Framing the Other Side: How Straw Man Arguments Obscure Mutual Understanding in the Immigration Debate

The immigration debate is among the most divisive in contemporary democracies, yet little is known about how the debate is perceived and experienced by citizens. This paper employs a novel survey experiment with open-ended questions to investigate how citizens frame the immigration debate in their own words. The findings reveal that individuals on both sides tend to attribute weak arguments to opponents, despite acknowledging the existence of stronger, more compelling arguments for their position. Notably, the counterarguments they recognize as valid align more closely with their opponents’ actual reasoning than the weaker arguments they attribute to them. This suggests that the divisiveness of immigration policy stems less from a failure to appreciate opponents’ point of view, than from a tendency to misperceive their way of thinking.