The Social Consequences of Subnational Restrictionist Immigration Policies in the U.S.

Abstract

As immigrants have moved beyond traditional immigrant gateways in recent years, local and state restrictive immigrant ordinances have proliferated. Although scholars have studied the determinants of these policies, we still know little about their social consequences.

In Chapter 2, I draw on ethnographic and interview data collected between 2007 and 2011 in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, which passed an anti-immigrant ordinance in 2006. I find that the law affected both immigrants and natives alike. It motivated anti-immigrant activism, hardened native views of Hispanics (regardless of documentation status), and increased native whites' fears of lawlessness and crime. Chapter 3 examines whether similar restrictionist immigration policies also increased local concern about crime and disorder beyond Hazleton. I find that the proposal of anti-immigrant ordinances was associated with a 6 percent increase in handgun sales in the Pennsylvania counties in which these policies were formally considered. I find that local newspapers increasingly published stories linking immigrants with crime following the proposal of these policies. I argue that these menacing portrayals of immigrants had the unintended effect of increasing social anxiety, which increased gun purchases. These results are replicated using concealed gun permits data from South Carolina. Finally, in Chapter 4, I examine the impact of Arizona's SB 1070, a controversial law that required local authorities to verify the documentation of individuals suspected of being undocumented, on public sentiment towards immigrants. Using sentiment analysis and a difference-in-difference estimation technique to analyze more than 300,000 tweets published in Nevada and Arizona in 2010, I find that the implementation of SB 1070 had a significant negative impact on the sentiment of messages regarding immigrants, Mexicans, and Hispanics posted by Twitter users in Arizona. In contrast, the bill did not affect public discourse on Asians or African-Americans.