… to Florida and Texas. “How Much Can Democrats Count on Suburban Liberals?” (nytimes) reports on an interesting study done in the wealthy and virtuous suburbs of Boston.
(Why is “Trump” relevant to this story? The NYT URL starts with “trump-racism”. The study was actually done in 2012 and published in 2014, but anti-immigrant sentiment apparently wasn’t newsworthy at the time.)
Putting two Mexicans speaking Spanish on a commuter train was sufficient to get virtuous supporters of Obama and Hillary to advocate for a reduction in immigration.
(I’ve done my own anecdotal experiments in this area. Whenever I have child passengers in the minivan and know that we’re heading into a traffic jam I ask for their feelings on immigration and policies, such as paid parental leave and tax subsidies, to encourage population growth. The kids always start out virtuous and welcoming to documented and undocumented immigrants. After 45 minutes of being parked on an Interstate highway, the same children will generally be turned into Zero Population Growth zealots and express hostility to sharing their infrastructure with tens of millions of new arrivals.)
How do you get such rational kids?
Also, here is Tyler Cowen’s take on the same article:
2. “Group hostility, he writes, grows as the size of the immigrant population grows until it reaches a certain point and then begins to recede…”
From: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/06/friday-assorted-links-162.html
Viking:
That receding of hostility is Stockholm Syndrome, or just stoic resignation.
The acceptance of homosexual marriage happened in much the same way. For a long time, popular referendums condemned same-sex marriage, even in California. Activist judges, media and academic elites beat back the popular will by fiat. The people, like the proverbial rape victim, learned to just lie back and try to enjoy it.