Media Frames The Immigration Debate Analysis

Immigration is an issue that has raised different reactions from the public for a long time, the way it is brought up to the public has a lot of influence on what these reactions are. In general, the way we speak and present any sort of issue is a very crucial element in how the audience will later perceive this issue. When making an argument the goal is usually to get the audience to have a specific reaction or opinion in the end. In order to do this, specific language will purposefully be picked to try and evoke certain feelings and/or reactions. In this same way, media platforms and public personas will use such language that frames immigration in a specific light that will get them the desired reaction.

As a nation founded through immigrants,

In her article, How the Media Frames the Immigration Debate, Stephanie Fryberg explains that “The media both reflects and contributes to the ways in which the debate over illegal immigration is processed and understood.” Media outlets tend to bring across their point of view on issues, and different controversial topics with predetermined goals and bias. Their content tends to have well-chosen language with either negative or positive connotations involved, in order to sway you to a chosen side. The issue of immigration being a heated topic and with little direct information about it, media and political leaders take the opportunity to “mobilize anti-immigrant sentiment for their own purposes.” And do so “by framing Latinos as “illegal” “lawbreakers” and thus inherently dangerous, threatening, and inimical to American

We see the term “illegal immigrant” being reference all of the time in the discussion of the issue. While it seems just like a normal term, in reality it upholds the illegal frame. “It frames the problem as one about the illegal act of crossing the border without papers.”(Lakoff) Accordingly, giving the immigration issue the definition solely of legality, or illegality. The use of the terms “illegals” or “illegal alien”, defines the immigrants as a criminal or a bad person. Criminalizing immigrants associates immigrants into the same category as robbers, murderers, or rapists, as people who do harm to others, and not punishing and treating them correspondingly would be considered immoral. The term “illegal alien”, not only criminalizes immigrants, it also emphasizes a strangeness or otherness. In the modern day, “alien” is normally associated with nonhuman things invading from outer space and taking over our lives. The use of this term to address immigrants dehumanizes them, making them seem even more foreign and dangerous to our society’s well