Date of Graduation

2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MA

College

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Political Science

Committee Chair

Joshua Woods

Committee Co-Chair

Candace Griffith

Committee Member

James Nolan

Abstract

Immigration has become one of the most important topics on the agenda of federal and state governments. President Obama just passed his pro-immigration executive order allowing five million undocumented immigrants to gain legal work visas. Conversely, there are laws such as Arizona Law SB1070, passed by Governor Jan Brewer in 2010, opposing Obama's pro-immigration stance. In the case of Arizona Law SB1070, it is important to have a basic understanding of the stereotypical perceptions people have of immigrants if laws like these are going to be enforced. In this study, we experimentally manipulated a real-life scenario of an immigrant being pulled over by an Arizona police officer who detains the immigrant for failing to produce his documents. By manipulating three frames, country of origin, immigration status, and occupation, we look to see if there is an effect on the acceptance of Arizona SB1070 based on the combination of frames given. The results showed that only one frame was significant, the immigration status frame (p<0.001).

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