trump Card: The Enduring Legacy of Racism in Immigration Law
Berkeley La Raza Law Journal, 26:1 (2016), 46 pp.
Authors:  David B. Oppenheimer, Swati Prakash, & Rachel Marie Burns
This article grew out of a 2011 European conference on "The ‘others' in Europe and Beyond" and will eventually be published in revised form in a book featuring papers from the conference.  Looking at the historical experience on major immigrant communities in the U.S, including the Irish, Jews, Italians, Chinese, Japanese, and Mexicans, the article finds that from the earliest days of the republic, "racism and xenophobia have been a driving force behind immigration law in the United States...In every generation of American immigration, the predominant immigrant group has been the victim of discrimination and oppression." The authors call attention to the "paradox" of a nation desperately needing successive groups of immigrants for their labor but denying them the welcome they deserve. The article also attempts to define the meaning of the terms assimilation (applicable, they suggest, to European immigrant groups), integration (applicable to Chinese and Japanese), and racialized non-white others - a category with shifting boundaries, which may or may not encompass Mexican immigrants and their descendants in the future.

When Islamophobia Turns Violent: The 2016 U.S. Presidential Election
The Bridge Initiative, Georgetown University Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, May 2, 2016, 76 pp.
Author: Engy Abdelkader
The mission of Georgetown University's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, since its founding in 1993, has been to build stronger bridges of understanding between the Muslim world and the West. Since the late 1990s, it has also studied the emergence and impact of Islamophobia. This report provides detailed information on violent incidents directed at Muslim immigrants and Muslim religious institutions in the U.S. from the beginning of 2015 through March of 2016.  The authors see a clear relationship between the heated, anti-Muslim politic rhetoric of Donald Trump and other Republican candidates for president and the increasing frequency of such incidents. Since the first candidate announced his bid for the White House in March 2015, there have been approximately 180 reported incidents of anti-Muslim violence, including: 12 murders, 34 physical assaults, 49 verbal assaults or threats against persons and institutions, 56 acts of vandalism or destruction of property, 9 arsons, and 8 shootings or bombings.  This represents a 17 percent increase over the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2014.

 Does Information Change Attitudes Towards Immigrants? Evidence from Survey Experiments,
Social Science Research Network, April 21, 2016, 55 pp.
Authors:  Alexis Grigorieff, Christopher Roth, & Diego Ubfal
This research suggests that the dissemination of accurate information about immigration can help to reduce biased attitudes and change policy preferences. The authors analyzed a representative cross-country sample of 19,000 people, half of whom were prompted with accurate information about immigration and half of whom were not. The probability that the "treatment group" felt that there were too many immigrants was 12 percentage points lower than those who did not receive the information.  The authors also performed a similar online experiment with 800 participants, where half of the sample received some general information about immigration, while the other half did not. Members of the treatment group "update(d) their beliefs about immigrants, and they donate(d) more money to a pro-immigrant charity."  Interestingly, self-described right wing or Republican participants "respond(ed) more strongly to the information treatment, both in terms of their views on immigrants and in terms of their policy preferences."

Engaging the Anxious Middle on Immigration Reform: Evidence from the UK Debate
Transatlantic Council on Migration, Migration Policy Institute, May, 2016, 27 pp.
Authors: Sunder Katwala & Will Somerville
This research on public opinion in the UK, prepared in conjunction with the 2015 plenary meeting of the Transatlantic Council on Migration, attempts to provide a more accurate and nuanced analysis of the various streams of opinion on migration-related questions. "Migration rejectionists," representing approximately a quarter of the UK population, take a uniformly hostile stance on all forms of migration, whereas "migration liberals" - also about a quarter of the population - seem to be content with current levels of immigration. By far the largest group, however, are the majority in the "anxious middle."  They recognize the benefits of migration, but also are concerned about the possible downside of migration, including greater use of welfare and public services on the part of some immigrants, potential job competition, and threats to the national culture. The authors argue that policy makers need to take these concerns into account, rather than dismissing them as irrelevant or illegitimate.  They also fault the current Conservative government for making promises it couldn't keep, e.g. cutting net migration to an annual total of 100,000, and thereby eroding public confidence in the government's handling of immigration, and spurring the growth of the right wing, anti-immigrant UKIP party. "The current government...has continued efforts to project a stance of tough control on immigration, despite evidence suggesting that these promises do not reassure the anxious middle and do not deliver what the public are asking for."

Strangers as Neighbors Toolkit: One Parish One Community - A Guide for Engaging United States Catholic Congregations in Difficult Dialogues,
Center for Faith & Public Policy, Fairfield University, 2016, 41 pp.
Authors: Jocelyn M. Boryczka & David Gudelunas
The discussion of immigration reform within a faith-based framework can be a contentious issue because of the principle of the separation of Church and state. Researchers at Fairfield University held focus groups at two different Catholic parishes on Long Island, NY, which revealed that tensions mount within congregations when priests introduce political issues directly into religious services. In response to these findings, the researchers created this Toolkit for Catholic congregations to engage in productive, faith-based discussions on immigration outside of formal religious services. Specifically, it provides a six-stage process for facilitating discussion with detailed examples of framing and messaging exercises, relevant Bible verses and prayers, and related Catholic social teachings. The authors recommend using the Toolkit to allow congregation members to move from a polarizing political discourse to one based on a shared humanity extending from the parish to the global community. The Toolkit can also be adapted to broach issues other than immigration. (Karly Foland for The Immigrant Learning Center Public Education Institute)

Managing Religious Difference in North America and Europe in an Era of Mass Migration
Transatlantic Council on Migration, Migration Policy Institute, April, 2016, 14 pp.
Authors: Demetrios G. Papademetrious, Richard Alba, Nancy Foner, & Natalia Banulescu-Bogdan
This paper compares and contrasts the experiences of Muslim immigrants in Europe and North America. The authors suggest that religious differences, per se, have greater salience in the European context because of the larger numbers of Muslim immigrants in Europe (nearly 40 percent of all non-European immigrants in 2010), and the fear that Islamic values and practices may be incompatible with European traditions of free expression, gender equality, and equal rights for previously stigmatized groups such as homosexuals. In the United States, on the other hand, Muslims constitute only 8 percent of all new permanent residents between 1992 and 2012, and religious pluralism -- whether Christian, Jewish, or Muslim -- is an established reality so that Muslims are not feared so much as a religious minority, but more as a potential security threat. Moreover, Muslims in the U.S. come from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds, show greater socioeconomic success, and have a larger percentage of people born in the U.S. The rest of the paper looks at the "macrolevel factors" that work to advance the full integration of religious minorities, including the "selectivity of immigration policies," the support of ethnic and religious communities -- which paradoxically facilitates assimilation into the larger society; and the removal of barriers to the economic integration of the second generation. But these factors alone do not guarantee success. Political leaders must provide wise leadership to manage social change.

How Americans View Immigrants, and What They Want from Immigration Reform: Findings from the 2015 American Values Atlas,
Public Religion Research Institute, March 29, 2016, 23 pp.
Authors: Robert P. Jones, Daniel Cox, Betsy Cooper, & Richard Lienesch
The Public Religion Research Institute's 2015 American Values Atlas is based on interviews, conducted with a random sample of 42,000 American adults. The large sample size allows for analysis at the state and metropolitan level. This report, focusing on attitudes towards immigrants and immigration reform, shows that a majority of the public views immigrants positively-something that is hard to discern in present day political discourse. There are, however, important differences among groups in thinking about immigrants as strengthening American society or as a threat to our traditional customs and values. The report details differences by age, race and ethnic group, political and ideological affiliation, and religious affiliation. The report also details attitudes by state and region. On the question of immigration reform, a majority of Americans (62 percent) favor a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, provided they meet certain conditions. An additional 15 percent say that these immigrants should be allowed to stay but not become citizens. There is majority support for a path to citizenship in every state except South Dakota, but even in that state, only 32 percent think that undocumented immigrants should be identified and deported (Maurice Belanger, Maurice Belanger Associates).

Sanctuary Cities and Dog-Whistle Politics,
University of Denver Sturm College of Law, Legal Research Paper Series, Working Paper No. 16-08, March 16, 2016
Author: Christopher N. Lasch
This essay deals with the use of coded racial narratives to set political and policy agendas in the "crimmigration" arena. The author focuses on the tragic death of Kathryn Steinle in San Francisco, accidentally shot and killed by an undocumented immigrant who had been released from the custody of the San Francisco Sheriff's Department after completing a federal prison term for illegal entry into the U.S.  Donald Trump, other Republican candidates for President, and Fox News seized upon this incident to condemn San Francisco's sanctuary policy. Donald Trump used the incident to justify his hardline immigration policies and to support his unflattering characterization of Mexican immigrants. According to the author, the complexity of the Steinle case got lost in the telling of the story. The author sees parallels with the Willy Horton narrative used by the George H.W. Bush campaign in 1988 to discredit his Democratic opponent as being "soft on crime."  In both cases, the story becomes a way to mask the underlying racial message, i.e. instead of an overt attack on Blacks and Latinos, the target becomes the alleged criminality rampant among members of both groups.

The Anti-Immigrant Lobby: The White Nationalist Roots of the Organizations Fighting Immigration Reform,
People for the American Way, 2015, 16 pp.
This report traces the origins of three organizations dominating the immigration restriction movement in the U.S: the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), NumbersUSA, and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) – all of which, according to the authors, “have ties to the dark underbelly of the anti-immigrant movement, which smears immigrants using racial terms, plays to fears of demographic change, and caters to those who want the U.S. to be and remain a nation run by and for a white majority.” The “architect” of all three organizations was John Tanton, who “has made it clear that one of the major factors driving his anti-immigration activism is his interest in the United States remaining a majority-white nation.”  The report notes that the three organizations are “heavily funded by foundations connected to a single wealthy conservative family, the Scaifes.” In the 2013 tax year, the Colcom Foundation – one of these foundations – “provided FAIR with a little over $4 million of the $6.3 million in grants and contributions it received that year; about $1.9 million of the $2.4 million that CIS took in; and nearly $4 million of the $6.3 million received by Numbers USA’s educational arm.” The report critiques the work of the Center for Immigration Studies -- the so-called “think tank” of the restrictionist movement – which produces studies that “have been exposed as flawed or have been debunked.” Despite its suspicious history and scholarship, the group is regularly called upon to provide testimony at congressional hearings. As political candidates stoke the anxieties and prejudices of segments of the white electorate to gain electoral advantage, the authors of this report fault these groups for providing a cloak of legitimacy to extremist views.

Residential Segregation: A Transatlantic Analysis
Transatlantic Council on Migration, Migration Policy Institute, September, 2014, 14 pp.
Author: John Iceland
The Transatlantic Council commissioned research for this paper in connection with its 11th plenary meeting in November of 2013. Acknowledging that immigrant residential segregation is often transitional and voluntary in nature, the authors discuss the circumstances under which such segregation can interfere with the goal of immigrant integration. They also review and evaluate an array of policy interventions designed to combat the ghettoization of immigrants and other minorities. Such interventions may be broadly classified as direct and indirect. Direct interventions might include efforts to redistribute low-income housing throughout the city or to develop mixed-use housing.  Indirect interventions seek to address the underlying causes of residential segregation, such as altering the skill mix of new immigrants (on the assumption that high-skill immigrants may be less likely to settle in ethnic enclaves) or giving immigrants access to the language training, citizenship acquisition, and economic opportunities necessary to succeed in society. The author concludes that the latter type of intervention, i.e. addressing underlying causes, will "reduce the risk that (immigrants) become economically and residentially marginalized."  The paper includes a table showing "dissimilarity indexes" for immigrant communities in various cities in the EU and the U.S. For example, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in the U.K. are among the most segregated (over 70), whereas Turks in Dusseldorf and Algerians in Paris are among the least (below 30). The chart shows comparable rates for Blacks and Hispanics in the U.S.

Opening Borders: African Americans and Latinos Through the Lens of Immigration,
Harvard Latino Law Review, 17:1, 2014, 64 pp.
Author:  Maritza Reyes
This essay is a plea for honest dialogue between African Americans and Latinos on the subject of intergroup racism. Reyes contends that racism is "the elephant in the room" when it comes to relationships between these two groups, and as they increase in size, the dynamic between them will shape the future of the nation. Although there is abundant literature on racial dynamics between Whites and minorities, the question of how minorities engage in "racialized politics" is a kind of "taboo subject." One way to gauge the extent of such attitudes, she believes, is through the lens of immigration reform politics. Sometimes, the media uses a "divide-and-conquer strategy" to exaggerate the level of tensions between the two communities, as they did during the 2008 Democratic Primary between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. However, there are real and worrisome examples of anti-Black sentiment within the Latino community (the author discusses the Latin American hierarchy of race), and anti-Latino sentiment within the Black community (she references Black support for nativist movements in American history).  One of the greatest fears among Blacks "is that Latinos who assimilate into whiteness will also assimilate into some of the privileges associated with whiteness, including racism against Blacks."  For these reasons, she urges African Americans and Latinos to engage in the arduous work of coalition-building. The ultimate success of immigration reform may hinge on the success of these efforts.

Fostering Welcoming Communities Through Dialogue,
Welcoming America, n.d., 28 pp.
Author:  Maggie Herzig
In order "to help strangers become neighbors," Welcoming America has partnered with the Public Conversations Project to produce this publication -- part of a toolkit of resources developed by Welcoming America to help fulfill its mission of promoting mutual respect and cooperation between immigrants and native-born Americans. The publication provides guidance on how to initiate, manage and evaluate structured, face-to-face communications between immigrants and native-born Americans. Welcoming America favors "dialogue," by which it means a "conversation that is carefully designed and facilitated,"  over other forms of interaction. Participants should understand each other's experiences, reflect on their own experiences, develop a curiosity about the lives and perspectives of others and move beyond stereotypes. The publication also contains suggestions regarding communication agreements and questions to draw out "deep sharing." For those interested in greater detail about dialogue method, Public Conversations Project offers a 172-page guide, Fostering Dialogue across Divides: A Nuts and Bolts Guide from the Public Conversation Project. (Denzil Mohammed)

Social Cohesion Radar (Measuring Common Ground): An International Comparison of Social Cohesion
Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2013, 73 pp.
Authors: Georgi Dragolov, Zsófia Ignácz, Jan Lorenz, Jan Delhey, Klaus Boehnke
The study seeks to address a gap in cross-national data comparisons by measuring the quality of "social cohesion" in 34 countries, including the U.S. The authors used 12 different data sets in their analysis and tracked changes over a 25-year period ending in 2012. The study identifies and defines three domains of social cohesion: social relations, connectedness, and focus on the common good. Within each of these domains, three measurable dimensions are identified, for a total of 9 dimensions. Examples of dimensions include Social Relations 1.3 (Acceptance of Diversity), i.e. people accept individuals with other values and lifestyles as equal members of society; Connectedness 2.3 (Perception of Fairness), i.e. people believe that society's' goods are fairly distributed and that they are being treated fairly; and Focus on the Common Good 3.3 (Civic Participation), i.e. people participate in society and political life and enter into public discussion. The approach taken in the study "specifically avoids equating cohesion and homogeneity," because a model seeking to transcend differences is "outdated and fails to account for the reality of diverse and complex societies."  The results indicate that social cohesion is strongest in Denmark, followed by Norway, Finland and Sweden. The English-speaking non-European countries of New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United States have the next highest rankings. Although specific policy recommendations were beyond the scope of the study, the authors note that "there is no one-size-fits-all approach," as countries like Sweden and the U.S. achieve relatively high scores, despite different social conditions. However, successful countries have "achieve(d) a broader kind of inclusion aimed at increasing acceptance for immigrants and, in general, anyone with a different lifestyle."

Stronger Together: Making the Case for Shared Prosperity Through Welcoming Immigrants in Our Communities
Welcoming America, n.d., 19 pp.
This messaging "toolkit" was prepared by Welcoming America, a national organization comprised of a network of local affiliates working to promote understanding between foreign- and native-born Americans. For immigrant-serving and other organizations seeking to inject a positive tone into the immigration debate, Stronger Together suggests messaging strategies that can resonate with key audiences in their communities, including legislators, community and business leaders, and employers. Effective themes might include "stronger together," "innovation" and "vibrant communities." The toolkit recommends partnerships with local universities or chambers of commerce to quantify the economic impact of immigrant tax payments, buying power, and entrepreneurship. In addition, advocates can remind both legislators and the "wide middle" of undecided citizens of the values that are shared between the foreign- and native-born. In these ways, immigrant-serving organizations can foster a more welcoming environment conducive to immigrant integration and community prosperity. (Denzil Mohammed)

The Role of Consular Programs in Fostering Welcoming Communities,
Welcoming America, n.d., 8 pp.
This brief argues that there is an important role for foreign consulates to play in creating a more receptive climate for immigrants in local communities. The brief describes a partnership between Welcoming America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to addressing the fears and concerns that native-born Americans have regarding immigration, and the Embassy of Mexico and its consular assistance programs in three states: Kansas, Minnesota, and Utah. Through their reputation, contacts, and resources, the consulates can help to create or strengthen local chapters of Welcoming America and to build stronger relations between new and established residents.

Immigration and Gender: Analysis of Media Coverage and Public Opinion,
The Opportunity Agenda, December, 2012, 50 pp.
In order to gain a better understanding  of whether women's concerns are adequately reflected in conversations about immigration, the authors of this report analyze how current media discourse and public opinion view women immigrants in the areas of immigration status, family, and gender roles. The researchers examined the content of over 30 media outlets, reviewed data from 25 public opinion surveys conducted in 2010-2012, and gleaned information from a linguistic study, excerpts of which are included in the Appendix. The findings suggest that the American public has a distorted perception of the lives of foreign-born American women.   Women immigrants are often depicted as powerless victims whose contributions to society as family stewards and civic leaders are overlooked. The report recommends that advocates, policymakers, journalists, and others work to better inform public discourse and opinion and build support for policies that encourage the full integration of women immigrants into American society.  The report makes nine recommendations to correct the distorted media image of immigrant women. (Jessica Spooner)

Anatomy of a Modern Day Lynching: The Relationship between Hate Crimes against Latina/os and the Debate over Immigration Reform,
University of California (Davis), Legal Studies Research Paper, October, 2012, 39 pp.
This paper argues that high levels of hate crimes against Latinos and immigrants are "an indirect result of the volatile national debate over immigration." As a case example, it recounts the killing of Mexican immigrant Luis Ramirez in the small town of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania in 2008. The authors argue that such violence is likely to continue until Congress passes fundamental immigration reform. They also propose a series of measures designed to "reduce, remedy, and deter  hate violence" against Latinos and immigrants, including reforms to ensure more diverse juries,  limitations on peremptory challenges to jury selection, allowing bilingual Spanish speakers and non-citizens  to serve on juries, stepped-up federal prosecutions of hate crimes, a clearer demarcation of federal vs state power to regulate immigration, strengthening the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and the creation of local human rights commissions to investigate hate crimes.


Media Coverage of Migration in the Americas,
Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas and Open Society Foundations, August, 2012, 21 pp.
This report summarizes the 9th Austin Forum on Journalism in the Americas, which took place in Austin, TX, in September 2011. A gathering of some 50 journalists, specialists and NGO representatives met over two days to identify ways to improve media coverage of international migration in the Americas. The report examines media coverage in the U.S., Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. The consensus was that "migration is more complicated than it seems, and its coverage is usually superficial." Participants agreed that in-depth analysis, balance and objective journalism are needed to better understand and cover immigration issues.  Among the suggestions offered in the report are more stories about immigrants and their families, historical explanations for migration and investigations into related issues such as government policies, health issues, economic and social factors, education and housing.  In this way, participants noted, journalists would communicate the broad and profound effects immigrants have on the lives of everyone around them, especially in their adopted homelands. Thus, journalists can help to fashion a new narrative of immigration that is less negative, more relevant and more constructive. The Forum also showcased examples of media projects to explore the hidden realities of migration. (Denzil Mohammed)
 

Beyond FAIR: The Decline of the Established Anti-Immigrant Organizations and the Rise of Tea Party Nativism,
Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, 2012, 51 pp.
This "special report" discerns two important trends during the period from 2007 to 2012:  first, a decline in membership and finances for the "nativist establishment;" and second, "an increase in anti-immigrant activism by national and local Tea Party groups, as well as a measurable number of anti-immigrant leaders who have joined the Tea Parties and consequently accelerated the rate of anti-immigrant activism by those Tea Parties." The nativist establishment, as defined in this report, consists of groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Americans for Immigration Control, the Minuteman, NumbersUSA, and the Center for Immigration Studies.  Financial support for seven of these groups dropped 32.8 percent from 2008 - the apex of their finances - to 2010. While the number of Minuteman chapters declined from 115 in 2010 to 53 in 2011, 36 leaders of Minuteman groups have become active with Tea Party groups. The authors of the report conclude that the "re-articulation of the Nativist  Establishment into the Tea Parties changes both the shape and strength of the anti-immigrant impulse in American life."  By being "mixed into the activities of multi-issue organizations...anti-immigrant activism has a bigger immediate constituency and is likely to be stronger."


The Receiving Communities Toolkit: A Guide for Engaging Mainstream America in Immigrant Integration,
Spring Institute for Intercultural Learning and Welcoming America, October, 2011, 31 pp.
The purpose of this Toolkit, written by Susan Downs-Karkos, is to highlight successful strategies and programs that "build meaningful connections between immigrants and the native born through contact, improved communication and leadership in order to foster stronger and more unified communities."  The content of the Toolkit is drawn from interviews with "61 stakeholders who have successfully employed" these strategies in their work. The "Contact" section of the Toolkit describes promising initiatives in three areas: dialogue programs, such as the Public Conversations Project of Welcoming America; joint projects, which bring immigrants and native-born together to achieve shared goals; and projects that build alliances across racial lines. The "Communications" section profiles innovative work in such areas as local media campaigns, film projects, National Public Radio's Story Corps Project, and Participatory Theater. This section also features tips on effective messaging on immigration issues.  Finally, the "Leadership" section stresses the importance of identifying local leaders, particularly those from government, faith communities, and business, willing and able to champion "Receiving Communities" initiatives. The report concludes with the observation that Receiving Communities efforts are most effective when they combine all three elements into a single program. The report also notes that "this is still a relatively new field with modest resources" and that effective evaluation of current efforts will lay the groundwork for continued growth.

Quantifying Hate Speech on Commercial Talk Radio: A Pilot Study,
Chicano Studies Research Center, UCLA, November, 2011, 46 pp.
This non-peer-reviewed study seeks to develop a "sound, replicable methodology for qualitative content analysis" of hate speech targeting ethnic, racial, religious, or sexual minorities.  Segments of thirty- to forty-minutes were selected from each of three programs broadcast  in the Los Angeles County radio market on July 31, 2008: The Lou Dobbs Show: Mr. Independent, The Savage Nation, and The John & Ken Show. The analysis revealed "a significant incidence of speech that incorporates targeted statements, unsubstantiated claims, divisive language, and indexical terms related to political nativism." The study, however, found no instances of hate speech calling for "immediate unlawful action," the standard used in a 1993 Report to Congress on the role of telecommunications in the commission of hate crimes.  This study includes a lengthy appendix with excerpts from the three shows illustrative of the factors used in the analysis


All Together Now?  African Americans, Immigrants and the Future of California,
Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration, University of Southern California, September, 2011, 62 pp.
This report focuses on neighborhood-level interactions between immigrants and African Americans in California communities. Using an analytical tool called "Black Immigrant Proximity Index," the researchers were able to identify "87 distinct communities that ranked most highly for African-American exposure to immigrants in the year 2000." These 87 communities were further sub-divided into four categories based on whether the Black population was declining, stable, or growing.  Although the report acknowledges some displacement of Blacks by immigrants in occupations such as janitors, many Blacks who retained jobs in industries dominated by immigrants saw significant income growth, suggesting a complementary effect.  The authors argue for an approach to coalition-building "based not in transactions but transformations."  Rather than seeking African-American support for specific policy reforms beneficial to immigrants, perhaps in exchange for immigrant support for a "Black issue," the authors assert that "such coalitions of interest can be both fragile and episodic - and less sustainable than those ties based on shared values, continuing engagement, and social movement organizing."  They then proceed to give numerous examples of how this approach has been applied successfully in specific communities.


Muslim Americans: No Signs of Growth in Alienation or Support for Extremism,
Pew Research Center, August, 2011, 127 pp
This telephone survey of 1,033 Muslim-Americans, updating an earlier survey conducted by Pew in 2007, finds "no evidence of rising support for Islamic extremism among Muslim Americans."  Interviews were done in English, Arabic, Urdu, and Farsi.  Muslim Americans are far more satisfied with the way things are going in the U.S. (56%) than the general public (23%).  More Muslim Americans report themselves to be in "excellent or good shape financially" (46%) than the general public (38%). Support for extremist positions is "negligible" with fully 81% saying that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilians are never justified. Nonetheless, significant numbers (28%) report being looked at with suspicion by their neighbors. Most Muslims (70%) either identify as Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party. 72% believe that the Mosque and community center near the World Trade Center should be built.


Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States,
The White House,  August, 2011, 8 pp
With particular attention to al-Qa'ida and its affiliates around the world, this paper outlines the federal government's strategy for preventing radicalization and terrorism in the United States.  More than a year in the making, the document contends that "our security...is inextricably linked to our values: the protection of civil rights and civil liberties and the promotion of an inclusive society." The paper also argues that any kind of "backlash" by the American public against Muslim Americans "would feed al-Qa'ida's propaganda that our country is anti-Muslim and at war against Islam, handing our enemies a strategic victory by turning our communities against one another" and creating a breeding ground for terrorist recruitment in the U.S.  The paper envisions the federal government's role as that of "facilitator, convener, and source of information."  Rather than creating a new architecture of institutions and funding, the paper advocates the ramped-up use of successful models, such as community policing and community engagement in problem-solving on all levels, not just those pertaining to the terrorist threat.

Attitudes toward Highly Skilled and Low-skilled Immigration:  Evidence from a Survey Experiment,
American Political Science Review, February, 2010, 24 pp.
Based on a survey sample of 2,285 American citizens, conducted in late 2007 and early 2008, this article questions the common assumption that concerns about labor market competition and immigrant utilization of public services motivate anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States. Instead, the researchers found a strong preference for highly skilled immigrants, even among highly-skilled native-born people, who might find themselves competing with such immigrants. This is one of the first empirical studies to analyze American public attitudes towards different types of immigrants. As such, it lends support to explanations "emphasizing noneconomic concerns associated with ethnocentrism or sociotropic considerations."


Climate of Fear: Latino Immigrants in Suffolk County, N.Y.,
Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), September, 2009, 28 pp
This report provides a detailed account of the development of anti-immigrant sentiment and violence in Suffolk County, NY, from 1999 to 2009, placing particular emphasis on the "angry demagoguery" of local politicians, the activity of anti-immigrant groups such as Sachem Quality of Life, and the shortcomings of the Suffolk County Police Department. The SPLC, best known for its battles against the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s, tracks the activities of hate groups in the United States. The report is based on interviews with more than 70 Latino immigrants and scores of local community leaders.


Confronting the New Faces of Hate:  Hate Crimes in America,
The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund, 2009, 50 pp.
While hate crimes in recent years have declined or leveled off for most groups, crimes against Hispanic immigrants and gays have increased. This report lays the blame for this rise on the "toxic environment" created by anti-immigrant talk radio hosts such as Michael Savage and cable TV personalities such as CNN's Lou Dobbs and gives examples of inflammatory speech from their programs. The report also faults three "seemingly legitimate" restrictionist organizations:  the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), and NumbersUSA -- "part of a network of restrictionist organizations conceived and created by John Tanton, the 'puppeteer' of the nativist movement."  According to the report, these organizations have "inflamed the immigration debate by invoking the dehumanizing, racist stereotypes and bigotry of hate groups." Yet, they are often given a platform by members of Congress to testify at hearings and cited as authoritative sources by the media. The report also notes a proliferation of hate groups since 2000, operating with increasing sophistication and making ample use of new social media to advance their cause. The report makes several recommendations to combat the threat of hate crimes, including passage of a strengthened federal hate crime law. 


Under Siege: Life for Low-Income Latinos in the South 
Southern Poverty Law Center, April, 2009, 64 pp.
Based on a survey of 500 Latino immigrants in Charlotte, Nashville, New Orleans, rural south Georgia, and several towns in northern Alabama, this report was designed to "take the pulse of the Latino community in the South." Among the key findings are the following: 41% of respondents have experienced wage theft, and 80% lack any knowledge of government agencies able to help out in these situations;  more than 50%  "lack confidence in the police;" 47% know someone treated unfairly by the police, with police checkpoints an especially common complaint; and 77% of Latino women have experienced sexual harassment on the job, often perpetrated by employers threatening to report women to ICE if they refuse their advances. The report concludes with a series of policy recommendations to the federal government to combat the growing menace of "racial profiling" aimed at Latinos.

Creating a Diverse and Inclusive Community (No longer available online),
Diversity Dialogue Task Force Report, Arlington County, Virginia, January, 2009, 8 pp.
During 2008, Arlington County conducted a series of three "diversity dialogues" attracting nearly 500 community members. Using the "World Café" approach and with help from staff at George Mason University's Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, the dialogues explored topics such as race relations and immigration. Participants developed a series of recommendations designed to create a more inclusive community.  The County also set up a website about the program. 

Neighbourhood Task Forces: A Tool for Dealing with Conflict in Communities,
The Young Foundation (London, UK), October, 2008, 40 pp.
The Young Foundation is an important catalyst for social entrepreneurship and "open" community development in the United Kingdom and internationally. In this report and "toolkit," the Foundation details its task force model for addressing community tensions in two London neighborhoods experiencing demographic change caused by immigration and internal migration. The Foundation considers the model a "relatively cheap and simple" approach to the challenge of "build(ing) the capacity of local people to work together on their own solutions" to community problems.

Immigrants Targeted:  Extremist Rhetoric Moves into the Mainstream,
Anti-Defamation League, 2007, 12 pp.
This report documents the use of stereotypes and outright bigotry by "groups that have positioned themselves as legitimate, mainstream advocates against illegal immigration in America." Seven groups, along with leading media figures and politicians, are profiled in the report.

Integration and Cohesion Case Studies,
Commission on Integration and Cohesion, Department of Communities and Local Government (United Kingdom), 2007, 226 pp.
In the aftermath of the July 7, 2007, London public transportation bombings, a Commission on Integration and Social Cohesion was set up to "consider how local areas can make the most of diversity while being able to respond to the tensions it may cause." In addition to its final report, the Commission produced this compendium of best practices throughout the United Kingdom.  More than 100 different projects are profiled in this document.

Thinking Past Integration and Community Cohesion (No longer available online),
Ash Amin, Paper presented at the 2007 COMPAS Annual Conference, Oxford University, July 5-6, 2007, 8 pp.
In this creative and thought-provoking piece, a leading English economic geographer argues the importance of "recovering the commons" as the physical space where "cultural and civic formation" takes place in our multicultural world. Places like parks, markets, squares, gardens can promote an image of the city as "plural, for the many, for the idiosyncratic and ill-conforming, but always in the spirit of revealing the ties that bind."

E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century,
Robert D. Putnam, Scandinavian Political Studies, June 15, 2007, 37 pp.
This controversial essay, written by Harvard professor Robert D. Putnam, author of Bowling Alone and other books and essays on civic engagement in America, examines the connections between immigration and civic participation. This is how Putnam abstracts the essay:  "Ethnic diversity is increasing in most advanced countries, driven mostly by sharp increases in immigration. In the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits. In the short run, however, immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital. New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to 'hunker down'. Trust (even of one's own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer. In the long run, however, successful immigrant societies have overcome such fragmentation by creating new, cross-cutting forms of social solidarity and more encompassing identities. Illustrations of becoming comfortable with diversity are drawn from the US military, religious institutions, and earlier waves of American immigration."

Community Foundations/Intergroup Relations Program, 
Association for the Study and Development of Community, July, 2002, 17 pp, September, 2000, 7  pp.
These two reports discuss a major initiative to support intergroup relationship building among immigrants and established residents in six areas of the United States. The Charlest Stewart Mott Foundation and the Ford Foundation partnered with six community foundations to invest $5.1 million to develop innovative neighborhood and community projects "to improve race and ethnic relations between recent immigrants and long-time residents." The first report provides guidance to community foundations in setting up intergroup initiatives. The second report discusses general principles for designing effective intergroup relations programs, provides an analytical tool for assessing the quality of existing intergroup relations, and gives some examples of successful projects.


Initiative to Strengthen Neighborhood Inter-Group Assets: Summary of Accomplishments and Lessons Learned, 1998-2000,
Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, February, 2001, 12 pp.
This report discusses a major intergroup initiative in the Washington, D.C., and northern Virginia which distributed over $800,000 in funding to 46 inter-group projects. The initiative promoted the development of learning community consisting of grantees, funders, and consultants who met on a regular basis to share experiences and review results. The report gives examples of specific projects and summarizes lessons learned.


Together in our Differences: How Newcomers and Established Residents are Rebuilding America's Communities, Findings from the Community Innovations Project,
(No longer available online)
National Immigration Forum, January, 1995, 95 pp.
This report spotlights community programs in Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and New York City that eased tensions between immigrant groups and established residents by engaging them to solve problems of mutual concern. Among the 16 projects discussed in the report are: the creation of a community credit union, a tenant organizing project, and the formation of a coalition to promote adult education.

Changing Relations:  Newcomers and Established Residents in U.S. Communities 
(No longer available online),
Ford Foundation, 1993, 79 pp.
This report presents the results of a study conducted by a multidisciplinary team of researchers investigating the relationships and everyday interactions among recent immigrants and longer-term residents in six U.S. communities. The sites include big-city neighborhoods in Chicago, Houston, Miami, and Philadelphia as well as suburban Monterey Park, California, and rural Garden City, Kansas. The study applied ethnographic research methods to an analysis of the ways long-time residents and newcomers of widely different cultures and backgrounds relate to each other. The studies' goal was to provide a detailed description of the full range of relations between immigrants and established residents including interactions producing conflict or accommodation. The researchers conclude by stressing the importance of economic restructuring, class and gender, geographic settlement, language barriers, racial stratification, and the role of community control in interactions between newcomers and established residents.