How We See Immigration — And Why We're Wrong

[pampango]

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2045932,00.html

From Arizona to Amsterdam, immigration remains one of the most contentious and divisive debates for Americans and Europeans alike. It is also, it seems, a debate fueled by large-scale misconceptions on both sides of the Atlantic. A new survey released Thursday has found that Americans and Europeans both tend to greatly overestimate the immigrant population in their home countries — but, when armed with accurate population figures, they hold significantly more lenient views towards migrants.

In the U.S., for instance, the average resident believes that 39% of the U.S. population was born abroad; the real figure is less than 14%. When told the correct figure before they answered a question about acceptable immigration levels, however, respondents were 20% less likely to say that there are "too many" immigrants in their country than residents who weren't primed with the accurate stat. Similar discrepancies exist in the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, according to a survey of 6,000 people in the U.S., Canada and six European countries carried out by the U.S.-headquartered transatlantic think-tank The German Marshall Fund (GMF).

Americans are also ill-informed about illegal immigration; 58% of those polled said that most immigrants did not have legal residency. In fact, illegal immigrants comprise less than one-third of the migrant population in the U.S.

The survey also found that the personal experience of economic hardship correlates with concerns over immigration. Those whose household economic situation got worse in 2010 were more likely to say that immigrants take jobs away from native-born workers. In the U.S., for instance, 63% of those who faced a pay cut or job loss in 2010 felt immigrants threatened job availability, compared to 49% of respondents whose economic situation either improved or stayed the same. Unemployed Europeans were also more likely to say that immigrants take their jobs (43% compared to the total European average of 35%).

But at the same time, the economic gloom of 2010 did not seem to shift overall perception of immigration in any country — in fact, it improved the way Americans and Europeans see immigrants, albeit marginally, as measured by the broad-brush question: "Are immigrants more of a problem than an opportunity?" Many commentators have claimed that the global financial crisis resulted in the rise of far-right, xenophobic parties in Europe in 2010. But, says Diehl, "this survey shows that the simple calculation that anti-immigrant sentiment is primarily driven by economic competition is not working very well."