Collateral Damage

Front matter

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COLLATERAL

The Influence of Political Rhetoric on the Incorporation of Second-Generation Americans

Contents

List of Figures ix List of Tables xiii Acknowledgments xv 1. Introduction I 2. A Theory of Collateral Damage in Political Communication 18 3. Conditions Necessary for Collateral Damage 35 4. Trump Rhetorical Analysis 57 5. Rhetoric and Attitudes toward America 71

6. Rhetoric and Attitudes toward the Republican Party and Donald Trump 93

8. Conclusion 136 Appendix 151 Index 159

II Figures

Number of mentions of immigration in US newspaper articles from 1984 to 2018

Number of mentions of immigration and the last name of the Republican Party nominee for president in US newspaper articles in presidential election years, from 1984 to 2018 Number of mentions of anti-immigration and Republican

in the same US newspaper articles from 1984 to 2018 Number of joint mentions of anti-immigration and Trump

in US newspaper articles from 1984 to 2018

Interest in presidential elections for second-generation Americans from the ANES survey, 1952-2020

Average feeling thermometer ratings for illegal immigrants for non—-second-generation and second-generation Americans in the 2016 ANES survey

‘Thermometer feelings of second-generation Americans toward Republican presidential nominees, 1968 to 2020 Angry feelings of second-generation Americans toward Republican presidential nominees, 1980 to 2016

Fear among second-generation Americans toward Republican presidential nominees, 1980 to 2016 Histogram of sentiment analysis of Trump immigration tweets comparing Trump with past presidents

Polling support for Trump in the Republican primary in 2015 and 2016 and the dates of two major anti-immigration speeches

44 46 47 48

12 13 14 15 16 a

25:

x + Figures

‘Treatment effects for patriotism

Histogram of treatment effects for patriotism

‘Treatment effects for American identity

Histogram of treatment effects for American identity Percent of second-generation Americans voting for a Republican for president for 1952 to 2020, divided by before Trump was not on the ballot and when Trump was on the ballot in 2016 and 2020 and by Hispanic or not Levels of agreement with Trump’s ideas on immigration by second-generation and non-second-generation Americans

Agreement with the respondent having a linked fate with immigrants by second-generation and non-second-generation

Americans

The level of Republican Party identification after exposure to the treatment conditions

The level of Republican Party identification after exposure to the treatment conditions for conservative second-generation Americans

The difference in Trump approval after exposure

to experimental stimuli for second-generation Americans The difference in Trump approval after exposure

to experimental stimuli for conservative second-generation Americans

Second-generation Americans’ opinions on changes

in Latinos’ situation, separated by parental home country Second-generation Americans’ opinions on which party has more concern for Latinos, separated by parental

home country

Second-generation Americans voting for Trump, separated by parental home country

Second-generation Mexican Americans’ opinions of

the Republican nominee from 1980 to 2016

Comparison of second-generation Mexican Americans’ opinions on building the wall at Mexico’s border in 2016 with non-Mexican second-generation Americans Second-generation Asian Americans’ impression of Trump in 2016, separated by parental home country

Percentage of second-generation Asian Americans voting for Trump in 2016, separated by parental home country

82 83

84 85

122 123

Figures + xi

30 Percentage of second-generation Asian Americans identifying with the Republican Party in 2016, separated by parental home country

31 Second-generation Americans’ opinions on building the wall at Mexico’s border in 2016 by border state residency

Pu Nhu

On nam

IO

FI

12 13

15 16

Tables

Feeling Thermometer Scores for Illegal Immigrants Selected Tweets about Immigration by Donald Trump Sentiment Analysis of Trump’s Immigration Tweets Presidential Speeches Mentioning Immigration

or Immigrants

Ordered Logistic Regression Models of Treatment Effect Ordered Probit Regression Models for Hispanic Americans Ordered Probit Regression Models for Asian Americans Determinants of Patriotism and American Identity in 2012 and 2016

Effect of Exposure to Trump Rhetoric on Identification with the Republican Party

Effect of Exposure to Trump Rhetoric for Hispanic Americans on Identification with the Republican Party

Effect of Exposure to Trump Rhetoric for Asian Americans on Identification with the Republican Party

Effect of Exposure to Trump Rhetoric on Trump Approval Effect of Exposure to Trump Rhetoric on Trump Approval for Conservatives

Determinants of Republican Presidential Vote and

Party Identification, 1952-2020

Determinants of Voting for Trump in 2020

Determinants of Voting for Party Identification in 2020

45 60

63 66 85 86 86 88 103

106 107

10g III

II2 IIZ xiv + Tables

Determinants of Voting for Trump in 2020

by Second-Generation Americans

Determinants of Voting for a Republican Presidential Candidate for Second-Generation American Democrats and Republicans, 1952 to 2020

Test of Unit Homogeneity

Effect of Treatment Conditions

Survey Questionnaire

Summary Statistics

Correlation with Unpatriotic and Dependent Variables

132 153 153 154 156 157

Acknowledgments

This research received beneficial comments from participants at various panel sessions, presentations, and colloquiums at the American Political Science Association, the Midwest Political Science Association, Georgia State University Department of Political Science, Doshisha University Department of Media, Journalism and Communications, Gakushuin University Department of Political Science, and Chuo University Faculty of Letters. This research received funding from the Office of the Provost at Georgia State University.

Introduction

What impact does anti-immigration rhetoric have on the children of immigrants? Profound cultural angst exists about immigrant incorporation (Segura 2006). This anxiety is reflected in the anti-immigration rhetoric embedded within our current political discourse. This book provides an overview of how political communication influences the process of incorporation. I show that how elites’ talk about immigration affects how the children of immigrants feel about the United States and its political parties. These feelings, in turn, greatly influence their desire to incorporate into American political parties and society. I also show that regardless of a speaker’s intended outcome, what is said can still have a deleterious effect on incorporation desire, a communicative process that I term co/- lateral damage. Although collateral damage is most used in a military setting, this term is broadly defined as an “injury inflicted on something other than an intended target” (Merriam-Webster 2020). I show in this book that anti-immigrant rhetoric from political elites inflicts civic injury’ on second-generation Americans whether they were the intended target or not. I also show, in chapter 7, how this loss is differentiated by the ethnic subgroups—such as Cuban American or Vietnamese Americans—that have had different experiences with the American party system and thereby have differing party affiliations that alter the impact of this rhetoric.

1. I define political elites as prominent former or current politicians, elected officials, or government officials.

2. To be clear, I define civic injury as any impact that creates estrangement from the polity and thereby negatively affects political engagement and democracy more broadly. I show below that harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric does that when read by second-generation Americans.

For immigrants and their children, hostile rhetoric may undermine their incorporation into American society by making the United States seem like a less desirable place to incorporate into. Integration is crucial for ensuring that immigrants and their children can access their rights and fully meet their responsibilities as residents of the country. Understanding the causes and barriers to successfully integrating the large current wave of immigrants into American society is crucial. Tam Cho (1999) shows that if immigrants and their children are socialized into believing that America listens to them and values them, they will have more political efficacy, increasing political participation. The evidence is also clear that integration provides economic benefits to immigrants and their children (e.g., Bratsberg, Ragan, and Nasir 2002). Ramakrishnan and Bloemraad (2008) show that immigrant integration leads to greater civic engagement. Thus, if harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric creates estrangement from the United States for second-generation Americans, it could have a long-term negative impact on political society in America.

In this book, I describe the dominant theoretical debates about immigrant incorporation and outline my collateral damage theory of adverse effects from political communication in the first chapters. I then show why the second generation is the decisive group for incorporation, which justifies my focus on them. I then detail critical recent examples of anti-immigration using President Donald Trump’s rhetoric as a test case. In the chapters that follow, I bring new experimental and survey evidence to bear on the question by examining how political communication influences the incorporation process of the children of immigrants. To conduct these analyses, I created several novel surveys with between 500 and 1,000 second-generation Americans, providing this book with more survey data from this understudied group than was previously available.’

I focus on the main avenue of political communication that may influence immigrant attitudes toward incorporation: elites’ anti-immigration rhetoric. I find that exposure to such speech is off-putting and leads the children of immigrants to be less likely to be patriotic, less likely to embrace an American identity, and express less support for the Republican Party. Thus, this rhetoric significantly impacts incorporation into either America or the Republican Party, whether intentional or not. This outcome shows collateral damage from political communication that adversely affects immigrant incorporation.

More specifically, by drawing on ideas about elite cues and social iden-

3. The survey questionnaires are available in the appendix.

tity theory, I posit that anti-immigration rhetoric will be perceived as an attack on a group that members of the second generation identify with because it includes their parents by definition. Attacks against “their” group are thus similar to attacks on themselves and may decrease their allegiance with the larger society. To investigate these effects, in 2016, I conducted an online survey experiment with samples of US citizens with two foreign-born parents matched to nationally representative census data for this group. In 2017, I replicated the survey experiment with online samples of US citizens with two foreign-born parents and two US-born parents, again matched to nationally representative census data for these groups. In 2018, I also conducted surveys on the attitudes and beliefs toward incorporation in general and the US political system with nationally representative data from second-generation Americans. I use these and other data to test the impact of elites’ growing use of anti-immigration rhetoric and show how it affects second-generation Americans.

Because ‘Trump typically directs his rhetoric against “illegal immigrants,” I used this terminology in the survey experiments’ treatments. Although the study participants were US citizens and were not themselves undocumented, I found a clear negative impact from exposure to Trump’s hostile rhetoric against undocumented immigrants. These results show that elite anti-immigration rhetoric may have an intergenerational impact that impedes successful integration for the second generation. This finding shows that second-generation Americans perceive elite cues directed against undocumented immigrants as a sign that the United States is less desirable to integrate into. It thus displays the collateral damage of anti-immigration rhetoric from elite persons that may impede integration for the second generation.

I also show how this rhetoric deters second-generation Americans’ support for the Republican Party, even among ideologically conservative second-generation Americans who would otherwise be inclined to support it. I show how the second generation’s alienation from the Republican Party is crucial for understanding American politics’ future, specifically presidential elections within battleground states. Anti-immigration rhetoric strengthens group identity among second-generation Americans, leading them to counter and oppose the Republican Party. By attacking immigrants, the rhetoric triggers an increase in consciousness by focusing attention on immigration and politicizing it. I also find that not all second-generation Americans follow my thesis, specifically Cuban Americans and Vietnamese Americans.

How to incorporate immigrant populations is a crucial issue for advanced industrial nations (Putnam 2007). Immigration potentially offers excellent advantages for the United States (Hirowatari 1998; Smith and Edmonston 1997). Increasing the supply of high- and low-skill workers benefits modern economies, especially as birth rates decline in many advanced democracies (United Nations Population Division 2000). A better understanding of how communication alters opinion can allow policymakers to escape the easy generalizations commonly made about immigrants and incorporation, supporting better decision-making. Gaining knowledge over the impact of communication toward incorporation may allow insights that facilitate better immigration policies. The increasing foreign-born population also presents several challenges for societies in Europe, Asia, and North America. If these effects are known, this knowledge can result in communicative discourse that is more conducive to successful incorporation. Creating positive intergroup relations during a period of increased immigration may have a long-term beneficial impact. Determining the impact of political communication on incorporation will enable an environment conducive to successfully incorporating these new immigrants.

I will now detail how this book contributes to academic debates on immigration incorporation and generally on political communication.

Contribution to Debates on Immigrant Incorporation

This book adds to several long-running academic debates on how the children of immigrants will be incorporated into the broader American society. This question is crucial because research shows that second-generation children often lag in basic citizenship skills, reducing their power and bifurcating society (Portes and Rumbaut 2001). Their incorporation depends on their view of how welcoming the society is and how responsive the system will be to their problems, which will affect their desire to become incorporated.

In the long-running academic debate over how assimilation will unfold in the modern United States, there are two perspectives on possible assimilation pathways. First is a straight-line assimilation model, which mirrors America’s past (Alba and Nee 2003). In this model, immigrants slowly adopt more American identity and cultural practices, increasing with each generation. The second perspective is segmented assimilation, which says that some immigrant groups will only assimilate to a certain degree (Portes and Rumbaut 2001). While this debate has unfolded, empirical evidence has been presented that supports both perspectives. Across many objective measures, assimilation does seem to be happening in a straight-line way (see, e.g., Citrin et al. 1997). However, scholars often point to immigrant social movements that are a reaction to anti-immigrant policies and discrimination to show that this new immigration wave is different from what has happened in the past. They argue that this recent wave of immigration will have a more segmented assimilation process.

There is certainly much evidence that immigrants face discrimination (Fetzer 2000; Kinder and Kam 2009). If so, it could be that this intense period of anti-immigration feelings could spark resistance to the traditional straight-line assimilation model. Telzer and Vazquez Garcia (2009), for example, find that Latinas experience a considerable level of discrimination based on skin tone. Beyond America, anti-immigration feelings have grown worldwide (see Richey 2010; Hainmueller and Hiscox 2007). Hopkins (2010) shows that we can expect a pronounced anti-immigrant feelings if a prominent immigration wave is combined with anti-immigrant rhetoric from elites. This finding describes the current American situation well. In response to this discrimination, protest movements—often run by the children of immigrants—that have sparked resistance to assimilation have been widespread (Zepeda-Millan and Wallace 2013).

Additionally, some scholars believe that immigrants do not wish to assimilate. For example, Huntington (2004, 1) says that “the persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages [because] unlike past immigrant groups, Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream US culture.” This view, however, takes an overly deterministic view of culture, as we know that culture is a continually changing hybrid that is shared between people and not a permanent, unchanging characteristic. Culture may influence behavior passed across multiple generations, but that culture intermingles with other cultures and technological innovation to produce somewhat different outcomes in just a matter of decades. Thus, it is unclear whether current immigrants’ existing cultural perspectives will impede the processes of incorporation or even assimilation. Indeed, in the past periods that are now viewed as having straight-line assimilation, anti-immigration critiques over the lack of cultural similarity from immigrants were profound (Archdeacon 1983). Nevertheless, those groups are now viewed as assimilating in a straight line.

All this information taken together suggests that the level of eventual incorporation for the recent large wave of immigrants has yet to be determined. Some forces could accelerate or decelerate the incorporation levels of immigrants into American society. This book aims to show how political communication will be one of the dominant forces that alter these levels, specifically how anti-immigration rhetoric can impact these processes. By bringing empirical evidence to bear on these two competing theoretical perspectives, this book sheds light on which path immigrants are likely to follow and the likely consequences for American politics. Incorporation is, of course, a two-way street: “Whether or not immigration changes the nature and identity of a people is the product of the collective decisions of two sets of actors—both the immigrants and those in the receiving society” (Fraga and Segura 2006, 283). The potential for intergenerational incorporation to affect American politics is profound. ‘Thus, it is vital to determine the influence of anti-immigration rhetoric on incorporation.

For example, suppose the Republican Party alienates the large current wave of second-generation Americans due to Republican politicians’ anti-immigration rhetoric. In that case, we can expect a long-term advantage for the Democratic Party with this significant portion of the population. As second-generation Americans are US citizens, it is essential to remember that their children will also be voters. As parents often pass their party identification on to their children, we can expect an intergenerational impact that will influence American politics for decades to come. Moreover, of course, specific subgroups of second-generation Americans, such as Cuban Americans or Vietnamese Americans, may not respond in this manner due to preheld beliefs about the Republican Party and attitudes toward immigration that are divergent from other immigrant groups.*

As part of the incorporation process, developing a partisan identification—an attachment to a political party—is crucial for developing ties with the political system. These ties start a bicausal process whereby those who become interested in one of the political parties and then recruited by that party’s mobilization efforts become even more active in politics. Mobilization efforts often target people who are at least somewhat inclined toward that party’s direction. Negative political communication may impede the development of partisan identification and attachment to the anti-immigrant party. Because second-generation citizens do not have extended family histories tied to parties in the United States, their party identification is often still in flux.

4. Additionally, it is essential to note that this book is focused on the impact of anti-immigrant rhetoric from political elites, not anti-immigrant immigration policies. The Democratic Party has pursued policies—such as increased deportations under President Joe Biden—that some second-generation Americans may view as anti-immigration.

I find that while many second-generation Americans are politically conservative, very few are anti-immigration. Anti-immigration rhetoric may alienate these potential supporters of the Republican Party. Since they make up a growing percentage in many battleground states, such as Florida, Arizona, and Nevada, they may have a disproportionate impact on American politics if they are pushed away from the Republican Party by this hostile rhetoric. Thus, due to its importance to the future of American politics, researching the impact of anti-immigration rhetoric on immigrants and their descendants’ attitudes toward party attachment is necessary.

The academic literature on immigration assumes that globalized societies are heading in a multicultural direction (Berry 2001). It assumes, or perhaps even makes the prescription, that host countries need to see themselves as pluralistic societies and thus support ethnic groups remaining distinct elements within society (see Taguchi 1983). Generally, academics push for countries to realize their diversity and to embrace it. What is mainly ignored in the current academic discourse, however, is the desires of immigrants. Do immigrants want to be a separate category, or do they want to incorporate? If so, how much? These are crucial questions, and they require more research on the opinions of immigrants.

The existing evidence is not conclusive. Data from various surveys conducted with immigrants show some want to incorporate (see, for example, Farkas, Duffett, and Johnson 2003). Furthermore, we know from sociological studies that many immigrants quickly incorporate, if they are allowed to (Waters and Jimenez 2005), in such ways as learning the dominant language and embracing the receiving country’s culture. In the United States, incorporation is common within two generations, especially for Americans of Mexican descent (Waters and Jimenez 2005).

We do not know how this process is affected by the recent increase in anti-immigration rhetoric from elites. The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States makes this topic particularly important to study. I show in chapter 4 that he often uses harsh anti-immigration rhetoric, which is thoroughly covered by mass media and therefore often heard by second-generation Americans. Thus, while incorporation is typical for immigrants, the impact of contact with the increasingly hostile anti-immigrant discourse is an essential issue to research. Consequently, understanding and addressing the barriers to successful integration are also critical.

Now I examine how current research on political communication is not focused on the unintended effects of communication and show how this book adds to political communication research more broadly.

Contribution to Debates on Political Communication

Scant academic research has been done on how elite rhetoric alters the process of immigrant integration. Even less research examines how the unintended impact of communication can still affect public opinion. Since ‘Trump’s messaging is probably not explicitly intended to impede the incorporation of second-generation Americans, any effect in that regard is an unintended by-product of the original communication. Most research assumes that communication is directed at a target with the aim of persuasion, such as the traditional sender-medium-receiver paradigm discussed in chapter 2. Indeed, Trump’s rhetoric is intended for a specific targeted audience to persuade them to vote for him and be against illegal immigration. However, in addition to this intended audience, others in society hear his rhetoric, and any impact on these nontargeted receivers has not been studied.

Despite considerable research on elite discourse and racial minorities (see, e.g., White 2007), there has been less work on the impact of such discourse on immigrants or their children. However, Valentino, Brader, and Jardina (2013) show how newspaper coverage focused white opinions about immigration on Latinos, which shows that elite attention can alter perceptions about immigration. Their research and others are focused on the impact of intended communication and ignore any possible unintended effects. This book’s chief contribution to political communication research shows how unintended audiences are affected by political communication. Examining unintended audiences opens up a broad new avenue for research. Political communication researchers can investigate how communication affects countless audiences that are not the communicator’s original target.

Why Write a Book on the Impact of Trump’s Anti-Ilmmigration Rhetoric?

The reason this book is necessary is the significant increase in anti-immigration rhetoric by elites (see chapter 4 for empirical evidence on ‘Trump’s rhetoric). This book empirically tests the normative and empirical assumptions implicit in prior work using experimental research and nationally representative survey data to focus on the fallout from harsh rhetoric about immigration. This book is different from prior works because it focuses on elite communication that alienates and marginalizes immigrants’ children. I focus on how communication impacts the desire to incorporate into the larger American political society. For example, scholars often focus on elite rhetorical depictions of American identity, but not how elite rhetoric impacts immigrants’ attitudes. As such, this book adds to the literature in important and novel ways. I term this impact collateral damage because although it may not have been intended to undermine integration, it could affect second-generation Americans’ attitudes and create negative reciprocal attitudes toward the United States. Note that this loss occurs for both second-generation Americans and the nation, which loses benefits due to decreased participation in American political life and causes a macro effect on US representational democracy.

Since Trump lost the 2020 election, it may be helpful to address why ‘Trump’s rhetoric is featured so prominently in this book. This book studies anti-immigration rhetoric from elites and uses Trump as an example, but it is not specifically a book about Trump. Trump is just one of many politicians who uses intense anti-immigration rhetoric. Many other politicians, such as Tom Cotton from Arkansas, Kris Kobach from Kansas, and Steve King from Iowa, use similar rhetoric. Due to his prominence and importance in American politics, Trump’s rhetoric is a practical way to operationalize elite anti-immigration rhetoric.

Simply put, the book is not about Trump. Instead, it is about how anti-immigration elite rhetoric affects those in the second generation, and it happens to use Irump’s communication as an exemplar of this type of rhetoric. More importantly, it offers a formal theory that is grounded in decades of communication science that shows that although we typically expect a minimal effect from communication, the conditions are in place for second-generation Americans to potentially be influenced by elite rhetoric such as Trump’s due to their lack of socialization into the American political system.

Additionally, it is essential to understand Trump’s impact because he may have a multigenerational influence due to the profound coverage of his rhetoric, even though he was only a one-term president. Almost everyone in the second generation will have heard his rhetoric on Mexican immigrants being rapists and killers and so forth. We need to understand what these Americans feel about a country that has nominated and elected a president like Trump. Moreover, since many other politicians may be influenced by Trump’s success in the future to take a similar approach to develop a following based on harsh anti-immigration rhetoric, it is crucial to understand how this rhetoric will subsequently influence incorporation processes. After his presidency, he also has an enormous email list of mil-

IO * COLLATERAL DAMAGE lions that receive daily blasts, often containing anti-immigrant rhetoric. He is potentially running again for president in 2024. Thus, even though ‘Trump was only a one-term president, his influence may alter politics for many years to come. For these reasons, it is important to study Trump specifically and more generally examine how elite rhetoric impacts incorporation processes.

Currently, the issue of immigration is framed by elite rhetoric from two chief sources.’ The first source of cues for the public are delivered directly from the politicians who bash immigrants. Attacking weak minorities is a standard tool for a specific subset of politicians to get easy name recognition and create interest in their campaigns. President Trump and former Colorado representative Tom Tancredo are perhaps the best-known examples, but dozens of prominent politicians have attacked immigration (Burgess 2004). Patrick Buchanan had a long career that featured many anti-immigrant diatribes. For example, Buchanan (2007) said, “Where the Italians wanted to be part of our family, millions of Mexicans are determined to retain their language and loyalty to Mexico. They prefer to remain outsiders. They do not wish to assimilate, and the nation no longer demands that they do so” (Buchanan 2007, 27). These politicians directly create hostility toward immigration and doubts that it benefits the host country.

The second source of cues is mass media that deliver these messages when they report on anti-immigration rhetoric. It is well established that the media are particularly interested in crime stories due to their ability to spark interest and increase ratings or sales (Barrile 1984). Immigrant crime has been sensationalized by the press, with stories about immigrants’ crimes far outnumbering stories on the positive impacts of immigrants (Jacobs, Hooghe, and Vroome 2017). Positive stories are less dramatic than crime stories, so the media focuses on rare examples of murder or rape by immigrants. For the average person, this media coverage frames immigration as a crime issue and inherently harmful (Vincenzo 2019). As part of this media coverage, the new intense anti-immigration rhetoric from prominent politicians, such as a president or presidential nominee,

5. For natives, prior research on immigration attitudes has determined that six main factors influence public opinion toward immigration. These six attributes are (1) ideology (McClosky 1964); (2) identification with anti-immigrant political parties (Weldon 2006); (3) economic threat (Burns and Gimpel 2000); (4) demographic attributes (Mayda 2006; Binder, Polinard, and Wrinkle 1997); (5) authoritarianism and tolerance (Altemeyer 1998; Pratto and Lemieux 2001); and (6) diverse social networks (Abrams and Hogg 1998).

will increase the amount of news coverage that has negative frames about immigration. We need to understand what impact these frames have on second-generation Americans and their perceptions of America broadly and the Republican Party specifically.

I now detail each chapter to explain its specific contribution.

Detailed Chapter Outline

Generally, this book is designed to test the determinants of immigrant incorporation for a thriving democratic society. The specific chapters are about support for and barriers to immigrant incorporation based on political communication, such as anti-immigration rhetoric from politicians. Below is an annotated table of contents for the rest of the book.

Chapter 2: A theory of collateral damage. This chapter explicates a novel theory on how presidential rhetoric can have nonminimal effects on unintended audiences. To investigate the potential for political communication to have unintended consequences, I examine communication theory and state specific lemmas from which my theory can be tested. I show how the rhetoric of President Trump and immigration incorporation are highly relevant test cases for this theory. My collateral damage theory is based on decades of research on conditioning and the impact of communication. Simply put, my theory is that highly interested subpopulations who lack political socialization will be differentially influenced by elite rhetoric compared with the uninterested mass public, which has a high degree of political socialization, whether or not they were the intended recipient of the communication. I also theorize that this effect is differentiated by long-term partisan attachment from different ethnic subgroups.

Chapter 3: Conditions necessary for collateral damage. In this chapter, I test the four lemmas described in chapter 2 that are conditions necessary for the theory of collateral damage to be empirically valid, and I provide empirical support for each. Specifically, I show that the media covered Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric so well that most second-generation Americans were fully exposed to it (lemma 1). Also, I show that children of immigrants are attuned to anti-immigration rhetoric because they care about immigrants (lemma 2). I also demonstrate that immigrants’ children can be influenced on these topics because they are not highly socialized into beliefs about the United States or its party system (lemma 3). Finally, I provide evidence that the effect is not dependent on Trump’s intention (lemma 4). The support for these lemmas leads to being able to test the main theory with the experiments and survey data analysis in the flowing chapters.