Welcoming Cities: Immigration Policy at the Local Government Level

Abstract

In the face of continued immigration to the United States and federal policy inertia, many local governments have started to adopt their own immigrant-related policies to cope with the newcomers. Among them, welcoming cities represent a new wave of inclusive local government responses that seeks to incorporate immigrants socially and economically and deviates from the previous policies that focus on law enforcement and legal status. In this article, we explore the rationales behind these cities’ commitment to immigrant integration by examining the effect of theory-based local demographic, economic, political, fiscal, and institutional characteristics and national network organization on local governments’ policy adoption. Our results indicate that cities that have an educated, diverse, and liberal population, are more economically troubled but fiscally sound are more likely to become welcoming cities. The Welcoming America as an umbrella organization also plays an important role in facilitating the welcoming movement.