On Tuesday, Richard Pineda, a professor at the University of Texas-El Paso, spoke about immigration and the often controversial and heated debates associated with it, particularly regarding border patrol. Focusing on the rhetorical framework that opposing sides use to argue their positions, he discussed how language affects the very nature of the debate. The event was sponsored by the communication department, the Latin American studies program, the Organization of Latin American Affairs, and Latinos/as of Boston College.
Pineda began by discussing the issue of immigration as it related to the language that is being used to frame the immigration debate, which he argued is not suited specifically enough to the task that it needs to accomplish. To emphasize his focus on the language that Americans use when debating the immigration issue, Pineda focused on George W. Bush's advocacy tour for the Sensenbrenner Bill. "I am interested in the way that presidential rhetoric and communication frames the discussion for policy and for culture in the United States and the way in which people react to that," Pineda said.
Pineda said that the president, in advocating this bill for immigration reform, focused on four issues: increasing security, enforcing existing laws, speeding up prisoner repatriation, and expanding the temporary worker permit program. "He sets security as the guiding framework," Pineda said. "It's almost impossible to talk about guest workers because they are competing interests." This, Pineda argued, shifts focus away from guest-worker program expansion because Bush places it at the bottom of his agenda.
Pineda also asserted that there is another major issue associated with immigration. He argued that the U.S. government and American culture are not prepared for the cultural shifts that happen so rapidly with immigration in the 21st century. As a result, Americans often focus on the problems and issues associated with immigration without remembering the immigrants themselves, he said. "We fail to humanize the people that are involved in the process [of immigration]," Pineda said.
Pineda defined this issue as "cultural citizenship," in which new immigrants may identify themselves as members of American culture, but do not have full citizenship. As a result of this cultural citizenship, protestors of immigration bills wave their native country's flag because they want to fit in with native Americans who wave the U.S. flag.
"We emphasize different cultural values in the United States that are often communicated in visual ways," Pineda said.
Communities that do not have legal citizenship often employ cultural citizenship, Pineda observed. People in these communities cannot vote or participate in political processes, and as a result must incorporate their culture with the surrounding American culture. This creates a drastic shift in the culture of the areas where immigrants have settled, an issue that the U.S. government refuses to acknowledge, Pineda said.
Pineda said that as the number of immigrants who have crossed the borders increases every day, the issue of immigration becomes increasingly important to voters. Pineda, however, suggested that immigration reform may not come into play in deciding the upcoming presidential election
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