Have views on immigration evolved?

Western Europe: concerns about immigration have abated

Immigration flows to Western Europe have dropped back to pre-2015 levels and so have Western Europeans’ concerns about immigrants.

…but as anxiety subsides the need to integrate immigrants into their new countries is becoming urgent.

Immigration concerns fall in Western Europe, but most see need for newcomers to integrate into society
By: Pew Research

Integration is key

Goldin and Nabarro argue that the economic impact of migration depends entirely on the policies put in place that allow immigrants to be productive in their hosting countries.

Currently, cross-national attitudes towards migration bear little resemblance to the economic necessitates, but instead the power of perceived economic and cultural threat. Countries that are most in need of migration due to collapsing fertility and tight labour markets (such as Poland) are often most against it.

Losing it: The economics and politics of migration
By: Ian Goldin, Benjamin Nabarro – University of Oxford, Citi Research

Immigration and politics

We find that an increase in low-skilled immigrants affects the vote of U.S. counties in different ways, but in general tends to push voters towards the Republican Party. Non-urban, low-skill counties with high local public spending strongly increased their Republican vote share in response to low-skilled immigration. To the contrary, voting patterns in urban, high-skilled counties with low local public spending did not respond much to low-skilled immigration, but did respond to high-skilled immigration by moving towards the Democratic Party.

The political impact of immigration: evidence from the United States
Authors: Anna Maria Mayda, Giovanni Peri and Walter Steingress
From: Georgetown University, UC Davis, Bank of Canada