Donald Trump's Attitudes Towards Immigrants

Give us your poor, tired and huddled masses... but only if they have a green-card. The state of the American Dream is imperiled for immigrants. Immigrants of all creeds and colors come to this “promised land” in search of a better life and a better socio-economic standing. But as attitudes towards immigration grow increasingly hostile, the path to success is riddled with greater obstacles for our immigrant populations, as families fear the threat of deportation or being sent to religious internment camps. Anti-Muslim and anti-Hispanic rhetoric has pervaded the majority of the 2016 presidential election season. And in Donald Trump’s America, the American Dream seems more and more like an elusive fantasy to immigrants. We, as a country, have …show more content…
In this paper, I plan to focus on both the economic and the socio-cultural determinants of anti-immigrant sentiments, particularly, in relation to one another. I will examine how race intersects with socio-economic status in forming negative perceptions towards immigrant populations. First, I will look at how economic theory frames attitudes towards immigrants and apply it to the current American context. And then I will look at social theory and which factors heighten in-group and out-group biases, which would contribute to increased nativist and anti-immigrant sentiments among different racial …show more content…
Collective theory suggests that if a nation’s GDP is higher there will be more positive attitudes toward immigrants. Similarly, it shows that there is a positive correlation between a country’s growth rate and its attitudes towards immigrants (Orak, Ugur, and Ozgur Solakoglu). The converse is also true countries with lower GDP tend to view immigrants poorly due to competition and “feeding off the welfare state.” Individual and collective economic theory both support the bi-variate hypothesis, as low-income individuals are, in theory, more disproportionately affected by competition with