Over the course of the 2016 election cycle there has been a lot of fact-checking of the candidates’ statements in their debates, speeches, and ads. In particular, a considerable amount of attention has focused on the frequent misstatements and distortions of Donald Trump and his surrogates.  One claim that has not received much attention, however, is the charge that immigrants, especially immigrants who entered the U.S. without papers, undermine the “American way of life” or make America less “great.” We can shed light on the validity of this assertion by looking at the responses given in the Latino Immigrant National Election Study (LINES), a nationally representative survey of foreign-born Latinos over eighteen that was fielded during the last presidential campaign.

Are Latino immigrants as patriotic as native-born Americans?  One way to address this question is by gauging emotional reactions to the flag, given that flags are a potent political symbol in any context.  Table 1 presents comparative findings across four groups—the U.S.-born participants in the 2012 American National Election Study (ANES), LINES respondents who had become naturalized citizens, noncitizens who came to the country with papers, and noncitizens who arrived without papers.  We observe in this table that the great majority of respondents reported feeling “extremely” or “very” good when seeing the flag.  This holds even for noncitizens without entry papers.  It was rare for anyone in these samples to express negative reactions to the flag.

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Among immigrants, these positive feelings carried over to general evaluations of the federal government (Table 2).  Approximately two out of three naturalized Latino citizens voiced a favorable view of the government, as measured by a 0-100 “feeling thermometer” scale (a standard metric in survey research).  For noncitizen immigrants, the number giving positive assessments was even higher—nearly three out of four.  In marked contrast, U.S.-born respondents were far more disparaging. In a related vein, Latino immigrants demonstrated a deep sense of civic duty in the United States (Table 3). When asked whether turning out to vote is a “duty” or just a “choice,” foreign-born Latinos—even those who did not have voting rights—overwhelmingly saw involvement as an obligation.  ANES respondents, on the other hand, were split, with 44% believing that voting was a duty and 45% seeing it as a choice.

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These findings and others from our survey show that foreign-born Latinos on the whole hold American governing institutions in high regard and are ready to accept the duties and responsibilities of citizenship.   American civic culture resonates with the immigrants in this study, even if many are not yet fully incorporated into American civic life.  (See the RSF journal issue "Immigrants Inside Politics/Outside Citzenship" for further research that draws from the LINES investigation.)