Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Politics
Ex Ante Immigration Policy: How Local Politics Anticipate Future Flows
2026-06-18
Scholarly work on the politics of immigration in the U.S. has focused primarily on the influence of local demographics. Less understood are the ways in which local governments respond to demographic changes beyond the city limits. We hypothesize that local governments anticipate future influxes of immigrants from neighboring localities and adjust policies ex ante in order to constrain their movement before it can occur. We predict variation in anti-immigrant legislation as a function of proximity to nearby immigrant populations and find that a 10 percentage point increase in the share of the foreign-born population in a city’s surrounding areas doubles the likelihood that a city considers a restrictive policy. The effect is more pronounced when neighboring immigrants originate from Latin America than from other regions. We also find suggestive evidence that knowledge of adjacent foreign-born populations is transmitted via commuting patterns as neighboring populations commute into cities for work. Our research highlights the importance of spatial networks in local politics and how local political units influence one another and engage in an anticipatory strategic response.