The Causes of American Presidents' Immigration Decisions: A Preliminary Logit Analysis

Presentation Type

Oral Presentation

Keywords

Pro-Immigration, Anti-Immigration, President, Immigration Statutes

Department

Political Science

Major

Political Science

Abstract

Although the office of the American Presidency would seem to wield enormous power over immigration policy, very few scholars have rigorously examined the roots of Presidents' policy-making in this area. Throughout my preliminary research, I cataloged 91 immigration statutes passed between 1864 and 2001 according to whether the law was pro- or anti-immigration. This data then became the basis for a Logit regression model of whether Presidents supported or opposed immigration. My tentative results suggest that a President's religious identification, ancestry, and racial ideology have affected their actions on immigration. In contrast, the partisanship of the President or Congress, wartime conditions, election years, nativity of his parents, and the year the law was passed, had no statistically significant effect.

Faculty Mentor

Joel Fetzer

Funding Source or Research Program

Academic Year Undergraduate Research Initiative

Presentation Session

Session B

Start Date

23-4-2021 3:45 PM

End Date

23-4-2021 4:00 PM

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Apr 23rd, 3:45 PM Apr 23rd, 4:00 PM

The Causes of American Presidents' Immigration Decisions: A Preliminary Logit Analysis

Although the office of the American Presidency would seem to wield enormous power over immigration policy, very few scholars have rigorously examined the roots of Presidents' policy-making in this area. Throughout my preliminary research, I cataloged 91 immigration statutes passed between 1864 and 2001 according to whether the law was pro- or anti-immigration. This data then became the basis for a Logit regression model of whether Presidents supported or opposed immigration. My tentative results suggest that a President's religious identification, ancestry, and racial ideology have affected their actions on immigration. In contrast, the partisanship of the President or Congress, wartime conditions, election years, nativity of his parents, and the year the law was passed, had no statistically significant effect.