American Immigration Attitudes and NIMBYism: Do Immigration Preferences Vary by Spatial Scale?

ABSTRACT In recent years, prominent Republican elites have instituted statewide migrant transportation programs in which asylum-seeking migrants are “bused” to liberal cities across the country. These programs are often justified by invoking NIMBYism (not-in-my-backyard), suggesting that when people must consider the effects of immigration policy in terms of their community, their attitudes toward immigrants will vary. Despite this, extant scholarship has yet to document the extent to which American immigration preferences vary by spatial scale and gives no expectation about how important any variation is relative to other determinants of immigration attitudes. Findings from a conjoint experiment reveal that Americans, on average, oppose immigrants proposed to move into their neighborhoods, but spatial scale does not alter considerations at the national, state, or city level. The relative importance of this NIMBY effect, however, is modest compared to a host of other individual-level characteristics of an immigrant. Moreover, despite elite claims of “liberal hypocrisy” in immigration, we find no evidence that the NIMBY effect varies by partisanship. Both Democrats and Republicans exhibit modest preferences against immigrants expected to move to their neighborhoods.