Immigrants have contributed greatly to the growth of the United States. As Steinberg (2004) pointed out, the Latino immigrants have made significant contributions to the development of the American Southwest. Many Latino immigrants who are in the country legally work in this area. While the media can give priority to the good work that Latino immigrants do in the country, it has chosen to focus on the dangers that undocumented immigrants pose to the American people. According to Kinefuchi (2015), media coverage of Mexican immigrants has been problematic. Immigrants have often been portrayed as criminals as well as people who represent chaos and failures of the United States immigration policy. The media has been responsible for shaping the public opinion about immigrants. Giving politicians, advocates, and immigrants a chance to engage in immigration issues helps in shaping the perception that the audiences develop about immigrants (Abalu, 2017). Until recently, the media in the United States had been framing immigration issues in a negative way. Moreover, the media had been doing little to correct misleading information that politicians and immigration advocates provided. This paper will examine how the media portrays immigrants by answering the following questions:
1. How has the media been portraying immigrants in the past?
2. Has there been any change in the way American media portrays immigrants?
Literature Review
The perception that many people in the United States have about immigrants is as a result of how the mainstream media covers immigration. According to Suro (2009), immigration coverage has been episodic. The issue of immigration itself is an example of a story that develops slowly over a long period. One can only understand immigration well if they examine it over a certain period, say a year or more than three years. However, the immigration coverage in the United States paints a misleading picture. The media covers immigration as breaking news, which produces spikes of coverage that are often followed by other periods where no one seems to say anything about immigration (Suro, 2009). Dramatic events are usually the driving forces behind the spikes in the immigration coverage. The public’s interest in immigration rises when the media covers protest marches, congressional debates, and any other eye-catching controversies that involve immigrants such as the Elian Gonzalez saga (Suro, 2009). As a result, policymakers and the public have been conditioned to look at immigration as something that occurs suddenly and which is often characterized by a crisis.
In addition, the United States media tends to focus on illegalities when reporting about immigrants, and this has in turn made many Americans look at almost all foreign-born individuals in the United States as illegal immigrant. As Suro (2009) points out, the percentage of illegal immigrants in the United States had been relatively low for many years. It was only in the last one decade or so that illegal immigrants hit a third of all foreign-born individuals in the United States. In year 2000, the largest number of immigrants in any given year in the history of the United States entered the country. The best estimates indicate that over 1.5 million foreign-born individuals came into the country that year (Suro, 2009). The number of immigrants continued to rise steadily in the years that followed until they accounted for more than thirty percent of the total immigrants in the country. Therefore, there is a much higher percentage of legal immigrants than foreigners who enter the United States illegally (Suro, 2009). In spite of this, the media has been focusing on illegal immigration as well as government’s struggles to control illegal immigration, while saying very little about other legal immigrants. At this point, it is important to acknowledge that millions of Mexicans have entered the United States in a lawful and orderly manner. Many immigrants have also contributed greatly to the country’s economic growth. In spite of this, the media has been allocating little time to cover policy processes and legislation that focuses on legal immigration. Suro (2009) points out that 86 percent of 2,614 immigration stories published by The New York Times from 1980 to 2007 focused on illegality aspects. Therefore, such media coverage only makes it logical for the policymakers and the public to associate an increase in the number of foreign-born individuals in the United States with government failures, disruptions of social norms, and violations of law (Suro, 2009). Many immigrants who are in the country legally often find themselves being treated in the same way as illegal immigrants because the public perception associates all immigrants with chaos and lawlessness.
Additionally, there has been a lack of context in immigration coverage in the media. Immigrants, advocates, and policymakers often dominate journalistic narratives, thus excluding other stakeholders who would have contributed to a balanced perception of immigration. In particular, the media in the United States does not give equal coverage on how immigrants play an important role in consumption and employment (Suro, 2009). In other words, the media appears to ignore the consumers and employers when covering immigration. Failing to cover such essential contexts makes the media underemphasize how the country’s labor market affects the characteristics and sizes of immigrant flows (Suro, 2009). Many of the undocumented immigrants come into the United States in search of greener pastures, particularly better employment opportunities than they have in their home countries. Therefore, it is a little misleading to attribute illegal immigration to government failures while ignoring how the labor market in the country lures more people to cross the United States borders. The result of focusing on negative attributes of immigration is that many audiences that are exposed to such skewed media coverage see immigrants as villains (Suro, 2009). Moreover, many Americans are likely to distrust their government for being an incompetent protector and view themselves as victims of immigration.
The media coverage of immigration has been involving politicians, immigrants, and advocates. These three stakeholders often engage each other in a confrontational way that shapes the public opinion. For instance, in 2006-2007, the media appeared to give more coverage to public opinions that sought to block policy initiatives. The House of Representatives had passed a law which would have led to a major crackdown on illegal immigrants (Suro, 2009). The Spanish-language media in the country mobilized immigrants to hold mass protests against this legislation. In 2007, the Senate drafted a bill that would have given a significant number of unauthorized immigrants legal status. Conservative voices in the media mobilized a strong opposition to the Senate’s bill that would have given amnesty to many immigrants (Suro, 2009). Many advocates and politicians got a chance to discuss their opinions about these two legislative attempts in media channels. The ensuing debate was intense, which made the public believe that undocumented immigrants were a serious concern to the United States.
At the same time, media coverage of immigration in the United States has made it difficult to have effective policy reforms. Today, millions of Americans learn what is happening in their country through various media channels such as the internet, television, talk radio, and newspapers. How the media portrays immigrants end us up affecting policy reforms (Suro, 2009). The media contributes to the current policy stalemate by shaping the public opinion about immigrants. In particular, the media has made many people in the United States associate immigration with government failure, controversy, crisis, and illegality (Suro, 2009). Some of the headlines in media and ‘breaking news’ portray immigrants as criminals and individuals who are likely to pose a threat to the safety of the American people. Moreover, some voices of advocacy promote the stalemate in policy formulation by exaggerating what the mainstream media reports (Suro, 2009). Such exaggerations and negative portrayals make it impossible to achieve a consensus about how the issue of immigration should be dealt with for the benefit of all stakeholders.
During the last United States presidential elections campaign, the media focused on messages of a candidate who wanted to portray immigrants negatively. While the media needs to report the main message by various candidates, in 2016 they did it in a manner that gave unauthorized immigration more attention than legal immigration (Abalu, 2017). In particular, the media repeated Donald Trump’s rhetoric about illegal immigration in their headlines in a way that overshadowed what his opponents were saying about immigration. The manner in which the media frames a candidate’s opinions shapes the perception of the audience about that particular topic (Abalu, 2017). Media houses are expected to report the utterances of politicians and provide correct statistics and information where an individual issues wrong or misleading statements. Therefore, when Trump portrayed Mexican immigrants as criminals who were likely to commit murder and other violent crimes, the media should have added a correction to their stories indicating what Trump said and what is true. The Ames Tribune framed its news according to what political candidates said without issuing correct statements whenever a particular politician said something that was untrue (Abalu, 2017). The tendency to reinforce negative comments that politicians make about undocumented immigrants ends up convincing audiences that a candidate’s utterances reflects the position of a particular media house.
At the same time, the tendency to frame immigration narrowly presents a misleading position. According to Abalu (2017), media discussions about immigrants during the last presidential campaigns focused on the illegality of immigrants. For instance, a video of a mother who had lost her daughter in a road accident suggested that illegal immigrants were dangerous people. The media linked drunk driving to immigrants given that the immigrant driver of the vehicle that hit the woman’s daughter was drunk (Abalu, 2017). Unfortunately, no statistics were given to support the assertion that immigrants were criminals or had caused many accidents through reckless driving when drunk.
Research Methods
This research involved an analysis of online sources and journals to understand the way the media has been portraying immigrants in the past and in the present. Four sources that showed the way the media portrays immigrants were selected. Based on the information in the four sources, the researcher sought to find out whether there has been any significant changes in the way the media in the United States portrays immigrants, especially the Latinos. Several publications by The Guardian, The New York Times, and the Huffington post that discussed Mexican immigrants were selected for the review.
Findings and Discussion
One of the selected articles discussed outrageous things that Donald Trump had said about Mexican immigrants during his presidential campaign. Moreno (2015) reported what Trump had said about Mexicans without making any corrections on what was false or misleading. During his campaign, Donald Trump claimed that Mexico was sending its worst lot to the United States. He further claimed that Mexican immigrants were rapists and drug traffickers. In addition, Trump claimed that Latino immigrants were also killers. Moreover, Trump claimed that Hispanics and blacks committed a majority of the most violent crimes in the United States (Moreno, 2015). Donald Trump’s portrayal of Mexican immigrants was similar to how the media has been portraying Latino immigrants in the last two decades. However, Trump went a bit farther by calling most of the Latino immigrants rapists and murderers. Even though Moreno (2015) does not correct the wrong assertions made by Trump, Moreno’s article shows some element of taking politicians to task to support the claims they make about immigration. Requiring evidence to support outrageous claims such as the ones that Trump made gives audiences an opportunity to determine whether a particular individual is making a particular argument based on facts. While Trump was making his outrageous remarks on CNN, the host required him to support his claims with evidence. In one of the occasions, Trump claimed that he got the information about Latino immigrants being rapists from a Fusion article (Moreno, 2015). The host was quick to correct him by informing him that the article he had cited spoke about something else. The article had claimed about eighty percent of female immigrants from Central America were being raped by gang members, government authorities, or human smugglers as they attempted to move into the United States (Moreno, 2015). Although Trump still insisted that the Latino immigrants were the ones raping women, the CNN host had attempted to offer the correct information to the media channel’s audience.
In addition, a substantial number of posts in the New York Times that have been published in the last two years appear to support immigrants. In the past, the media rarely took a bold step to disassociate itself from outrageous claims that some politicians and advocates made about immigrants. However, the media now seems to be more sensitive about what it publishes to ensure it does not offend immigrants. For example, all major television networks have refused to air Trump’s ad which suggests that all Latino immigrants pose a violent threat (Grynbaum " Chokshi, 2018). Even though some of the media channels aired Trump’s ad for some time, others such as the CNN declined to air the ad right from the beginning. The fact that some media channels are refusing to air or publish untrue information about immigrants suggests that politicians and advocates role in shaping the public opinion will reduce sufficiently in the future.
At the same time, even though some media portrayals appear to highlight negative issues that affect Latino immigrants, some of them actually do so to push for a policy change. Gumbel (2018) narrated the challenges that Latino immigrants face in the detention camps. The shocking conditions under which both children and their parents survive in are likely to change the public opinion about immigration policies and detention centers. Immigrants in detention centers in Texas sleep on hard concrete. Some of them faint due to lack of food and dehydration (Gumbel, 2018). The journey from their home countries to the United States is usually perilous. Immigrants have to put up with filth to an extent where a significant percentage of them loses hope of having a positive life by the time they reach the United States (Gumbel, 2018). Once in the country, detention centers present even a more challenging situation. Immigrant parents sometimes have to watch their children sleep on a cold concrete floor without food and water. Moreover, immigrants suffer verbal abuse from immigration officers. The recent media portrayal of the experiences of undocumented immigrants in detention camps seeks to show the inhumane side of the United States (Gumbel, 2018). It is disheartening that the country subjects undocumented immigrants to despicable life experiences in the detention facilities. One of the immigrants explained how immigration officers would urge them to remain silent, failure to which they would lower the temperatures thus exposing them to cold (Gumbel, 2018). Some of these individuals do not come into the country out of their own will. A significant number of the immigrants from Central America come into the United States to seek political asylum. Instead of the country being a source of hope for such immigrants, it focuses on making the detention centers horrible to discourage others from making the trip to the United States. The stay at the immigration centers can be quite long, which exposes many Latino immigrants to health risks (Gumbel, 2018).
Many reported cases of mistreatment of Latino immigrants in detention centers are likely to push the government to review its policies in order to avoid suits as well as negative public opinions. Even those who support tough positions taken by the Trump administration on immigration would not want to see or read about what has been happening at the detention centers. The public pressure has forced federal officials to work towards improving the welfare of the immigrants (Gumbel, 2018). At the same time, federal officials are usually unable to trace those who mistreat immigrants in the detention camps since many of the immigrants are unable to tell where they were being held. Moreover, they cannot tell who had held them. At the same time, reports of medical neglect in detention camps might increase the pressure for a policy change to protect other immigrants as well as the American people. According to Gumbel (2018), immigration officers have been forcing some of the immigrants in detention camps to abandon their medicines. In one of the cases, the officers took away the medicines of an HIV-positive woman. Some of the injustices being done against immigrants such as denying sick people an opportunity to take their medication is likely to change the way Americans view immigrants. Instead of seeing immigrants as crime perpetrators as has been the case for many years, Americans will begin to look at them as victims that need assistance.
Conclusion
Even though the United States media has been portraying immigrants negatively for many years, this trend appears to be changing. The United States media has begun covering immigrant issues in a manner that may be beneficial to the immigrants. In the past, the media had been portraying immigrants negatively for the purpose of showing how they could not fit in the American society. In many cases, immigrants were seen as criminals and portrayed as a source of chaos in the country. At the same time, the media has been underreporting about the good deeds that are associated with immigrants. There are millions of legal immigrants in the country, some of whom have contributed greatly to the economic growth in the United States. In spite of this, the media had been avoiding discussions that show the important role played by immigrants in building the nation. Additionally, there has been a slight change in the way the media portrays undocumented immigrants. Some of the leading media channels have refused to broadcast political messages that are insensitive to immigrants in the country. Moreover, media houses are now going to great lengths to correct wrong impressions made by politicians about immigrants. Finally, the fact that the media has started covering the challenges that immigrants face might end up changing Americans’ perceptions about undocumented immigrants. Americans are likely to view immigrants as victims of mistreatment instead of perpetrators of crime.
References
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