“But should old acquaintance be forgot, keep your eye on the grand old flag.” George M. Cohan’s famous verse reminds us that a flag can call a nation back to its core values in times of distress. But, in a nation of immigrants, which flag and what values?
The vivid images of protesters against Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in Los Angeles brandishing the Mexican tricolor instead of the Stars and Stripes have dominated news coverage and commentary.
Critics have suggested that the Mexican flag in this context shows loyalty to a foreign country rather than the United States. President Donald Trump and his allies have pounced on the opportunity to invoke the use of the Mexican flag to malign the protests as un-American or outright hostile to this country. Calling attention to the flags, Vice President JD Vance insinuated that L.A. faced an “invasion.” Top White House adviser Stephen Miller called it an “occupation.”
Supporters of the protest movement’s goals are divided over the symbolism of the Mexican flag. To some, displaying it is an expression of ethnic pride that is fully compatible with Americanism and legitimate protest. To others, it belies the strong American identity and rapid assimilation of the very immigrants the protests are meant to protect and it casts an unpatriotic pall over the movement that harms the popularity of the protests and immigration.
Does the choice of flag at an immigration protest actually carry any weight? Do images of the Mexican flag provoke the backlash among ordinary citizens that we see among some conservative commentators? Would the Stars and Stripes put the protests in a more “American” light and help win public sympathy and support?
Although voters are often alleged to be dug in on immigration, the likely answer to all these questions is a resounding yes.
Decades of research show that the U.S. flag almost universally elicits strongly positive feelings in Americans from all backgrounds. Moreover, the flag can signal immigrants’ desire to become American and love of their adopted country. American patriotism is pervasive among immigrants and their children, and the vast majority of Americans believe that love of country is an important criterion for being “truly American.”
In 2010, we published a study that directly explored how the imagery of U.S. and foreign flags affects public reactions to immigration protests. We were motivated by immigrants’ rights protests that occurred throughout April 2006, centered on Los Angeles but spreading to 102 U.S. cities. These also saw their share of commentators who argued that protesters’ displays of Mexican flags would foster backlash and ultimately do more harm than good.
To test this notion, we surveyed a representative group of American adults and showed one random half protest imagery that highlighted Mexican flags and the other half pictures of protesters waving the Stars and Stripes.
The results were strong and unambiguous: Most notably, a majority of respondents in the “Mexican flag” group (55%) were “Bothered a lot” by the protest, whereas only 45% of those shown the U.S.-flag-dominated images were similarly bothered. In short, changing the symbolic association from “foreign” to American can contribute significantly to turning a hostile public into a supportive one.
A more recent study we conducted in 2018, during Trump’s first term, underscores that despite all the polarization of the past decade, symbols of patriotism remain pivotal. We found that telling people a hypothetical immigrant had a U.S. flag, versus one from their country of origin, in his home elicited substantial feelings of shared identity and community. Notably, this effect was similar regardless of immigrants’ legal status. Immigrants who fly Old Glory are more likely to be accepted by ordinary citizens as “one of us.”
Foreign flags surely have an important place in a nation of immigrants where our distinct origins and traditions are celebrated. Most Americans have respect for such pluralism and honor others’ distinct customs and backgrounds. But most also believe that the worth of immigration in this country is to be judged fundamentally by what people want to become rather than where they came from. Protesters who aim to convince the general public to rally to immigrants’ defense should seek to amplify this aspiration instead of obscuring it. A picture is worth a thousand words.
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