The Latino Threat : Constructing Immigrants, Citizens And The Nation

With Election Day just over one year away, immigration policies have come to the forefront of the political discourse. As strong proposed approaches begin circling through the media circuit, new public opinions and policies begin to form. Scholarly articles and extremists blogs alike have picked up the thread of the immigration, reporting on known facts and assumed truths. Though the idea of the threat narrative like that in author Leo Chavez’s book The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens and the Nation, has it’s own history, current views on immigration are constructing a new public discourse. Pat Buchanan’s 2009 prediction that “Mexico [will be] the greatest foreign policy crisis...America faces in the next 20, 30 years” (as cited in Chavez 2013:1), was an overestimate, as GOP frontrunners are throwing out severe policy ideas for our southern border, just before the upcoming primary election. In the current political climate, “[o]rganizations that work on behalf of immigrants suspect that nativist sentiments are being turned into nativist policies…”(Fernandez 2015). Often mass media only furthers this idea of the Latino Threat Narrative as “the cultural dark matter filling space...on the radio and TV talk shows, in newspaper editorials and on Internet blogs” (Chavez 2013: 4) in the minds of the public. But is the political and social discourse, and its media representation, always that of fear and of a threat? Through the analysis of three articles focusing on different levels of policy, the local, state and federal level, my essay seeks to answer that question.

At the local level, a CNBC article titled “How 3 cities are tackling immigration” focuses on a city’s duty towards ensuring inclusivity and safety to all....

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...o present both sides, as seen in the article “Immigrants Fight Texas’ Birth Certificate Rules”. True pro-immigration or anti-immigration articles were generally opinion pieces but while pro commentaries were featured in popular media such as CNBC, anti-immigration articles often came with a disclaimer from the journal, even if it was local and generally held bias. At the end of “Obama Sparks Rage Across The Country” Western Journalism published a disclaimer stating “the views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by WesternJournalism.com.” For readers, the neutrality of common, popular sources may hopefully change the public discourse as they recognize that “real immigrants do exist...undocumented immigrants eat, breathe and dream in cities and towns all across America.” (Chavez 2013: 47)