Framing Immigration Reform, Framing Immigrants: An Analysis of Newspaper Coverage of Immigration Reform August 2005, April 2006, and October 2006.

This paper analyzes newspaper coverage of immigration reform in mainstream English-language newspapers prior to, and following passage of immigration reform legislation by the US House of Representatives in December, 2005. The purpose of this project is twofold: 1) To illuminate the media's participation in the social construction of the policy "problem" and acceptable "solutions" to it; 2) To illuminate how the social construction of the policy problem and solution contributes to the social construction of a particular group of people in America, namely Latino immigrants. The analysis presented here is based upon a qualitative analysis of a large random sample of newspaper articles published in the northeast and southwest United States during August 2005, April 2006, and October 2006. The analysis reveals both consistency and significant changes in the news coverage of immigration reform between April 2005 and October 2006. I discuss two key findings at length. First, changes in coverage between August 2005 and October 2006 portray an expansion in the terms of the debate about immigration reform that has proven significant in the course of the policy's development. Second, while many articles fail to explain the need for immigration reform, the coverage generally portrays the problem as "illegal immigrants" from south of the US-Mexican border. This portrayal contributes to the social construction of Latinos as the Other. This project therefore enhances our understanding of the social construction of immigration policy and its subjects, and the print media's contribution to this process. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]