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Border War Film Analysis

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The documentary, Border War, produced by Citizen United, documents different people’s narrative on illegal immigration, specifically from Mexico. Although this film primarily focuses on illegal immigrants coming from Mexico, it articulates a dominant and single hegemonic narrative about illegal immigration as a whole. It tells a single common story through a bias lens of the effects of illegal immigration. By being selective with their evidence and editing, this film eliminates and excludes many variables that could be crucial in understanding illegal immigration. In this film, the people selected to be interviewed and documented, for the most part, had negative thoughts and opinions about illegal immigration. Most of the film contains interviews of white males, ranging from the border patrols to congressmen and political officials. These selected few interviewees were all against illegal immigration, and …show more content…

This film keeps secrets, which are, “known and then not told” (Eisenstein 38). This means that there are facts that are excluded solely to target and criminalize illegal immigrants. By keeping these secrets and leaving out information or evidence from the illegal immigrants, it creates misunderstanding and misrepresentation. Just like what Chimamanda Adiche’s Ted Talk on the “Danger of the Single Story,” the single story also known as the hegemonic narrative serves the people in power, which in this case is those in the film that are against illegal immigration (Adiche Ted Talk). The illegal immigrants are unable to deliver their stories because they do not have the power too. In contrast, the border patrols, congressmen, and women that were attacked by illegal immigrants, all of these people had the power to discuss and talk about their views and experience of illegal

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The accounts predominately ranged from Mexican Braceros and their families to a few non-Latino scholars who studied the Bracero program. With this, the non-Latino officials in charge of the Bracero program were not included, making it seem that there could be some bias in the film due to the common ethnic identity amongst the interviewees. If non-Latino officials of the Bracero program and farm owners who hired Braceros were interviewed, this addition of accounts would create a more wholesome argument because both sides would have been

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The house they were waiting in was compromised, and the immigrants then were taken into the custody of law enforcement for their statements. Jose recalls that he was, “Kindly led to a desk where a blond officer sits. In a Spanish that impresses me, he asks me my full name and place and date of birth, whether I have tried crossing before and if I’ll try again afterward. I say no to both, and I don’t remember if he either makes me sign a document or takes my fingerprints” (6). This interaction that Jose had with law enforcement was nothing like what he had expected it to be like.

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