I.  Publications

23. Latinos’ Knowledge of the US Supreme Court. 2021. Journal of Law and Courts.

With Joseph D. Ura

22. The Role of PRIEC in Building Community in Political Science. 2020. PS: Political Science & Politics.

With Nazita Lajevardi

21. Validating a Measure of Perceived Parent-Child Socialization. 2020. Political Research Quarterly

With Brittany N. Perry

A growing body of research in political science is influenced by conceptual advances in socialization theory which posit that children can influence adults’ learning across a wide range of topics. The concept of bidirectional influence describes socialization led by one’s parents and children. One outstanding need in the effort to import this concept to political socialization research is a measure that captures the influence of both parents and children. We meet this need with a measure of relative influence from both parents and children as sources for political learning. We provide evidence of measurement validity using separate samples of Asians, Blacks, Latinos, and Whites. Our findings suggest that our metric is portable across groups, and that the range of what individuals recall about their familial socialization experience includes more child-to-parent influence than existing studies suggest.

20. Identity Fusion and the Use of Force: A Group Psychological Explanation for Support of Military Interventions. 2020. Political Research Quarterly

With Marissa Theys and James S. Krueger.

Under what circumstances will the public support military intervention in other countries? Recent answers have focused on the importance of identity and attachment to one’s nation to explain variation in public support. We posit that some segments of the public are more willing than others to support military action even when there is perceived risk due to a psychological attachment to veterans. We distinguish kinship, geographic, and psychological forms of propinquity and argue that the psychological attachment of an individual to a group drives disparate attitudes about
military force when their group is threatened. Using a unique national data set, we examine public attitudes across a range of hypothetical and actual military interventions and find that psychological attachment, measured using identity fusion, helps to explain the pattern of support across interventions. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings on the use of force literature.

19. Direct and Indirect Xenophobic Attacks: Unpacking Portfolios of Identity” 2020. Political Behavior

With Sergio I. Garcia-Rios and Bryan M. Wilcox-Archuleta.

Political threats are typically conceptualized by scholars as targeting particular groups of people. We call for also conceptualizing threats as political attacks directed towards particular facets of an individual’s identity portfolio. We reason that individual political responses to political attacks depend on the strength of identity with the group under attack, just as Social Identity Theory anticipates, but we contend that responses also depends on the shared social categories across an identity portfolio. Drawing on data from 2006 – 2016, we compare the political assessments of various presidential candidates between Mexican heritage Latinos and other non-Mexican heritage Latinos. Given the specificity of the rhetoric towards Mexican heritage Latinos in 2016, we find evidence that Mexicans and non-Mexicans cast distinct judgments of Donald Trump. Yet, we observe no comparable distinction in prior electoral contexts, suggesting that 2016 uniquely politicized the responses among Mexican heritage Latinos.

18. Spillover Effects: Immigrant Policing and Government Skepticism in Matters of Health for Latinos.

2018. With Vanessa Cruz Nichols and Alana M.W. LeBron. Public Administration Review, 78(3): 432-443. DOI: 10.1111/puar.12916.

To what extent do people become less trusting of the government under threatening policy contexts?
The authors find evidence that Secure Communities, a bureaucratic program that enhances immigrant policing
through collaboration between local law and immigration enforcement agencies, spurs mistrust among Latinos but
not non-Latinos. This article focuses on the politics of immigration and health, two issue areas marked by largescale
bureaucratic developments over the last 50 years. The authors argue that a major consequence of expanding
immigrant policing is its trickle-down effect on how individuals view public institutions charged with the provision
of public goods, such as health information. The results indicate that Latinos in locales where immigrant policing is
most intense express lower levels of trust in government as a source of health information. Through a policy feedback
lens, the findings suggest that the state’s deployment of immigrant policing conveys more widespread lessons about the
trustworthiness of government.

17. Policing Us Sick: The Health of Latinos in an Era of Heightened Deportations and Racialized Policing.

2018. With Vanessa Cruz Nichols and Alana M.W. LeBron. PS: Political Science and Politics (51): 2.

16. Cruz Nichols, V.,  A. M.W. LeBron  “Policy Feedback: Government Skepticism Trickling from Immigration to Matters of Health”

2017. With Vanessa Cruz Nichols and Alana M.W. LeBron. in Policing and Race in America: Economic, Political and Social Dynamics. Edited by James Ward. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

15. Courted and Deported: The Salience of Immigration Issues and Avoidance of Police, Health Care, and Education Services among Latinos.
2017. With Maricruz Ariana Osorio. Aztlán.

To what extent does the salience of immigration as a political issue deter Latinos from using police, health care, and education services?  Past and present efforts to restrict access to various public services on the basis of nativity and citizenship status often conflate these eligibility criteria with ethnicity, and create a bureaucratic environment and public sentiment that is permissive of racial profiling. This concern is central to critiques of California’s Proposition 187 and subsequent copy-cat legislation, as well as plaintiff’s arguments in more historical case law like Plyer v. Doe, which established that enrollment in K-12 public education could not be prohibited on the basis of citizenship status.  We argue that one consequence of restrictive immigrant policies is that they psychologically condition Latinos to navigate institutional relationships in their daily lives in such a way as to minimize risk to themselves, their families, and members of their social networks.  We claim further that extent to which people exercise caution in how they interface with public services depends on an individual’s personal vulnerability to immigrant policing, which is determined, at least in part, by factors like citizenship status, English language proficiency, and gender. Using a population-based survey experiment, we examine the extent to which simply mentioning immigrant-related concerns changes the willingness of Latinos to interface with police, health care providers, and educators. We find evidence that mere exposure to an “immigration issues” cue is associated with higher proportion of Latinos who shy away from using public services, and this effect is generally more pronounced with respect to police than doctors or teacher, and the deterrence is greatest among women and non-citizens of unknown status.

14. Nativity and Citizenship Status Affect Latinos’ Health Insurance Coverage under the ACA.
2017. With Gabriel R. Sanchez,  Edward D. Vargas, and Graduate Students Melina D. Juarez and Barbara Gomez-Aguinaga. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. 43(12): 2037-2054. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2017.1323450

The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) aimed to increase health insurance access for the over 47 million uninsured people in the U.S.A., among whom ethnoracial minorities had the highest uninsured rates before the ACA. Studies have shown that Latinos have had the greatest improvements in health coverage under the ACA, but many may be at a significant disadvantage, specifically due to their nativity and immigration status, as the ACA explicitly excludes unauthorised immigrants from most of its provisions. Using the 2015 Latino National Health and Immigration Survey, a nationally representative sample of Latinos (n = 1493), we find that variation in health insurance access among Latinos can be traced to immigration status. This study finds no differences among U.S.-born versus foreign-born Latinos in the likelihood of being uninsured in 2015. However, among foreign-born Latinos, unauthorised immigrants are five times more likely than naturalised citizens to be uninsured and less likely to visit a primary care provider or clinic, even after controlling for other factors including language, income and education.

13. Cautious Citizenship: The Deterring Effect of Immigration Issue Salience on Health Care Use and Bureaucratic Interactions Among Latino U.S. Citizens.
2017. With Vanessa C. Nichols and Alana M.W. LeBrón. Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law. 42(5): 925-960. DOI 10.1215/03616878-3940486

Research shows that health care use among Latino immigrants is adversely affected by restrictive immigration policy. A core concern is that immigrants shy from sharing personal information in response to policies that expand bureaucratic monitoring of citizenship status across service-providing organizations. This investigation addresses the concern that immigration politics also negatively influences health care utilization among Latino U.S. citizens. One implication is that health insurance expansions may not reduce health care inequities among Latinos due to concern about exposure to immigration law enforcement authorities. Using data from the 2015 Latino National Health and Immigration Survey, we examine the extent to which the politics of immigration deters individuals from health care providers and service-providing institutions. Results indicate that Latino U.S. citizens are less likely to make an appointment to see a health care provider when the issue of immigration is mentioned. Additionally, Latino U.S. citizens who know someone who has been deported are more inclined to perceive that information shared with health care providers is not secure. We discuss how cautious citizenship, or risk-avoidance behaviors towards public institutions in order to avoid scrutiny of citizenship status, informs debates about reducing health care inequities.

12. The End of Dichotomy: The Effect of Social Proximity to Prototype and Periphery Group Members on Political Attitudes.
2017. With James S. Krueger. Social Science Quarterly. Forthcoming  DOI: 10.1111/ssqu.12411

This paper extends prototype theory to explain why non-members who are socially connected to group members hold political attitudes that differ from non-members lacking that connection.  We argue that the intensity of non-member attitudes varies by connection to a prototype or periphery group member.  Using data from the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), we model group-salient political attitudes for veterans, union members, and their family members.  We find social distance from group members is theoretically linked to within group variation that distinguishes prototype from periphery group members.  Analysis of political attitudes is enhanced beyond the traditional member/non-member dichotomy by accounting for non-members’ social distance from group members.

11. Judging Dream Keepers: Latino Assessments of Schools and Educators.
2017. With Angel Molina Jr. Politics, Groups and Identities.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2015.1102152

There is consensus among scholars, policy experts, and ordinary Latinos that a Latino education crisis exists, and that education is the primary vehicle for achieving the American Dream. Yet we know surprisingly little about what predicts Latinos’ views of the bureaucrats and organizations charged with translating their educational hopes into reality. This study links disparate literatures to provide theory and evidence about how group features and elements of citizen-bureaucracy relations explain Latinos’ judgments of schools and their assessments of contact with school officials. Using the 2006 Latino National Survey, we find that nativity, acculturation, and discrimination undermine positive evaluations. Our results also indicate that some of these negative associations might be countered with Latino-salient outreach, including providing school-relevant information in Spanish language.

10. The Effects of Anti-Immigrant Policies on Perceived Discrimination among Latinos in the US: A Multi-level Analysis.
2016. With Joanna Almeda, Katie Biello, Francisco Pedraza, and Edna Viruell-Fuentes. Social Science & Medicine — Population Health. 2: 897-903. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2016.11.003

Research has found a strong inverse association between discrimination and health and well-being. Most of these studies have been conducted among African-Americans, and have examined the relationship at the individual-level. To fill these gaps in knowledge we estimated the prevalence of perceived discrimination among a nationally representative sample of Latino adults in the US, and investigated the association between state level anti-immigrant policies and perceived discrimination. We merged survey data with a state-level anti-immigrant policy index. First, we fit hierarchical logistic regression models to test the crude and adjusted association between anti-immigrant policies and perceived discrimination. Second, we specified cross-level interaction terms to test whether this association differed by relevant individual characteristics. Almost 70% of respondents reported discrimination (68.4%). More anti-immigrant policies were associated with higher levels of discrimination (OR=1.62, 95% CI 1.16, 2.24, p=0.01). The association between anti-immigrant policies and discrimination differed by place of origin (p=0.001) and was marginally moderated by generation status (p=0.124). Anti-immigrant policies stigmatize both foreign and US-born Latinos by creating a hostile social environment which affects their experiences of discrimination. These non-health policies can adversely affect Latino health, in part through exposure to discrimination, and may help explain health patterns among Latinos in the US.

9. Ties that Bind: Revisiting Context, Identity, and Attitudes.
2015. With James S. Krueger, Research & Politics.

The article focuses on group-based features of issue publics and advances the concept of residual group saliency as a way to organize members of issue publics. We accord veterans exemplar or prototype status, and civilians as periphery members of this issue public. As issue public exemplars, veterans anchor the “right” attitudes and behaviors for the veteran issue public, and civilians, especially those with family ties to veterans, gravitate toward those exemplar attitudes. We argue that pressure to conform to these “right” attitudes among civilians who are connected to a veteran is greater when there are more veterans in their environment. However, veterans and civilians who are not connected to a veteran are not responsive to such contextual effects, the former because they are already exemplars, and the latter because there is no motivation to evaluate the self in relation to veterans. We test and find support for these claims using data from the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. We conclude with an evaluative discussion and suggestions for future research.

8. Racial Attitude and Race of Interviewer Item Non-Response
2015. With Matt Barreto, Loren Collingwood, and Christopher Parker, Survey Practice. 

We evaluate the relationship between race of interviewer (ROI) and racial attitudes, using original telephone survey data that includes a response to the question: “What is my race?” A large percentage of our respondents answer, “don’t know.” Traditional racial attitude models tend to exclude ROI altogether, whereas alternative racial attitude models include perceived ROI but drop “don’t know” respondents. We propose a new modeling strategy that includes “don’t know” respondents and find that in general this modeling strategy is preferred because it leads to better model fit and fewer type II errors. We suggest that researchers control for “don’t know” ROI responses in any analysis of racial attitudes.

7. The Two-way Street of Acculturation, Discrimination, and Latino Immigration Restrictionism.
2014. Political Research Quarterly. 2014

Existing research concludes that acculturation converges Latino immigration policy views with those of Anglo-Americans. Yet, polls show few Latinos support restricting immigration. This article reconciles these statements with theory and evidence. I argue acculturation is part of a broader give-and-take process, the two-way street in which the contrast between expected and perceived treatment by the receiving community shapes whether or not Latino acculturation leads to restrictionism and “convergence” with Anglos. Regression analysis of survey data shows that perceived group discrimination, but not perceived individual discrimination or Latino within-group discrimination, moderates the link between acculturation and support for restrictive policy.

6. A Decisive Voting Bloc in 2012.
2014. With Matt Barreto, Loren Collingwood, Justin Gross, and Gary Segura. In Matt Barreto and Gary Segura (Eds.) Latino America: How America’s Most Dynamic Population is Poised to Transform the Politics of the Nation. New York: Public Affairs, pp. 145—170.

5. Missing Voices: War Attitudes among Military Service-Connected Civilians.
2012. With James S. Krueger. Armed Forces & Society.

Public opinion studies on war attitudes say little about civilians who are related to military service members. The authors argue that military ‘‘service-connected’’ individuals are missing voices in the research that examines public support for war. Using over 50,000 observations from the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, the authors estimate attitudes toward the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, and the use of US military troops in general. The authors find that service-connected civilians express greater support for war and the use of troops than civilians without such a connection. This study discusses the implications of these findings for theoretical advancements in the literature addressing war attitudes and the conceptualization of the ‘‘civil–military gap.’’

4. The Efficacy and Alienation of Juan Q. Public: The immigration marches and orientations toward American political institutions.
2010. With Gary M. Segura and Shaun Bowler. In Irene Bloemraad and Kim Voss (Eds.) Rallying for Immigrant Rights. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp 233-249.

In this study we explore the possibility that the 2006 immigration rallies marked not an expression of opposition and alienation from the U.S. political system but an act of faith in that system and expectation that the system will ultimately be responsive. To explore this interpretation we examine the general orientations of Latinos toward the U.S. political system, using the 2006 Pew Hispanic Center’s National Survey of Latinos. Specifically, we measure Latino or Hispanic residents’ beliefs regarding their influence on policy and whether governmental policy works on their behalf. We then use these measures to examine attitudes towards the 2006 protests and immigration debate in general. We find that it is the absence of alienation that is associated with a positive assessment of the marches and the likelihood that they will result in a general social movement.

3. Exit Polls and Ethnic Diversity. How to Improve Estimates and Reduce Bias Among Minority Voters.
2009. With Matt Barreto.  In Wendy Alvey and Fritz Scheuren (Eds.) Elections and Exit Polling. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley and Sons, Inc. pp 194-202.

2. The Renewal and Persistence of Group Identification in American Politics
2009. With Matt Barreto. Electoral Studies. 

This article builds on analyses addressing social group identification found in The American Voter Revisited (chapter 11), by exploring the dynamics of social group identity and Latino partisanship using data from the 2006 Latino National Survey. We argue that group identification matters to Latinos, and that the ANES significantly underestimates the degree of ethnic identification among Latino registered voters. The evidence we bring to bear on the matter of Latino partisan unity shows important distinctions by national origin, generation, language and level of perceived discrimination — measures that are unreliable due to sampling error or wholly unavailable in the ANES. These distinctions are shown in our replications of descriptive tables in the American Voter Revisited, and further supported through multinomial logit models of Latino partisanship. As a result of a large immigration population, continued and widespread discrimination against Latinos, and new mobilization efforts that encourage ethnic appeals, the Latino electorate embodies the renewal and persistence of group identification in American politics.

1. Should I Stay or Should I Go: Explaining Why Most Mexican Immigrants are Choosing to Remain Permanently in the U.S.
2009. With Brian Wampler and Maria Chavéz, Latino Studies.

This paper analyzes why some Mexican immigrants, especially undocumented residents, plan to remain permanently in the United States, whereas others plan to return to Mexico. If Mexican migrants, especially those who are living in the United States without proper legal documentation to do so, plan to remain in the United States permanently, there will be far greater consequences on US society and public policies than if the migrants are only planning to reside and work in the United States for a short period. We use logistic regression analysis to analyze a data set of 492 Mexican and seasonal farmworkers (MSFWs). Two-thirds of the survey respondents lacked documents to live in the United States, and the remaining one-third indicated that they were US ‘‘legal permanent residents.’’ Specifically, those who planned to remain permanently in the United States appeared to be strongly influenced by ‘‘cutting ties’’ to their sending communities, as well as by ‘‘planting roots’’ in their host, and potentially adopted, community. Importantly, we also find that their documented status had very little effect on their intent to remain permanently in the United States.

II. Under Review

1. I’m doing this for my daughter: A Pre-Registered Examination of the Daughter Effect in the 2016 Presidential Election (ERPC2016)
With Kevin Arceneaux, Sarah A. Fulton, and Stephen P. Nicholson.

2. Bi-directional Influence: Concept Development and Validation Evidence for a New Measure of Political Socialization by Parents and Children.
With Brittany Perry

A growing body of research in political science is influenced by conceptual advances in socialization theory which posit that children can influence adults’ learning across a wide range of topics. The concept of bidirectional influence models individual-level socialization processes in terms of influence by one’s parents and children. One outstanding need in the effort to import this concept to models of political socialization is the development of a measure that adequately captures the influence of both parents and children. In this paper, we develop such a measure, assessing individual-level perceived parent-child and perceived child-parent political learning on the same continuum. Drawing on existing models of political socialization, we evaluate measurement validity using separate samples of Asians, Blacks, Latinos, and Whites. We conclude that our proposed measure is valid and portable across groups, and that most individuals rate their parents and children as similarly important sources of political learning. This result challenges the conventional wisdom in political socialization, which assumes that most political learning happens in a “top-down” fashion.

3. Latinos Knowledge and Support of the US Supreme Court.
With Joseph D. Ura

Research shows that Americans exhibit high, stable levels of knowledge about the Supreme Court’s institutional design and political functions. This finding comports with evidence that knowledge of static features of the American political system stems principally from formal education rather than a dynamic product of events and media. However, we find evidence that these aggregate results mask variance in political knowledge by ethnicity. Using data from surveys of Latinos and non-Latinos, fielded shortly before and after the Supreme Court’s 2012 landmark rulings in Arizona v. United States and National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, we find that Latinos know less about the Court’s structure and function than other Americans and that Latino’s knowledge of the Court is less stable in the face of salient political events, increasing significantly from the first survey to the second. These findings indicate important differences in the sources and dynamics of political knowledge between Latinos and non-Latinos.

4. Identity Fusion and the Use of force: A Group-Psychological Explanation for Support of Military Interventions.”
With James S. Krueger and Marissa Theys

Under what circumstances will the public support military intervention in other countries? Recent answers have focused on the importance of identity and attachment to one’s nation to explain variation in public support. We posit that some segments of the public are more willing than others to support military action even when there is perceived risk due to a psychological attachment to veterans. We distinguish kinship, geographic, and psychological forms of propinquity and argue that the psychological attachment of an individual to a group drives disparate attitudes about military force when their group is threatened. Utilizing a unique national dataset, we examine public attitudes across a range of hypothetical and actual military interventions and find that psychological attachment, measured using identity fusion, helps to explain the pattern of support across interventions. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings on the use of force literature.

5. Representative Bureaucracy and Performance Quantity and Quality: An Application to Immigration Enforcement.
With Graduate Student M. Apolonia Calderon

This study proposes quantity and quality of organization performance as dimensions for analyzing active representative bureaucracy. Drawing on theories of representative bureaucracy, the relationship between levels of Hispanic police and quantity and quality contributions of local law enforcement to federal immigration enforcement programs in the United States is evaluated. In testing the theoretical arguments, this research employs zero-inflated count and zero-inflated beta regression techniques to analyze ethnic representation and the degree to which an interior-oriented enforcement program, Secure Communities, is conforming to the commitment to focus on high-priority criminal offenders. The findings indicate higher shares of Hispanic Sheriff deputies are associated with lower quantity but higher quality of Secure Communities enforcement at the county-level, even controlling a range of other relevant variables like population, per-capita law enforcement resources, unemployment, and political context.

III. Developing Projects

1. Breaking ICE: Immigration Enforcement, and the “Chilling Effect” on the Use of TANF
With Ling Zhu

 Why do eligible individuals not enroll in social safety net programs? We anchor an explanation of (non)participation among immigrants the “chilling effect” hypothesis which posits reduced take-up among children of non-citizens is generated by welfare reform measures and federal immigration enforcement in the 1990s to the policy feedback framework. We argue that immigration enforcement reinforces signals from the welfare state that convey ethnic stereotypes of dependency. However, empowering lessons from interaction with government in other domains counter negative feedback, as we hypothesize and found for naturalized citizens. We find evidence of a chilling effect among US-born Latinos, but not Whites and Blacks, who presumably do not feel targeted by immigration enforcement. The cross-domain policy feedback we observe indicates that chilling effects are more complex than previously described, and breaks new ground in research linking welfare and immigration politics.

2. Group Filters: The Political Significance of Priming Group Identity
With Mara C. Ostfeld

Quality research on population subgroups is impeded by the cost of recruiting and retaining representative samples. To minimize costs, many surveys eschew the practice of ending the survey with demographic questions last, and instead begin by asking participants about their identification with a particular group. However, these “group filters,” also cue an identity laden with social, economic and political associations. We craft and test hypotheses about how identity cues at the beginning of surveys affect the political attitudes that are reported. Using a population-based survey experiment, and looking at the case of Latinos in the United States, we demonstrate that group filter questions affect attitudes across a range of political issues. The patterns we uncover tell us which direction and whom among the group cued is most responsive to the filter. We discuss implications for the production and analysis of data on racial, ethnic and other population sub-groups, more generally.

3. Acculturation Bargain: DACA and Latino presidential candidate preferences in 2012

In 2012 President Obama garnered a record high 75% of Latino votes.  Scholars and pundits credit Latino support for the incumbent to Obama’s executive order to defer immigration enforcement for childhood arrivals (DACA).  I unpack this claim by evaluating which Latinos were most moved by the policy shift. Here, I show that immigrants, those presumed most likely to benefit or be connected to a direct beneficiary of DACA, were not the most responsive to the mid-campaign shift in immigrant policy.   In this study I synthesize the reward-punishment hypothesis with the concept of the acculturation bargain to anticipate and explain “moderately acculturated” Latinos as most volatile in their expressed preference for incumbent Obama. The argument is that Latinos who invest in acculturation interpret hostile policy as a rejection of their efforts to integrate into the “core” part of society, and hence are most poised to reward or punish the incumbent.  Latino candidate preference are contrasted before and after the policy shift. The results supporting the acculturation bargain model of political attitudes are corroborated with a survey experiment manipulating welcoming and hostile immigration candidate messages.

4. Identity Portfolios and Public Opinion.
With Bryan Wilcox-Archuleta and Sergio Garcia-Rios

Much of the existing work in Latino public opinion suggests that identity variables matter most for policies that pertain to the Latino community (e.g., immigration). We extend this line of thinking but complicate the conditions under which various social identities matter for public opinion and how targeted threats impact identities and the ultimate opinions. Using the identity portfolio framework, which accounts for variation in the salience of multiple social identity categories, we test the level of support for ethnic and non-ethnic policies in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Given the extensive hostile rhetoric directed at the Latino community, we would expect that Latinos with strong identity should be supportive of policies that benefit the Latino community, regardless of national origin. Instead we find that non-Mexican heritage Latinos were less supportive of ethnic related policies compared to their Mexican heritage counterparts. Our findings complicate the relationship between identityand public opinion suggesting that reactions to hostile rhetoric prompted different reactions from Mexicans and non-Mexicans.

5. Rule of Law and Principled Political Attitudes

In this project I examine the consistency of principled political attitudes. I compare individual beliefs about the extent to which breaking the law across different policy domains and by members of different groups leads to broader flouting of laws.

6. Unexpected Ripple Effects: Government Skepticism Surrounding Immigration and Health
With Vanessa Cruz-Nichols and Alana LeBron

To what extent do people become less trusting or more skeptical of the government under threatening policy environments? Using regression and logit analyses we find evidence that Secure Communities, the centerpiece of contemporary immigration enforcement, spurs mistrust among Latinos, but not other counterparts. We focus on the politics of immigration and health, two issue areas marked by large-scale bureaucratic developments in the last fifty years. We argue that a major consequence of expanding immigration enforcement is spillover to how individuals view the institutions charged with the provision of public goods, including health and healthcare information. We find that Latinos who reside in locales where enforcement is most intense express lower levels of trust in government as a source of health information. Through a policy feedback lens, we contend that the state’s deployment of immigrant enforcement conveys more widespread lessons about the trustworthiness of government.

7. Immigration Surveillance and Mental Health for a National Multi-Ethnic Sample
With Vanessa Cruz-Nichols and Alana LeBron

The surge in interior immigration enforcement since 9/11 may exacerbate health inequities for populations adversely affected by immigration policies. We investigate the consequences of one component of these new immigration enforcement policies, the Secure Communities program, on mental health. We merged immigration enforcement and survey data (n=6,265) from a national multi-ethnic sample and conducted multiple linear regression to examine the association of immigration surveillance with anxiety and depressive symptoms, and variations by race/ethnicity, nativity, and gender. Relative to their White counterparts, immigration surveillance is associated with significantly higher anxiety and depressive symptoms for US-born Latinos and Latino men. These associations do not vary by race/ethnicity in models restricted to women or immigrants. These findings suggest that immigration surveillance is a salient source of anxiety and threat for Latinos, contributing to mental health inequities, with implications varying by social status.