Attitudes about immigration are central to political contestation around the world. Research has focused on fear of economic, cultural, and security threats. We describe a new sort of fear about immigration that can polarize attitudes: how the presence of migrants from particular countries can intensify voters’ anxiety about their own country’s future. Politics in sending countries can spark “that could be me” fears in receiving countries – that one day migrants’ experience could be their own – that they’d be forced into exile because their own country became as oppressive or chaotic as the sending country. Such fear can arise independently of perceptions that immigrants represent economic, cultural, or security threats.

The Venezuelan exodus across Latin America offers a useful context for exploring our hypothesis. Countries in the region are similar culturally and economically, but vary in terms of polarization and the salience of immigration. To determine whether immigration sparks “that could be me” fears, we fielded a survey-experiment in several countries that vary across these dimensions, cueing voters to think about Venezuelans versus immigrants from elsewhere. Across countries, a large Venezuelan inflow drives economic and security fears. Yet where Venezuelan immigration is relatively insignificant but political polarization high, conservative politicians use Venezuelan immigrants to raise fears of what might happen under a future left-wing government at home. Our argument offers a novel way of thinking about immigration attitudes, particularly in terms of south-south global migration, where 'that could be me' fears are potentially quite common.