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Journal of Public Management & Social Policy

Abstract

Following the norm breaking immigration policies of the departed Trump administration, which drastically reduced refugee admissions and pressured state and local governments to join in identifying and deporting unauthorized immigrants, the current Biden administration faces significant choices about the pace and degree of any potential roll back of such Trump policies. In this moment, the importance of the understudied local and state dimensions of migration and integration of newcomers increases for public management and intergovernmental policy research. Numerous studies have tied the creation of national level policy toward immigrants to the examination of national and international public attitudes toward immigrants and immigration (ATII) around broad questions of whether immigrants are perceived as a threat and whether the current flow of immigrants is too high. But few studies have examined factors driving public opinion on more specific sub-national policy options such as local willingness to welcome refugees and the use of local resources for immigration enforcement. This paper makes use of a 2017 representative state level survey from Virginia (USA). Descriptive and logistic regression analysis of data from the VCU Wilder School’s Summer 2017 Commonwealth Poll is conducted to determine which factors are significant determinants of the variation in responses for each of these understudied topics. The paper presents the results and concludes by summarizing potential implications for policymakers.

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