A student caller asks for assistance in the SCSU Survey Lab during the Fall 2015 survey.
The majority of Minnesotans see immigration as having a positive effect on the United States, according to findings by the Fall 2015 SCSU Statewide Survey.
Each fall the SCSU Survey conducts a survey of adult Minnesotans about their perspectives on relevant political and social issues.
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The SCSU Fall 2015 Survey previously released Political, Environmental and ADA Law reports based on the survey results.
Among other issues, this year’s survey asked respondents about immigration policy and their attitudes about specific groups of immigrants.
More than 60 percent of Minnesotans believe that immigrants have a positive or very positive effect on the United States. About 25 percent of respondents indicated they believe immigrants have a negative or very negative effect on the state.
Acceptance levels differed for different ethnic groups. Fifty-five percent of Minnesotans support the state continuing to welcome Somali immigrants, and 80 percent support the state continuing to welcome Mexican immigrants.
An SCSU Survey student caller make calls for the Fall 2015 survey.
“We attribute this to the fact that Somali immigration is a more recent phenomenon in Minnesota than Mexican immigration,” according to Sandrine Zerbib and Ann Finan, in the Immigration Report. “However, these results are also consistent with an interpretation that race and religion are also important factors in how immigrants are received.”
Zerbib and Finan are associate professors in the Department of Sociology.
Attitudes also differed based on where Minnesotan’s live, with metro respondents demonstrating higher levels of acceptance of immigrants than out-state respondents. About 70 percent of metro residents indicated they believed immigrants have a positive effect on the United States, while 56 percent of out-state residents said the same.
Respondents were also more likely to see immigration in a positive light if their family had ties to immigration. Eighty-four percent of immigrants or the children of immigrants indicated they believed immigration’s effects were positive versus 69 percent of people born in the United States to non-immigrant parents.
Despite the support for immigration, 85 percent of respondents indicated support for some form of strengthened immigration control.
The results of the 2015 survey are similar to the attitudes found in the 2014 survey, when 61 percent of respondents indicated they believed immigrants had a positive effect on the nation.
Responses for the survey were gathered from 623 randomly-selected landline and cellphone users Oct. 12-22 at the St. Cloud State Survey Lab.
