Article makes me think about how squeaky wheels get the grease at town halls and on that, what's good for the the goose is good for the gander. That while people screaming "don't take away my Medicaid/Obamacare without replacing it" at similar town halls might have worked for defeating GOP repeal, it might work to produce some too tough immigration law. Think like a Congressperson from a district like this, you know how passionate how many are and how they are not going to forget your vote especially if unemployment goes up. Very few passionate pro-immigrant citizen advocates showing up at town halls, if green card holders dared to show up, why would you care, they can't vote.

I do think it's important to remind that this is not just an American phenomenon: xenophobia rules the day in rural districts worldwide.It's a country mice vs. city mice issue of longstanding.

Not that there aren't anti-immigrant sentiments in urban areas, but that gets complex, that all depends on how cosmopolitan vs. how tribal the geographics are, the more "ghettoes", the more anti-immigrant I would think. You can see this in NYC on a micro-level, the areas where there is still segregation and not assimilation and mixing and mingling, i.e. Hasidic Jews, or Russians and former SSR's in Brighton Beach Brooklyn, or say, Sengelese Muslims take over blocks and blocks and blocks, you get tensions along the lines of "why don't you just become Americans?" And how such groups take care of their own, whether they do, or they are seen as using a lot of government services is part of that.