Replication Data for: Beliefs and Opinions about “Illegal” and “Undocumented” Immigrants: Conceptual Replication of a Null Result

Activists and politicians often express a belief that the language used to describe immigrant populations, such as “illegal” vs. “undocumented,” can impact policy opinions. Existing experimental studies, however, have found relatively little support for that conjecture. In this note, we extend this line of research by exploring whether language impacts perceptions about unauthorized immigrants, such as their association with criminal behavior. Our study uses a conjoint design with experimentally manipulated instructions: respondents are randomly asked to identify profiles that belong to “illegal” or “undocumented” immigrants. We find that language used in the conjoint instructions does not impact perceptions about unauthorized population. At the same time, our observational results show that respondents’ preferences for terms “illegal” and “undocumented” are related to attitudes toward immigration. We discuss the implication of these results for the debate regarding the role of labels in political conflict over immigration.