We have always heard that undocumented workers take jobs away from American workers. It turns out this is only partially true, undocumented workers often times are taking jobs at lower wages than an American citizen would be willing to work for. It had been said that the reason they are willing to work for less is because they are afraid of reprisal if they complain about wages or working conditions. They work for less so they can stay in the country.
Border control is an issue that has been around for a long time, a lot of people believe that we aren’t doing enough to protect our borders. Our research showed the President Obama has continued with policy that started during President Bush’s term, under this policy the number of border patrol agents has more than doubled since 2004. As for the safety of our borders, the President says it best, “Over the past two and a half years, we've seized 31 percent more drugs, 75 percent more currency, 64 percent more weapons than ever before. And even as we have stepped up patrols, apprehensions along the border have been cut by nearly 40 percent from two years ago. That means far fewer people are attempting to cross the border illegally”
The overall message of our cartoons is that immigration is a very controversial issue; many people have different opinions about it. We would say that most, if not all, of our cartoons have a negative framing of undocumented workers, but many of those same cartoons are positive towards policy reform. This leads us to believe that the thing Americans most dislike about undocumented workers is that they came into our country illegally. This finding challenges a belief that many of us held, that the problem with undocumented workers was race. It is not the fact that they have a different skin color, we are a very diverse nation as it is.
Just about any issue that you can think of pertaining to immigration is being cultivated in our country, and it isn’t just one side of that issue either, multiple sides of these issues are being seen in media across the nation. For instance:
Border control – There are those who say we aren’t doing enough but the President has met
every promise he has made and every goal that was set by during Bush’s presidency.
Law – According to the 14th amendment anybody born inside our borders is considered an
American citizen. Many people feel that immigrants come here to give birth so their
kids can be citizens only to receive American benefits, they have termed this as “drop
and leave” or “anchor babies”.
History – Our country has also been unforgiving of immigrants in the past, for example: Irish
immigrants, Chinese exclusion, and anti-Semitism.
There are many terms that Americans use to label undocumented workers, some of them being: illegals, aliens, wet backs, clandestine workers, and boat people. None of these terms are positive in any way, they are meant to be degrading and hurtful to those they apply.
All of our cartoons, international and domestic, have a commonality in that they approach the issue of immigration sarcastically. Without previous knowledge of the issues the average person would take these cartoons at surface value. Many of the international cartoons we came across pertained to the immigration issues in the United States. Paresh Nath of the U.A.E published two of our international cartoons, and they both take place on the Mexican border.
Different cartoonists are approaching these issues in different ways. Some of them approach by race,
while others approach it from a political direction,
still others have brought Christianity into it,
while a few target Americans.
The cartoonists tend to privilege the truth in their cartoons, but like any media or news source there are also those who print truthiness. In most cases we found that the cartoonist deal only with truth and it is a small minority that pushes truthiness. The impact of these cartoons is somewhat dependent on how the cartoonist has framed the cartoon but the key is the person’s knowledge of the specific issues in immigration. There are many cartoons that are satirical in nature and the average citizen would take it at face value when in actuality the cartoonist is making fun of a person or issue and is conveying the opposite.
