Partisanship and Support for Immigration – Econlib

Two key quotes from the article:

1. "Race had no statistically significant effect on any group. Both conservatives and liberals, however, changed their views based on how they would vote. Only conservatives were affected by whether the refugees were said to be high-skilled and therefore presumably beneficial to the economy, or low-skilled and likely to rely on government assistance. Figure 1 below shows how partisanship, but not necessarily race, matters. The gap between the groups “very liberal” and “very conservative” in support for immigration is cut by around two-thirds when refugees are said to support Republicans instead of Democrats!"

2. "Notice: Not only do very liberal respondents like white migrants more than the very conservative do; very liberal respondents like Republican migrants more than very conservative ones do! To my mind this is strong evidence that Republicans’ core prejudice is not racism but xenophobia. They’re even relatively hostile to immigrants on their own side of the aisle."