Since the United States was established as a nation in 1776, people have emigrated from across the globe, settling in American in search of a better life. Whether in search of freedom from oppression, reprieve from hunger, or in search of paid work that offers enough compensation to support one’s family in one’s country of origin, the United States population is of incredible diversity. According to the Pew Research Center, an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants lived in the United States in 2014, 66% of whom are estimated to have lived in the United States for ten years or more (2016). Although the United States has a long-standing reputation as a land of promise, immigrants, particularly those who have not acquired federal immigration status, are regarded negatively by the American public. Negative media representations of undocumented people shape and perpetuate attitudes and presumptions held by the public. These representations strengthen anti-immigrant narratives in political discourse, reinforcing the fear of being discovered by authorities as an undocumented person. The purpose of this paper is to exemplify the ways in which deliberately negative portrayals of undocumented people as invaders, criminals, and pollutants in various forms of media not only shape public opinion, but perpetuate oppressive and violent hegemonic practices toward undocumented Americans.
Humans use metaphor as a tool with which to interpret, conceptualize, construct, and influence the world. George Lakoff (1993) discusses the widely-understood definition of ‘metaphor,’ arguing that the word has historically been understood as an instance in which an expression is used outside of its conventional meaning, and appropriated to convey another concept (p. 1). Lakoff suggests that the practice of using one idea as a framework to understand another is more complex than simple lyrical or figurative expression; human interpretation of the world is dependent on metaphorical framing (p. 3). Metaphors do more than influence language; metaphors construct thoughts and beliefs based on interpretation of experience, and impact actions and responses. Media messages use metaphor to strategically present and re-present undocumented people in situations with which viewers can connect personally, therefore influencing beliefs about, and subsequent treatment of, undocumented people (Cisneros, 2008, p. 570). Constant negative representation perpetuates the narrative that undocumented people are unworthy of the same basic human rights and protections to which those with documentation are entitled by default.
The deliberate practice of representing undocumented immigrants in media as criminals, contaminants, or aliens is understood here as ‘strategic essentialism.’ The notion of essentialism, as posited by Griffin (1996) is understood as “an argument for fixed, unchanging characteristics that determine an individual’s behaviors or actions” (p. 1). This paper examines the common views of undocumented immigrants portrayed in American media as a criminal, as a pollutant, and as invaders.
The idea that undocumented immigrants are criminals is a common representation in news media. In 2015, Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president of the United States, delivering a speech during which he mentioned the topic of immigration from Mexico, and his desire to build a wall along the United States border. During this speech, as Jeffrey Toobin (2015) notes, Trump claims that undocumented immigrants arriving from Mexico are rapists, bringing drugs and crime to the United States. Almost as an afterthought, Trump adds, “some, I assume, are good people” (p. 31). While these claims are largely unfounded—Toobin offers that crime rates committed by the general population are higher than those of first-generation immigrants (p. 31), supporters of the Republican party expressed agreement by voting for Trump as president in 2016.
The framing of undocumented immigrants as criminals is not always so straightforward, however. George Lakoff (2012) discusses a speech delivered by President Barack Obama at the NALEO (National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials) conference in 2012, a speech during which the President expressed acknowledgment and appreciation of the contributions that many undocumented people make to the American economy and society. During his speech, President Obama expresses his support for undocumented individuals, explaining that undocumented people make the same valuable contributions to their communities as those who have documentation. However, Lakoff suggests that language in President Obama’s speech that contradicts his claims to appreciate and support hard-working undocumented Americans, noting that Obama refers to ‘undocumented’ immigrants as ‘illegal’ immigrants (p. 1-2). Using ‘illegal’ synonymously with ‘undocumented’ implies that people who are in the United States without documentation ought to be “understood first and foremost as criminals” (2012, pp. 1-2). Obama’s use of phrasing, such as his reference to “innocent young people,” reinforce the idea of inherent guilt associated with undocumented immigrants by calling attention to its opposite.
Additionally, Lakoff explains that Obama’s reference to ‘amnesty’ as an alternative to deportation emphasizes the criminalization frame of reference to undocumented people: to be granted amnesty, one must first be proven guilty of a crime. When used, even in expressions of support, words like ‘illegal’ ‘alien’ and ‘amnesty’ perpetuate the criminal frame used to conceptualize undocumented people, and reinforces the idea that such individuals are indeed criminals (2012, p. 2).
David Cisneros (2008) discusses California governor Pete Wilson’s 1994 campaign, during which he advocated heavily for public support of Proposition 187, a bill that would end access to public services for undocumented Californians. Wilson relied largely on anti-immigrant rhetoric to shape public perceptions of undocumented migrants as dangerous, intruding villains, referring to “illegal aliens” whose very presence indicated responsibility for the fiscal catastrophe faced by Californians in the 1990s. Wilson’s campaign strategy worked, and Proposition 187 passed with 59% of the vote; although the federal courts later declared the bill unconstitutional (Gendzel, 2013, p. 176). Despite annulment of Proposition 187, anti-immigrant rhetoric framed around the idea that undocumented people are criminals has certainly not lessened since the 1990s.
As Cisneros (2008) discusses, news media coverage of immigrants is often framed in ways that present undocumented people as an uncontrolled contaminant: mobile, threatening, disruptive, and unpredictable. Groups of faceless immigrants appear in news media “in a disorganized and huddled heap” undoubtedly posing a threat to an otherwise serene and orderly American community (pp. 579-580). Cisneros points out that groups of immigrants are often shown on camera as moving, either out of frame or toward the camera lens, traveling closer to the viewer (p. 582). These on-screen portrayals of immigrants reinforce anti-immigrant rhetorical themes of migrants as contamination, as threats to the physical safety of Americans. Images of groups of immigrants standing or sitting in lines at work centers, for example, imply that the mere presence of immigrants is seeping into American communities, contaminating shopping centers and public spaces, “collecting like piles of potentially dangerous waste” (p. 579).
The film District 9 symbolically represents the conflicts that arise when migrants are treated as outsiders and denied equal protection afforded to citizens. The extraterrestrials and their malfunctioning space ship stalled in South Africa, and the storyline suggested a narrative recognizable as commonly associated with large-scale rescue and relief efforts in terms of refugees or asylum-seekers—when said individuals cannot return to the geographic location from which they originally came. District 9 showed the aliens, referred to as “prawns” in the movie, as slum-dwellers, attracting drug and gun peddlers, portraying a group that is generally dirty, disorganized, unproductive, and prone to violence. District 9’s storyline detailed the implementation of the South African government’s decision to have “prawns” relocate to a new encampment. Armed government officials went door-to-door to serve eviction notices. Most prawns were displeased with the news that they were being evicted, and the government officials used cat food to entice the alien into signing the eviction notice—a delicacy to the prawns. If a bribery of cat food failed, the government officials used threats of violence against the prawn’s children, or forcefully entered the prawns’ homes to search for weapons or contraband.
The treatment of the fictional aliens in District 9 is metaphorically similar to the treatment of immigrants in the United States: people enter the country for a myriad of reasons, often fleeing violent or otherwise oppressive conditions. As Antonia Darder reminds us, rhetoric around immigration in the United States often ignores or overlooks “the fact that most people would much prefer to remain in their own countries, on their own land, in familiar surroundings, providing their children and families a decent quality of life” (2011, p. 285). This theme was enacted in the movie as well, showing the prawns attempting to fix their space craft in order to leave planet Earth and return home.
A single representation of undocumented immigrants may encompass more than one of the themes addressed above. A 2016 article published in the Washington Times featured the headline, ‘Haitian illegal immigrants pouring into U.S., exploiting Obama policies’ (Stephen Dinan, 2016). Strategic framing persuades the reader to think about the undocumented migrants as an environmental hazard: an unstoppable flood of people. The headline also reinforces the idea that undocumented people are criminals by nature, referring to ‘illegal’ immigrants. Finally, the wording of the headline implies that the party responsible for the flood of criminals, and the inevitable chaos and destruction that will undoubtedly accompany them, onto the left-leaning Obama administration. The article claims that the inadequacy of the Obama administration’s policies around immigration are to blame for a lack of national security, claiming that some 3,000 undocumented Haitian immigrants are entering the United States every month, “exploiting special policies and lax Obama administration enforcement” (Stephen Dinan, 2016). The article itself, however, does not make mention of President Obama’s deportation rates in comparison with those of the previous administration, likely because in five years, Obama had deported about the same number of people as President Bush had in eight years (Gonzalez-Barrera and Krogstad, 2014). Mentioning President Obama’s higher deportation rate in comparison with Bush’s would contradict the inference that Obama’s policies are weak in comparison to the conservative ones, and contradict continuation of the desired theme: that conservatives are, by nature, tougher on immigration than liberals.
It is not so much a matter of whether or not undocumented people are theoretically protected by established law: Matthew Green (2017) explains that rights of all people living within the jurisdiction of the United States—including undocumented workers—are protected under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. However, as Peter Orner (2008) points out, although undocumented people are theoretically entitled to legal and human established rights, many are unwilling to risk deportation as a result of revealing one’s undocumented status to authorities, which is an inevitable risk associated with exercising rights (p. 10). Because of this, undocumented Americans live in fear of being deported as a result of simply being discovered by law enforcement officers or immigration agents. El Curita, in Peter Orner’s Underground America, describes his experience as an undocumented worker in Mississippi. He and his sister and brother-in-law agreed to work for a woman to whom he refers as “La Americana” in exchange for housing and food, in addition to monetary wages. El Curita describes the long hours he was forced to work (regular days were ten to twelve hours, although he sometimes had to work up to seventeen), motivated by the promised payoff at the end. La Americana required seven-day work weeks, and compensated El Curita and his family only a fraction of what had been promised initially. When El Curita and his family members complained, La Americana threatened to report them to immigration enforcement officials, using their fear of being discovered as an opportunity to benefit from cheap labor. As an undocumented American, El Curita was understandably afraid to draw attention to himself and his family members, fearing that doing so would result in deportation.
Lost in Detention is a 2011 Frontline segment by PBS that sheds light the legal process to which undocumented immigrants are subjected, if charged with a crime. The implementation of the government-run program, “Secure Communities” established relationships between local law enforcement agencies and ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), and required law enforcement agencies to report any undocumented people who had committed any sort of crime—such as driving a car with a tail light out, or other minor traffic offenses. Once reported, ICE placed such individuals under arrest. The undocumented individual is then held in detention for varied lengths of time, devoid of the civil rights to which American citizens and document- carrying residents are entitle, such as the right to a fair and speedy trial or the right to legal counsel. Many detainees reported violent attacks and sexual assault by prison guards. Families were torn apart, mothers and fathers being detained and held for months before being deported and kept from seeing their United States-born young children.
Amanda Armenta (2017) interviewed an undocumented man named Jose, who moved from Houston, Texas to Nashville, Tennessee in 1996, about his experience as an undocumented person in the legal system. Jose was arrested for “criminal impersonation” in 2008, because a police officer saw him sitting outside of the laundromat where he worked, and asked Jose for his identification. Jose did not have his state identification card with him, so he gave the officer his ITIN (Individual Taxpayer Identification Number) card, which is a documented provided to noncitizen individuals by the IRS so that they can file taxes. The officer accused Jose of using someone else’s social security number, and placed him under arrest—not for having insufficient proof of identification, but for using false documents. In court, Jose’s public defender advised him to plead guilty, and that he would be released if he did so. Jose’s public defender failed to take into account that, as an undocumented person, pleading guilty to the bogus charges would not help him, because he was already being incarcerated under an immigration hold. Finally, in 2010, a judge had cancelled the order of removal, and Jose was patiently awaiting his green card. The arresting officer had admitted in court that he had mistaken the ITIN card for a social security card, which led to the judge’s decision to dismiss the charges. Moreover, Jose’s long- term residency and lack of criminal background no doubt helped his case by establishing his good character.
Antonia Darder (2011) describes the United States immigration system as one that is in desperate need of repair, calling its policies and practices reflective of an “ideologically unsustainable paradigm” (p. 280). Speaking specifically of Mexican immigrants, Darder states that American immigration discourses criminalize Mexicans as violent drug-smugglers, rather than focusing on productive immigration topics as pertinent to local respective communities, such as education, employment, transportation, housing needs, and social issues (p. 280). Darder calls attention to the fact that consumer patterns of growing immigrant communities of Latinos have positively impacted the growth of new businesses and contributed to the growing economy. Additionally problematic, Darder argues, is the tendency of pro-immigrant groups use overgeneralized rhetorical phrases in response to the anti-immigrant claims, often referring to vague abstracts such as “the American dream,” emphasizing only positive qualities such as entrepreneurialism and work ethic. This narrow representation, while positive, fails to provide in-depth analysis and meaningful consideration of anti-immigrant claims, and does not address the politics of migration (pp. 283-284). The complexities of immigrants as human beings in the grips of a broken system are not usually addressed.
Ultimately, framing undocumented immigrants in the United States negates the valuable contributions that migrants make to their communities by constructing the idea that anyone who is undocumented is first a criminal, pollutant, or an alien, before one is considered an individual human being. When a person is regarded as underserving of consideration as a member of American society, his or her contributions to that society are overlooked. Instead of viewing undocumented immigrants as human beings with families, lives, personalities, and histories, the tendency of the American public is to cast these individuals as a separate entity. Orner points out that even the use of the word ‘undocumented,’ while arguably less offensive than ‘illegal,’ is not accurate in a literal sense: although one may not have the same federal immigration status as others, plenty of documents representing one’s life: family photos, child’s drawings, newspaper clippings, utility bills, report cards, drivers’ licenses—artifacts which Americans of many cultures hold dear (p. 12). These are pieces of human lives, indications of things which render us human, with which we can claim individuality and group membership simultaneously.
As Peter Orner describes in his introductory chapter to Underground America, the term ‘undocumented’ only reflects one minute dimension of a person. The undocumented people living in the United States are not assumed to be “uniformly saints nor sinners” (2008, p. 13). By assuming that undocumented people are criminals, contaminants, or aliens, it is not only the undocumented person that is outcast—we, as the American people, are selling ourselves short, passing up the opportunity to acknowledge another human being’s presence and contributions to the communities in which we live. By continuing to allow short-sighted and negative views of immigrants to shape our public policies, social practices, and discursive discussions, we deny undocumented members of our communities their voices— the chance to voice opinions, relate with us, and share their cultures. We dismiss the chance to learn from those who are different than we are. And, as Peter Orner says, there is nothing American about that.
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