Made in the USA? Immigrants' imported ideology and political engagement

•Mexican immigrants import their ideological predispositions to the United States.•Mexican immigrants use Imported ideology as a heuristic to navigate U.S. politics.•Imported ideology heightens the prospects of immigrants' electoral participation.•Right-leaning immigrants are the most likely ones to participate in U.S. elections.

This study explores both the extent to which immigrants' pre-migration ideological predispositions might serve as a heuristic, by which these individuals anchor and adjust their ideological predispositions in the new polity, and the extent to which imported ideology enhances the likelihood of immigrants' political engagement once in their new home. Empirical tests take advantage of two unique survey datasets of Mexican immigrants residing in the United States; one of which incorporates a survey embedded experiment. Results show that immigrants' ideological predispositions in the country of origin do anchor these individuals' ideological predispositions in the new host country in terms of intensity and directionality. Most importantly, imported ideology does heighten the prospects of immigrants' electoral participation in the United States.