Welcome to Media Dog's Immigration Blog!

Our Goal: Show how to effectively analyze editorial cartoons pertaining to undocumented immigration, and provide factual information supporting those cartoons.

Cartoon Analysis:

When analyzing an editorial cartoon there are effects that you need to take into account, just like when analyzing other forms of media. Here are some editorial effects to pay attention to while reading an editorial cartoon:

• Symbols: Cartoonists use simple objects, or symbols, to stand for larger concepts or ideas. When reading the cartoon think about what the cartoonist is trying to portray with the symbol(s).

• Exaggeration: When trying to make a point about someone, cartoonists will often times exaggerate someone's physical characteristics to make a point about them. When reading the cartoon try to figure out what the cartoonist is trying to portray about that person. Pay attention to facial expressions and facial characteristics.

• Labeling: Cartoonists often label objects or the whole cartoons in order to reveal their stance on the cartoon's topic. Pay attention to the labels in the cartoon and see if they make the comic's message more clear.

• Analogy: An analogy is a comparison between two unlike things that share a common characteristic. By comparing a complex issue or situation with a more simple situation, cartoonists can help their readers see it in a different light, or understand their cartoons easier. Try to decide what analogy the cartoonist is trying to depict.

• Irony: Irony is the difference between the ways things are and the way things should be, or the way things are expected to be. Cartoonists often use irony to express their opinion on an issue.

Terms not to use when describing someone who is foreign to the United States:

• Illegal Alien: Alternative terms are "undocumented worker," or "undocumented immigrant." The pertinent federal agencies use this term for individuals who do not have documents to show they can legally visit, work or live here. Many find the term offensive and dehumanizing because it criminalizes the person rather than the actual act of illegally entering or residing in the United States.

• Illegal Immigrant: Instead of using illegal immigrant, alternative labels recommended are "undocumented worker" or "undocumented immigrant." Illegal immigrant is a term used to describe the immigration status of people who do not have the federal documentation to show they are legally entitled to work, visit or live here.

• Illegal: Alternative terms are "undocumented immigrant" or "undocumented worker." This term has been used to describe the immigration status of people who do not have the federal documentation to show they are legally entitled to work, visit or live here. The term criminalizes the person rather than the actual act of illegally entering, residing in the U.S. without documents.

Undocumented Immigration Myths:

• MYTH: Immigrants have a negative impact on the economy and the wages of citizens and take jobs away from citizens.

In June 2007, the President's Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) issued a report on "Immigration's Economic Impact." Based on a thorough review of the literature, the Council concluded that "immigrants not only help fuel the Nation's economic growth, but also have an overall positive effect on the American economy as a whole and on the income of native-born American workers."Among the report's key findings were that, on average, U.S. natives benefit from immigration in that immigrants tend to complement natives, not substitute for them. Immigrants have different skills, which allow higher-skilled native workers to increase productivity and thus increase their incomes. Also, as the native-born U.S. population becomes older and better educated, young immigrant workers fill gaps in the low-skilled labor markets.

• MYTH: Immigrants—particularly Latino immigrants—don't want to learn English.

While many first-generation Latino immigrants are unable to speak English, 88 percent of their U.S.-born adult children report that they speak English very well. And studies show that the number rises dramatically for each subsequent generation. Furthermore, similar to other immigrants, Latinos believe that they need to learn English in order to succeed in the United States, and believe they will be discriminated against if they don't. Most Latino immigrants (67%) report that they use at least some English at work.

• MYTH: Immigrants don't pay taxes.

Legal immigrants pay income taxes and indeed many undocumented immigrants also pay income taxes or have taxes automatically withheld from their paychecks—even though they are unable to claim a tax refund, Social Security benefits or other welfare benefits that these taxes support. In the Chicago metro area for example, approximately seventy percent of undocumented workers paid payroll taxes, according to the University of Illinois study from 2002. In the Washington Metro Region, immigrants paid the same share of the region's overall taxes (18 percent) as the rest of the population (17.4 percent), according to a 2006 Urban Institute study. This study also points to the fact that immigrants' tax payments support both local and state services in addition to the federal government.

• MYTH: Immigrants bring crime to our cities and towns.

Although incarceration rates are highest among young low-income men and many immigrants arriving in the U.S. are young men with low levels of education, incarceration rates among young men are invariably lower for immigrants than for their native-born counterparts. This is true across every ethnic group but the differences are especially noticeable among Mexicans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans, who constitute the majority of undocumented immigrants in the United States. Even in cities with the largest immigrant populations, such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami, violent and non-violent crime rates have continued to decline.

- These statistics and myths were found at www.aclu.org/immigrants-rights/immigration-myths-and-facts