TITLE:
Religion, Partisanship, and the Boundaries of Inclusion: Explaining Pro-Immigration Attitudes in the United States
AUTHORS:
Md. Sirajul Islam
KEYWORDS:
Immigration Attitudes, Religious Orientation, Race, Education, Political Liberals, Public Opinion
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Political Science,
Vol.16 No.4,
October
9,
2026
ABSTRACT: The growing diversity of immigrant populations in the United States has prompted renewed attention to public attitudes toward immigration and the complex factors that shape them. While previous research highlighted socio-demographic and ideological predictors, less is known about how deeper belief systems moderate these effects in the new era of political and cultural polarization. This study investigates how religious orientation conditions the influence of political party identification on pro-immigration attitudes. Using recent data from the 2022 General Social Survey, the analysis confirms that education, political ideology, and age remain significant predictors of immigration attitudes. Although the interaction between Republican identification and religious liberalism is statistically significant, post-estimation analyses reveal no significant difference in immigration attitudes between Republican religious liberals and Republican religious fundamentalists. By integrating insights from group threat theory, modernization theory, and social identity theory, this study advances a more nuanced understanding of how religion moderates the relationship between structural predictors and immigration attitudes. Unlike much of the existing research that emphasizes opposition to immigration, this study focuses on the drivers of pro-immigration attitudes and highlights how religion conditions the liberalizing influence of party identification. By focusing on the drivers of pro-immigration attitudes rather than opposition, the findings contribute to a better understanding of the sociopolitical factors that shape public opinion on immigration and highlight the complex ways in which religion influences civic attitudes in an ideologically polarized U.S. society.