Contextual reporting needed for complex US immigration issues

A presentation on October 22, 2024 for the International Media Association for Peace and Universal Peace Federation online forum “Immigration in America: Welcomed or Unwanted,” referencing on my doctoral research titled “Bridging the Political Divide of US Immigration Reporting through Transformative Journalism.”

By Dr. Marivir Montebon, D.Min.

I come from a lineage of obscure immigrants. My great grandfather Raymundo Hinaut was a labor import from the Philippines in the late 1920s-1930s. He worked as a farm worker, called sacada, in the asparagus plantations of Hawaii and California. He died in a dysentery epidemic when my maternal grandmother was two years old.

I am a fourth-generation immigrant of my family, and I am not your stereotypical Filipino nurse. I am a writer.  But like all of us here, I rest on the shoulders of my immigrant ancestors.

Immigrants form the social fabric of America and have done so right from the beginning of this American experiment about 247 years ago.  With apologies to the natives of America, the peoples of the First Nations who have been wiped out by genocide and concentrated in reservation parks, we immigrants have contributed to empowering the US.  

With New Mexico Rep. Joy Garratt and UPF moderator Ray Lipowcan during the UPF and IMAP forum. https://www.facebook.com/UPFUSA/videos/1210825690139883

We are a society seeking to be the best version of ourselves. On the one hand, inequities and racism abound. On the other, we see communities across the country working for the inclusion of everyone in the public sphere. Yes, the media has been responsible in exacerbating the political divide when it comes to understanding immigration issues.

This is because of the very nature of the media itself. It takes its ideology and business interest from its owners. As what communications theorist Marshall McLuhan said, “the medium is the message.”

Fox News is owned by conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch. CNN is owned by liberal minded owners to include Warner Bros. Discovery, AT&T, Turner Broadcasting, etc. The cable networks tend to nationalize the American narrative, of conservativism or liberalism, because of its inherent capability as huge corporations.

On the local communities are tiny media organizations, ethnic owned, with shoestring budgets like my company. We provide narratives of truth from the ground hyper-locally. We reach a concentric community of race, religion, business, profession, and age group. Ethnic media has its own defined ideologies too. The states of California, Texas, New York, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, and Ohio are where most ethnic media organizations are.

With the death of the newspaper industry, journalism has become digitally driven. Corporate and ethnic media now share the digital platform. With digitalization, disinformation becomes a new challenge for journalists. But this is a separate and unique topic by itself.

My doctoral research found out three reasons why the media has divided us politically on immigration issues 1. Lack of context in reporting 2. Normalizing the use of demeaning terms to describe immigrants 3.  He said, she said type of journalism (political treatment).

The communication process of our society is such that straight news is drowned by the frequency of interpretations by political pundits on social media and cable news. One news story at 6 am, for example, is reinterpreted 4-5 times over around the clock according to conservative or liberal pundits.

This results in daily confusion and cementing of our held-on beliefs about immigrants.  Contextual reporting demands that journalists dig the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of discrimination, for instance. Or of politicking to get votes, fanning hate and resentment.

For example, when reporting about a theft or murder allegedly committed by arrived immigrants, there is a need to include in that article that such theft is uncommon. Records show that crimes in NYC are perpetrated by locals.

The problem on political polarization, particularly in reporting immigration issues is as old as the American society itself.  

When information goes through the media, such information is naturally amplified and consolidates an individual’s cognitive bias.[1] Therefore, the value of accurate and fair reporting could never be overemphasized.

The immigrants’ job invasion rhetoric which could be traced to the 1880s, persists to this post-modern day, because of the lack of contexts in reports. In 1873, news and advertisements of “Chinese invasion” were published at the San Francisco Chronicle.

The lack of contextual and historical reporting in the media has fanned hate, confusion, and resentful social attitudes. Here is where the problem lies deeply.  Without responsible reports, social tension and hate has been exacerbated, and pervaded American society extensively throughout history.

Immigration reporting needed to be explicatory. It should look at the relationship between immigration and the economy. For example, the influx of Chinese labor took place to build the transcontinental railway. The Bracero program was aimed to populate the farms with Mexican labor.  The increase in these migrant labor populations has created resentment and later resulted in their repatriation through the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Repatriation Acts of the 1930s and 1950s. The influx of Filipino nurses to the US hospital systems is another example of the relationship between immigration and the economy. I hope Philippine nurses won’t be repatriated when their numbers increase in volumes.

The border crisis is a specific beast to be dealt with here and now. A solid legislation so wanting could solve that. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act is broken and must be reformed to address the border crisis.

Franciscan priest Fr. Julian Jagudilla of the Migrant Center of NY said, we welcome strangers, but we need to have a sound immigration program. Right now, government must issue a moratorium of allowing immigrants in until a legislation is in place.

Media has failed to see that and make the connection between legislation and immigration.

I interviewed two immigration lawyers in this study. One said that the US must have a needs-based immigration system to match industry with labor needs. Unlike Canada which upgrades its immigration law to organize its society, American legislators aren't doing anything substantial, but instead focused themselves on political bickering.

Journalists need to dig deeper and let people understand more than what meets the eye. Instead of fueling hate with reports without context or being a mouthpiece for politicians, the media must have stories that hold power to account. A need-based immigration law is long overdue. The deadline was yesterday. #

[1] Kendra Cherry. 2022. List of Common Cognitive Biases. Retrieved from https://www.verywellmind.com/cognitive-biases-distort-thinking-2794763 on November 2, 2023.