Immigration Reform: Promoting Opportunity for All

The immigration-reform debate in Congress and the dynamic street protests across the country this past spring offered an important chance to promote positive immigration policies, while building lasting support for broader social change. Efforts to achieve comprehensive reform are likely stalled until after the midterm elections, yet immigration reform continues to be an important issue in the minds of the public; in some districts it continues to be a central issue. In the past months we’ve learned much about the way that this debate is framed in the media and in the minds of the public. These talking points provide a summary of the current framing of the debate and our recommendations for building support for positive immigration reform.

Major Messages and Themes

The major opposing frames in the immigration-reform debate thus far pit positive Opportunity Values of community, equal treatment, and human rights against equally powerful Competitive Values of defending limited resources, preserving cultural identity against outsiders, and fear of disorder. The most effective communications that immigration reformers can employ emphasize inclusive Opportunity themes and avoid or diminish Competitive ones.

Communications on current immigration issues should emphasize the positive national values at stake in the immigration debate, as well as the values and aspirations that immigrants and native-born Americans share.

• When it comes to building a prosperous nation, we’re all in it together. We need the effort and ideas of everyone who lives here—no matter where they come from or what they look like.
• Laws criminalizing immigrant families or excluding them from health care and other necessities damage the health and prosperity of our country. We are a stronger nation when we ensure opportunity for everyone who lives here.
• Immigrants want what all of us in this country want: to pursue the American Dream of opportunity for our families, to contribute and participate fully in our society, and to be treated fairly by our government and institutions.

Communications should also work to build bridges between native and nonnative communities, emphasizing the shared concerns that these groups often have.

• Immigrant-rights marchers are calling not only for immigration reform, but also for civil-rights enforcement, the right to organize, and a fairer criminal-justice system. Those guarantees are central to the freedom and opportunity that most immigrants came to America to realize, and that we all need to keep America strong.
• Immigrants and African Americans share an interest in quality public schools, safe and healthy neighborhoods, and laws prohibiting discrimination and exploitation.
• Holding our country to its promise of opportunity and human rights is in all our interests.

To build a broader constituency for social justice, we recommend promoting comprehensive immigration reform, along with other reforms that speak to the concerns and interests of everyday Americans.

• Giving immigrants a path to full participation in our society is one of the things we must do as a country that cares about opportunity for everyone who lives here. In the months to come, that change has to be combined with reforms that promote economic security and mobility for native-born Americans as well as newcomers, including better job training and education, living wages, and health care. These are policies that all Americans need to pursue the American Dream.
• What hurts American workers—U.S. born and immigrants alike—is our leaders’ failure to ensure a living wage and affordable health care for all, to invest in education and job training to prepare U.S. workers for the global economy; and to stand up for employees’ right to organize.