ABSTRACT
Political parties play a significant role in determining agendas for policy and politicians, as they compete for votes and control of governments. Left parties tend to see immigrants as potential voters and try to recruit them to their parties as they become citizens. Right parties have tended to focus more on immigration control and appealing to voters who feel threatened by immigration. In this chapter, we examine political parties in detail, focusing on how parties on the left (i.e., social democratic, or in the case of the U.S., the Democratic party) have positioned themselves on immigration policy, as compared with conservatives or the Republican party. We also examine more extreme parties, particularly radical right parties that tend to take a strong anti-immigrant position, and in the European case, have more recently focused on Muslim immigrants. The position taken by some European politicians can be compared with the position that many American politicians have taken toward Hispanic or Spanish-speaking immigrants. The authors explain how different types of integration may play out for both natives and immigrants, and how that changes with succeeding generations. For politicians on the right, these groups have become the focal point of political rhetoric and campaigns to attract white working-class voters.
