ABSTRACT
The debate surrounding some laws has emphasized claims relating to the putative criminal threats posed by undocumented immigrants. Prior research has linked punitive popular attitudes to the perception of criminal threat from other minority groups, including African-Americans. The present study uses survey data from a national random sample of non-Latino adults in the United States to examine the extent to which undocumented immigrants are perceived as a criminal threat. The authors test how perceived criminal threat relates to support for punitive social controls dealing with both undocumented immigrants trying to enter the country and those already present. They also examines whether support for those controls may be influenced by contextual indicators of presumed threat. The pattern of results from the subsample analyses indicates some significant differences between Black and Anglo respondents with regard to the effects of immigrant threat on support for border controls and between conservatives and non-conservatives in relation to the effects of threat on internal controls.
