Valuing Immigration: How Frame Elements Contribute to Effective Communications
Communications about policy reforms that remind the public that beneficiaries of reform are likely to be ethnic minorities fail to elevate policy support.
Findings from several survey experiments with registered voters demonstrate that immigration advocates ought to be very careful in how they sequence issues of race and ethnicity in the conversation about immigration policy reform. We find that communications about policy reforms that remind the public that the primary beneficiaries of reform are likely to be racial or ethnic minorities fail to successfully elevate policy support, while frames that emphasize mutual benefits across groups and interconnectedness prove far more effective in building support for immigration policies. We present empirical evidence from alternative frames that do elevate support for immigration reform and provide examples from our Talking Disparities Toolkit about how advocates can structure more effective frames.