CONTAMINATED COMMUNITIES THE METAPHOR OF IMMIGRANT AS POLLUTANT IN MEDIA REP OF IMMIGRATION by J. David Cisneros PDF

CONTAMINATED COMMUNITIES: THE METAPHOR
OF "IMMIGRANT AS POLLUTANT" IN MEOIA

REPRESENTATIONS OF IMMIGRATION
J. DAVID CISNEROS
Popular rhetoric about immigration often operates by constructing metaphoric

representations of immigrants that concretize the social "problem" and connote
particular solutions. Scholars have identified discursive connections between the
rhetoric of immigration and representations of other human problems such as
crime or war. This essay identifies another metaphor present in popular media
coverage of immigration, particularly visual images of immigrants. The metaphor
of "immigrant as pollutant" present in news media discourse on immigration can
have serious consequences for societal treatment of immigrants as well as the poli-
cies designed to respond to immigration.
A "nation of immigrants," the United States has never been able to quell the
fascination and fear with which it approaches migration. Though the coun-
try collectively celebrates the brave souls who populated the nation, America's
inhabitants remain suspicious of the hundreds of thousands of individuals that
cross into the country on a yearly basis. Both legal and illegal immigration have
been a concern to the government and the public since the birth of the nation.'
Though the degree of popular obsession with immigration rises and falls, there
is always an awareness that these strangers potentially bring with them monu-
mental and threatening changes.
Concern over immigration is evidenced not only in public discourse but also
in the large body of scholarship on the phenomenon of immigration, includ-
ing an attempt to understand how immigration as "problem" is constructed
in mass media.^ To make sense of this complex phenomenon, scholars note,
individuals approach immigration through the perspective of metaphor to
/. David Cisneros is a doctoral candidate in Speech Communication at the University of Georgia,

Athens. The author wishes to thank Vanessa Beasley, Kevin DeLuca, Martin Medhurst, and the
anonymous reviewers for their suggestions, encouragement, and guidance.
© 2008 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved.

Rhetoric & Public Affairs Vol. 11, No. 4, 2008, pp. 569-602
ISSN 1094-8392
570 RHETORIC & PUBLIC AFFAIRS
clarify the topic and to connect it with their personal experiences.' Much of
our knowledge about how immigration is represented in media and popular
discourse has centered on metaphors such as a crime wave or war as guiding
tropes through which the "problem" of immigration is represented. In this essay,
I identify another metaphor through which popular media represent immigra-
tion. Moreover, I contribute to our understanding of immigration rhetoric by
paying careful attention to how visual images construct metaphoric representa-
tions of migrants. By comparing the visual and metaphoric images of immigra-
tion in recent news coverage to images of pollution from coverage of toxic waste
spills, particularly the crisis at Love Canal, I sketch a heretofore underanalyzed
metaphor of "immigrant as pollutant" present in the immigration debate. Not
only does this essay begin to illustrate another metaphor through which immi-
gration is articulated, it also points to the need for more analysis of the visual
rhetoric of immigration.
The essay first outlines the importance of metaphor as a representational
strategy and the scholarly literature on the metaphoric representations of immi-
gration. Using the discourse of the Love Canal toxic waste controversy of the
1970s as a point of comparison, I turn to recent television news discourse to
argue that immigrants are framed visually and metaphorically, using similar rep-
resentational strategies, as dangerous and destructive pollutants. Finally, I con-
sider the implications of these metaphoric constructions for the social treatment
of immigrants and the social policies designed to respond to immigration.
UNDERSTANDING METAPHOR
Rhetorical theory and cognitive science teach us that metaphors are more than
linguistic ornamentation; they are "significant rhetorical tools that affect politi-
cal behavior and cognition.""* Metaphors create conventional understandings by
connecting phenomena with familiar cultural assumptions and experiences.^
Not only are they essential cognitive tools, but metaphors participate in creat-
ing fundamental understandings of texts and the rhetorical contexts in which
they are situated.* Metaphors are cultural indices with which "Americans build
their commonplace understandingfs]" and attitudes.'^ Scholars have mapped
the historical metaphors used to talk about the immigration "problem" as a
means to identify the underlying cultural assumptions of these representations.
Mark Ellis and Richard Wright offer examples of metaphors that encapsulate
different perspectives on the assimilation of immigrants into American society
such as the "melting pot," the "quilt," the "kaleidoscope," or the "salad bowl."
They describe how metaphors of immigration serve as conceptual tools with
which scholars build research, society establishes group relationships, and gov-
ernment creates public policy:
CONTAMINATED COMMUNITIES: THE METAPHOR OF "IMMIGRANT AS POLLUTANT" 571
[Metaphors] represent competing views, some more distinct than others, of

the consequences of immigration, interethnic contact, and societal coherence.
In using metaphors . . . we run the risk of being confined to particular ways of
interpreting immigration and demographic trends. As they become entrenched
in theoretical discourse, they influence how we formulate our hypotheses about
the impacts of immigration and ethnic group behavior—about how different
immigrant groupsfitinto U.S. society.*
As repositories of cultural understandings, metaphors are some of the princi-

pal tools with which dominant ideologies and prejudices are represented and
reinforced. For example, as George Lakoff and Sam Ferguson note, the framing
of immigration discourse in the terms of "illegal aliens," "horder security," and
"amnesty" "focuses entirely on the immigrants and the administrative agencies
charged with overseeing immigration law." This framing is "NOT neutral" but
"dehumanizes" immigrants and "pre-empts" a consideration of "broader social
and economic concerns" (such as foreign economic policy and international
human rights).^
The task, then, is to examine the ways in which conventional understand-
ings of immigration are made concrete through metaphor. Examining these
discursive representations can "unmask or demystify" dominant assumptions
about immigrants, assumptions that can have potentially deleterious effects on
social relations.'° Before discussing these contemporary metaphoric represen-
tations or their ideological implications, however, I review the extant literature
on metaphors of immigration.
METAPHORIC REPRESENTATIONS OF MIGRANTS
The study of metaphoric representations of immigration helps to create a broad-

er understanding of the metaphors employed in public discourse. Some schol-
ars have examined metaphoric clusters that surround particular controversies
or proposals; others have focused on creating more broad-based taxonomies.
California's Proposition 187, which restricted undocumented immigrants
from accessing social services such as medical care and public education, pro-
vides a central focus of the scholarship on metaphoric discourse. Hugh Mehan,
for example, identifies metaphors of criminality and social deviance central to
the Proposition 187 campaign." Kent Ono and John Sloop focus on a different
group of metaphors in rhetoric surrounding Proposition 187. The "civic" rhet-
oric emanating from government and mainstream media sources reinforced
dominant assumptions about the danger of "illegal" immigration by focusing
on nativist, racist, and xenophobic justifications for immigration restriction.
The discourse of the Proposition 187 campaign accomplished this character-
ization through metaphors of "pollution,"infection,' and'infestation.'"''^ These

clusters created images of biological invasion or contamination that structured
discourse about immigration and fueled the Proposition 187 movement.'^
In addition to studying specific immigration controversies, scholars have cre-
ated overarching taxonomies of metaphoric representations. Though they differ
in their scope, most of these studies share similar metaphoric clusters as Mehan
and Ono and Sloop. Dorothy Nelkin and Mark Michaels, for example, identi-
fied in the public discourse about immigration a pervasive use of biological and
eugenics metaphors that v^ere used to portray immigrants as dangers to the
"purity" of American society and culture.'* Examining public policy research,
Ellis and Wright identified the metaphor of "balkanization," through threats of
societal fracture and ethnic strife, as another way that the "dangers" posed by
immigrants are articulated.'^ Leo Chavez provided a more systematic and in-
depth discussion of the representations of immigration by cataloguing the dif-
ferent ways in which immigrants are portrayed in popular media. He examined
magazine covers from major publications such as Time and Newsweek, focusing
on cover images and titles, to identify the metaphor of "immigrants as invaders"
as the driving articulation of immigration in popular discourse.'*
Otto Santa Ana provides the most extensive taxonomy of metaphors
employed in the coverage of immigration by examining a variety of contro-
versies about immigrants, including Proposition 187, Proposition 209 (which
banned preferential treatment by state and public entities), and debates over
bilingual education. Unlike other studies, Santa Ana centers his discussion on
how metaphors of the nation create organizing logics for multiple, polysemous
representations of immigration or immigrants. He finds two overarching met-
aphors in the bulk of these news stories: When the nation is conceived as a
physical body, immigrants are presented either as an infectious disease or as a
physical burden. When the nation is conceived as a house, immigrants are rep-
resented as criminals, invaders, or dangerous and destructive flood waters.'^
The table below outlines the various metaphors of immigrants and immi-
gration identified in the existing literature.
Table 1
Immigrants Immigration
Disease, Infection Genetic defect
Criminal Balkanization, Ethnic strife
Infestation
Invader
Burden
Flood
Metaphoric constructions can be broadly categorized into those metaphors

that represent immigrants as a class of people and those metaphors that con-
ceptualize immigration as a phenomenon. Metaphors of immigrants often por-
tray them as objects or threats to society, whether biological, physical, or social.
On the other hand, metaphors of immigration concretize the problem through
cognitive comparisons to other physical or social ills. Together these studies on
the metaphoric representations of immigration provide an important base of
knowledge in the study of immigration rhetoric.
Despite their contributions, however, these studies have two important limi-
tations. First, many of these studies encounter a methodological shortcoming.
Most research on the metaphoric representations of immigration focus solely
on the text of stories in newspapers and magazines or transcripts of political
speeches. Chavez's book examines magazine covers and their corresponding
stories. Ono and Sloop do recognize how television news images contribute to
public understandings of immigrants, yet neither work sufficiently examines
the visual components of immigration rhetoric for the cooperative role they
play in constructing metaphors of immigration. Attention to the visual ele-
ments of immigration rhetoric is important because of the centrality of images
in modern public discourse, particularly news discourse.'^ As Robert Hariman
and John Louis Lucaites argue, "the widely disseminated visual image provides
the public audience with a sense of shared experience that anchors the neces-
sarily impersonal character of public discourse in the motivational ground of
social life."'' Though their discussion centers on iconic photography, Hariman
and Lucaites make clear that journalistic images, whether photos or videos,
"can underwrite polity by providing resources for thought and feeling that are
necessary for constituting people."-^" Visual images create social visions, consti-
tute identities, create publics, and influence individual and group interrelation-
ships. Images are not comprehensive by any means, as they are situated within
textual and verbal contexts, yet the importance of analyzing the visual com-
ponents of news messages is evident in the authenticity and evidentiary status
often culturally attributed to news rhetoric. As Cori Dauber notes.
Because these images are presented in a context of "authenticity," they tend to be

read not as representation but as evidence. Although our guard may be up when
we encounter visual images (even photographic images) presented as advertise-
ment orfiction,we tend not to utilize such defenses while watching or reading
the news. Their very design encourages the reader to forget that images are con-
structed artifacts.... If imagery is powerful, it is all the more powerful when pre-
sented as "objective."^'
Therefore, since news media are a "cultural product" that construct our "social
reality,"^^ analyses of metaphoric representations of immigrants in news media
must examine how visual images either co-construct or challenge domi-

nant discourses of immigration and the social relations that imbricate these
discourses.^^
The second problem facing much of the work on immigration and meta-
phor is a problem of scope. As Table 1 illustrates, these studies focus mostly
on metaphors of invasion and war, or physical burden and disease, repeating
these common metaphoric clusters. This scholarship looks at the ways in which
immigration is compared metaphorically to human problems. Important also
are the ways in which popular discourse places immigration in a symbolic rela-
tionship with nature. As other scholars have argued, terms like "nature," "envi-
ronment," or "wilderness" serve as important argumentative topoi around which
portrayals of women or ethnic groups are constructed. ^* These representations
tend to serve dominant interests. Popular discourse makes subtle arguments in
support of hierarchy and social stratification by deploying "nature" symboli-
cally. Turning to recent discourse on immigration reveals how conceptions of
"nature" and "the environment" serve as metaphors to build representations of
immigration.
Contemporary discourse capitalizes on metaphors like invasion or disease,
but it also appeals, both through images and language, to environmental catas-
trophes such as pollution and waste in making arguments about immigrants. To
illustrate this connection, I analyzed television news segments from major news
networks CNN and Fox News from September to December of 2005.^^ I limited
my search to television stories that featured a combination of textual, aural, and
visual images of immigration or immigrants. Throughout these four months,
as President Bush campaigned for a "comprehensive" immigration policy and
Congress debated different proposals for immigration reform, both networks
featured immigration in their news coverage.^^ Concern over immigration crys-
tallized in late 2005 on the heels of Bush's visits to Arizona and Texas in late
November and tbe House of Representative's passage of border security legisla-
tion in December. Analyzing this body of discourse provides a perspective on
the ways in which immigration is framed and articulated in popular rhetoric.
Examining recent media coverage of immigration necessitates a point of
comparison and a discursive grounding around which metaphors are con-
structed. As Kenneth Burke famously notes, "metaphor is a device for seeing
something in terms o/something else."-^' Since metaphors build conceptual rela-
tionships among phenomena, comparing news media coverage of immigration
with news media coverage of pollution provides a point of comparison to ana-
lyze the metaphoric construction of immigration in relation to pristine nature.
Specifically, I draw from coverage of the toxic waste crisis at Love Canal, New
York, beginning in the late 1970s, to provide a resource for tbis discussion of
metaphoric constructions of immigration. Thus, before outlining tbe metapbor
of immigrant as pollutant, I review representations of toxic pollution, specifi-

cally focusing on the crisis at Love Canal, to build topoi around which to analyze
the discourse of immigration.
A POINT OF COMPARISON: LOVE CANAL AND COVERAGE OF

TOXIC POLLUTION
The crisis at Love Canal in the late 1970s and early 1980s was a monumental
event in the history of the environmental movement that led to the develop-
ment of more stringent environmental regulations. During the 1950s, Hooker
Chemical disposed of their industrial waste by burying thousands of drums of
toxic chemicals in the Love Canal in northern New York State. After covering
the disposal site with dirt and clay. Hooker sold the land to the Niagara Board
of Education, which built a new school on the site and around which a town
developed. Decades later, in the late 1970s, after prolonged heavy rain chemi-
cals began to seep out of the ground, poisoning water supplies and leaking into
homes. After many complaints from residents, "federal and state officials con-
firmed the presence of eighty-eight chemicals, some in concentrations 250 to
5,000 times higher than acceptable safety levels."^*
Andrew Szasz's book Ecopopulism traces the responses to this crisis, in media
and in the nascent environmental justice movement, through a discussion of
the images and the discourse surrounding the incident. The imagery of Love
Canal media coverage does not provide a definitive representational analog to
immigration rhetoric, but it does provide a source from which to draw ele-
ments of visual and discursive framing that can serve as points of comparison
for contemporary immigration rhetoric. Szasz notes that the reactions to con-
tamination at Love Canal were "made for television."^^ A host of visual images
surrounded the stories of pollution, their dangerous effects, the community's
reaction, and the resulting governmental response. Through an analysis of the
newspaper stories, photographs, and television news that surrounded the crisis,
Szasz notes that "all the right elements were there" for a sensationalized message
of dread, disaster, and disorder: "industrial chemicals, cancer and birth defects,
victimization of innocent citizens . . . sinister piles of drums, discolored pools
of water, angry community meetings, [and] distraught parents."^" Even several
years later, after the evacuation of many of the residents of Love Canal and after
the beginning of a governmental response to the crisis, mass media discourse
repeated the limited, highly stereotyped, emotionally charged visual vocabulary

of television's "toxic waste" imagery: haphazard piles of broken, leaking fifty-five-
gallon drums; cleanup crews encased in protective safety gear; home after home,
boarded up, abandoned; plain folks, mostly women, distraught, angry.''
As a point of comparison to the discourse of immigration, attention to this

description of news coverage of toxic pollution yields three categories of rep-
resentations: images of the pollutant, images of the pollutant's impact on the
community, and images of the government's attempts to clean up the problem.
The following table summarizes three metaphoric topoi drawn from the news
discourse about pollution and toxic waste at Love Canal.
Table 2
The Pollutant The Pollutant's Effects Governmental Response

Stationary pollution Disrupted community life Praise for individual agents
' Piles of leaky drums • Protesting citizens • Disposal of waste
Mobile pollution • Abandoned town Criticism of government response
' Seeping pools of Health Effects • No support for cleanup
chemicals ' Cancer and other illnesses
• Birth defects
Images of the pollutant displayed both stationary and mobile pollution.

Photographs and video of stationary pollution featured images of leaky and
dented chemical drums, pools of toxic waste, and contaminated soil and veg-
etation.^^ One particular example, an ABC World News Tonight segment with
correspondent Rebecca Chase featured multiple images of haphazard piles of
dented and damaged chemical drums.^-* Taken from close range, these images
left some of the chemical barrels outside of the camera frame, connoting a
sense that the problem's scope was uncertain and potentially unmanageable.
The barrels lay in unorganized heaps, some on their sides while others stood on
their ends. The sense of disarray in the footage was heightened by the condition
of the drums, many of which were cracked or dented. Meanwhile, this aban-
doned and dangerous waste, apparently on the verge of creating further con-
tamination through leaks or spills, was often situated in open fields, amongst
trees, grass, and bushes, or in the yards of suburban houses. Contrasting close
shots of barrels of pollution or pools of waste with the scenes of suburban life
such as parks or towns created a sense that the pollution at Love Canal was
physically disrupting community life and threatening more contamination.
Thus, images of the pollutant in coverage of toxic waste crises like Love
Canal presented the dangers of stationary, accumulating pollution. Yet Love
Canal coverage also portrayed the pollutants as mobile dangers. Pools of dark
waste welled toward abandoned houses and streamed across streets. Rivulets
of pollution seeped across lawns, contributing to the sense of a dynamic threat
that was spreading throughout the town. Rebecca Chase's report for ABC News
included these visual elements as well. Images of leaking barrels and seep-
ing pools of waste showed the chemicals moving, often toward the camera.
which created a sense that the contamination was about to engulf the viewer.
Together, these images of the pollutant, sometimes presented as stationary and
sometimes as mobile danger, made vivid the problems at Love Canal, drawing
the attention of news media and the outrage of people across the nation.^*
In addition to images of the pollutant, images of the pollutants' effects formed
the second representational theme in coverage of toxic waste crises. In the case
of Love Canal, both photographs and video "conveyed the total disruption of
community, of settled, everyday life," showing a closed grade school, abandoned
streets, and ominous warning signs.^^ Pools of toxic sludge and drums of waste
took over the public parks and lawns where children once played. Families were
forced from their homes into the streets to try to escape the spreading danger.
Furthermore, this displacement and disorder led to "angry" "protest" and calls
for government action.^^ In one particularly powerful image of the pollutants'
effects on Love Canal, a photograph taken and circulated by the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) featured a middle-aged, dark-haired Love Canal
woman and two children protesting the government's inaction.^' The woman,
seemingly from the working class by her simple hair style and attire, stood hold-
ing a sign above her head while wearing another sign draped over her shoulders.
The sign she held above her head featured a white skull and crossbones framed
by the words "Love Canal," and the larger sign on her body read "We've got bet-
ter things to do than sit around and be CONTAMINATED!!" In the left corner
of the photograph, two children stood by the woman, staring into the camera
with solemn expressions. Evoking echoes of the iconic photograph of Migrant
Mother (by Dorothea Lange) in its content and visual framing, this image cap-
tured the sense of community disruption and disarray brought on by the pol-
lution at Love Canal. Media also illustrated the health dangers of pollution by
featuring victims of cancer and birth defects. Collectively, these images of the
pollutants' effects created a sense that Love Canal was a "public health 'tragedy'"
that demanded intervention by the government.^*
Finally, representations of the government's response formed the third topos
of Love Canal media coverage. Even these images reinforced the dangers of the
pollutants and the severity of the situation. One particularly powerful example
of representations of governmental response was a photograph taken by Joel
Richardson for the Washington Post.^^ The image featured a full view of three
officials from the EPA loading a drum of toxic waste into a truck for disposal.
In the photograph, the three men struggle to move the heavy barrel from a
lift into the back of the truck without spilling or damaging the drum. Each
official holds the barrel with two hands while bending at the waist and knees.
Their postures express a degree of care and trepidation that connotes the dan-
gers of the act they are performing. In addition to the officials' postures, their
clothing contributes to the sense of danger. As in much of the other images of
Love Canal cleanup, each official wears a white hazmat chemical suit, including
gloves and a gas mask, as protection from the toxic waste and its fumes. The
visual elements of the image contribute to a sense of danger and dread, while
the framing and position of the camera, which sits behind and facing the truck
and the officials, contribute to a feeling that the viewer is being relieved of the
dangerous substance. This particular photograph, featured in the Washington
Post, illustrates the rhetorical techniques in representations of the government's
response to Love Canal. As Szasz notes, media coverage hailed the individual
efforts of "local, state, and federal officials" who helped dispose of some waste,
but it decried the general lack of support from the federal government that
purportedly doomed any effort at cleanup.'"'
These three themes from the coverage of Love Canal illuminate the framing
of public dangers and disasters from toxic waste spills. The verbal and visual
elements of news media discourse constructed images of the pollutants, images
of the pollutants' effects, and images of the government's response to the con-
tamination. In what follows, I use these three themes summarized in Table 2
as a point of comparison for the metaphorical constructions in rhetoric about
immigration. Moreover, the visual rhetoric of Love Canal discourse, includ-
ing elements such as visual framing and the positioning of the photographed
object, provide a visual vocabulary which I use to analyze the rhetoric of immi-
gration as I examine how the metaphor of immigrant as pollutant is created
through the visual and verbal elements of the news media.
IMMIGRANT AS POLLUTANT
Analyzing the ways immigration is constructed through the images, texts, and
aural messages of news discourse illustrates another way in which immigra-
tion is articulated through visual metaphor. I look to reports on immigration
from Fox News and CNN from September to December of 2005 to argue tbat,
in addition to being conceived as a crime wave or invasion, immigration is
ñ'amed metaphorically as a dangerous pollutant. This metaphoric construc-
tion of immigrant as pollutant can be unpacked by considering the images of
undocumented immigrants, the images of the dangers posed by these immi-
grants, and the images of the government's response.
¡mages of the Undocumented Immigrant
Popular media coverage of public issues such as immigration botb respond

to and help guide governmental agendas and popular opinions. In the case of
pollution crises like Love Canal, news coverage conveyed the danger of con-
tamination through piles of broken, leaky drums, and images of the pollutants
themselves in dark, ominous pools of waste. One clear example of this visual
framing was the footage of dented and damaged toxic waste barrels from the
ABC news report. Representations of immigration on major cable news net-
works like Fox News and CNN often portrayed undocumented immigrants
through similar visual techniques, creating an impression that immigrants
were collecting like piles of potentially dangerous waste or were approaching
the viewer as mobile pollutants.
Images of large, unorganized groups of immigrants mirror tbe images of
stationary pollution from the coverage of Love Canal in tbeir visual framing
and content. These visual constructions create an impression of immigrants as
both stationary and mobile pollution. In Fox News's prime time debate show
Hannity & Colmes, for example, hosts Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes inter-
viewed Chris Burgard and Jay T. Rockwell, directors of tbe documentary The
Month of October, on tbeir experiences filming at tbe U.S.-Mexico border. As
Hannity asks the two men questions about the "shocking new footage... [tbat]
exposes problems on our borders in a way we've never seen before," images
from tbe documentary flash on tbe screen.'" Here tbe cooperation of tbe visual
and verbal content is key to tbe metapborical representations of immigrants.
While Hannity warns of tbe impending dangers of immigration tbreaten-
ing tbe nation, tbe camera illustrates bis concern by focusing on a group of
Mexicans sitting under a tree, apparently resting from the grueling trip across
the desert-border of Arizona. Taken from close range, the video clip shows the
immigrants sitting together in tbe shade. While some individuals at tbe edges
of the frame lay down, other immigrants in the middle of the frame sit huddled
together, back to back, to keep from laying on the rocky soil. Like the images
of Love Canal reported by Rebecca Chase, tbis immigration footage sbows the
immigrants in a disorganized and huddled heap, in sbarp contrast to the peace-
ful desert environment tbat tbey are pbysically disrupting. Similarly, in an ear-
lier interview with Chris Simcox, codirector of tbe Arizona Minuteman Project
(a citizen group working independently to patrol tbe Arizona border), images
show Mexican immigrants, mostly men, huddled together. Collectively tbe
large size of tbe group of immigrants and tbeir position in a chaotic mass con-
note a threat to the ordered, peaceful, and pristine desert wilderness."*^
A CNN report by Candy Crowley from November 29 concerns President
Busb's immigration plan and tbe Republican Party's response. Crowley makes
tbe metapboric framing of immigrant as pollutant more concrete. She notes
the magnitude of the immigration problem, putting it at "ten to eleven million
illegal immigrants living and working in the U.S.""*^ Republican representative
Tom Tancredo, interviewed in the report, talks about tbe need for increased
border security. Meanwbile, images of large groups of Latinos/as—presumably
immigrants—mill around in a parking lot waiting for work. In tbese images.
too, immigrants stand in disorganized groups on street corners and sidewalks.

Some stand with their backs to the camera, while others face it; nonetheless,
the immigrants literally take up physical space, presenting a psychological dis-
ruption to the peace and serenity of community life. "We are at a point in this
nation's history," Tancredo notes, "where we cannot afford to keep our borders
porous in order to provide employers with cheap labor."'*'' The video images of
huddled groups of immigrants function as evidence for Tancredo's claim about
the problems of a "porous" border. This footage of large, unorganized groups of
immigrants on street corners, parking lots, or borderlands captures "a sense of
large-scale immigration."^^ The content of this visual rhetoric conveys a sense
that the mere presence of immigrants creates a danger and a threat, much like
the standing drums of toxic waste in the photos of Love Canal.
The visual framing of the images of immigrants also draws on popular dis-
course of pollution such as the rhetoric surrounding Love Canal. In the rhetoric
both of pollution and of immigration, there is no doubt about the character-
istics of the threat, and the placement of the camera is one important parallel
between these two visual rhetorics. Images of toxic waste barrels at Love Canal
were taken from close range, showing the barrels were clearly damaged and
thus posing the threat of leakage. Similarly, close-range images of immigra-
tion clearly show ethnic and economic class markers that reinforce popular
concerns about immigration.''^ In much of this footage, markers of ethnic and
racial difference distinguish the migrants as different and potentially unruly.
The Fox News report on Hannity & Colmes, for example, focuses on an unor-
ganized group of border crossers. News discourse from CNN, such as that from
Candy Crowley, reports the magnitude of the immigration problem, featuring
images of unorganized groups of immigrants milling on street corners and side-
walks. Like the barrels in images of Love Canal, the immigrants are portrayed
as unorganized, idle, and aimless—connoting a sense of accumulating danger.
Whether sitting under trees or collecting on street corners, these images disrupt
a sense of order and safety by portraying immigrants as ticking time bombs of
cultural and economic contamination situated throughout our cities.
Using similar techniques as the news media coverage of pollution, immi-
grants are portrayed visually in news media rhetoric as stationary pollutants
contaminating communities and the environment. Yet, like the seeping, oozing,
and pooled toxic waste of Love Canal, immigrants are also portrayed as mobile
threats. Not only are these dangers accumulated on street corners and intersec-
tions, immigrants are continually shown moving through the desert and across
the border, conveying a sense of an approaching danger and a growing prob-
lem. Crowley's CNN report of November 29, for example, begins with video of
two Hispanic men easily scaling a fence that is nine or ten feet tall, then cuts
to two different Hispanic men running across a street, apparently fieeing.^'' In
both clips the camera is positioned on the American side of the border, while
immigrants scale or duck fences to sneak toward the viewer. Another CNN
report by Casey Wian shows a Hispanic man leaning on a section of border
fence; the fence is of such poor quality, though, that the man can look over the
barbed wire fence into the United States, as he sits with his arms folded."** In
both Wian and Crowley's reports one hears about the need to "crack down" on
illegal crossings into the country; both reports, as well as other similar pieces,
provide images of immigrants moving across the porous border followed by a
discussion of proposals for a large fence that will finally shut out "illegals.'"*^
Fox News coverage of immigration features similar visual representations of
immigrants as mobile threats. In the Hannity & Colmes interview of November
14 with the makers of The Month of October, Jay T. Rockwell notes that "it's ter-
rorists coming across" the border, highlighting the need to "close the back door
on terrorism." Meanwhile, footage of a line of people walking toward the cam-
era and then off frame dominates the screen.^" Shot at night with a night-vision
lens, the video shows few details about the immigrants other than a wide shot
of their path of movement across the frame and toward the camera. Particular
features of the immigrants are indistinguishable in such adverse lighting condi-
tions. Instead, the night vision lens gives the immigrant bodies a strange neon
green luminosity; they blend together, and the footage creates an impression
of an ominous and oncoming stream of toxic green pollution. In fact, these
immigrants pose an arguably greater threat to the country than toxic waste
because they are not only mobile but also purposeful.^' A special report from
November 8 on The O'Reilly Factor follows the same pattern, showing immi-
grant men and some women walking through the desert in groups and making
their way across the border into the United States. Here the camera's focus is
on groups of Mexicans walking along the border fence, looking for an opening
through which to cross. As the immigrants duck in and out of holes in the bor-
der fence. Representative Duncan Hunter describes the "no man's land" of the
border, an area through which immigrants stream across from Mexico in thou-
sands or are smuggled across like dangerous and secret substances. '^
These examples illustrate the ways in which immigration is constructed as a
mobile, toxic threat. The directionality of the videos and their visual composi-
tion contribute to their metaphoric meaning by drawing on similarities with
pollution coverage. Immigrants are shown moving toward the camera; their
movement is "directed towards the observer's eye," which connotes that the
immigrants are "coming at" the viewer.^^ This conveys a sense that the immi-
grants are invading our space and posing an immediate threat. The pollutant is
on the move and will soon reach and contaminate the viewer. Like the pools of
toxic waste that creep toward the camera in images of Love Canal, immigrants
are moving closer to the camera, presenting an ever-greater threat. There is
also an intelligence in the immigrants that makes the threat of contamination

even greater. They jump over or duck under fences that are supposed to protect
boundaries. The accumulation of these representations of seepage through the
"porous" border portrays immigrants as being like those pools of toxic waste
in Love Canal. Sometimes the connection is more subtle, created by impres-
sions of immigrants as stationary threats polluting peaceful parks or sidewalks.
Other times the metaphor of pollution becomes more explicit, as when images
taken at night create the impression that immigration is a stream of contamina-
tion seeping through holes in the border. In many of these examples, however,
immigrants are presented as "an undifferentiated mass quantity" that must be
controlled to prevent contamination.^''
Besides the directionality of immigrants in this visual rhetoric, the framing
of these images of immigrants also draws on elements of pollution rhetoric.
Representations of both stationary and mobile immigrants are framed so that
the immigrants trail off of the screen in one or both directions. Whether close-
ups or long shots, many of these videos exclude part of the group from the
frame. Like the barrels of pollution and the pools of waste in Love Canal, the
immigrants spill out of the frame, thus connoting that "the flow of immigrants
does not have a definitive end in sight."^^ The size and scope of the station-
ary pollutants are unknown, and their lack of supervision or purposive action
may connote danger to some viewers. As in the images of drums of waste or
toxic pools of sludge, the viewer cannot determine the extent or spread of the
pollutant. Similarly, images of moving migrants mirror visuals of Love Canal
that show pollution welling toward the camera, so close that it is moving out
of the frame. These images suggest the magnitude of immigration and offer up
some uncertainty about how far the problem extends; the "flow" of immigrants
appears to go on forever. Showing immigrants hopping fences, walking through
the desert, or crossing over and under barriers provides fuel for the metaphor
of the immigrant as mobile waste. Showing them moving in the direction of
the camera heightens the threat by making it appear that they are coming closer
to the viewer. These representations portray immigrants as a hazard, as moving
bodies of dangerous material.
While immigrants are portrayed metaphorically as a dangerous pollutant
that is seeping through the borders and collecting on street corners, they are
also often represented as criminals or as invaders.^^ The argument here is not
that these images have a singular or preferred meaning, but that "immigrant
as pollutant" is another metaphor in the network of metaphoric framings
underlying popular rhetoric about immigration. Images of immigrants form
the first theme of this metaphor, but the framing of "immigrant as pollut-
ant" is bolstered by portraying the immigrants as stationary or mobile threats
that contaminate or pollute American communities. Thus, news coverage also
constructs images of immigration's consequences, which form the second

dimension of the metaphor.
The Dangers of Illegal Immigration
The media coverage of Love Canal portrayed the threat in clear terms, illustrat-
ing the pollutant through images of scattered drums of chemicals or pools of
hazardous waste. It also provided a clear picture of the danger posed by these
chemicals to the community at large. First, focusing on social damage, images
of Love Canal conveyed the "disruption" pollutants had on the ordinary life of
the community.^^ Abandoned schools, empty street corners, and angry pro-
testers conveyed a sense of chaos and disarray. Second, images of the impact of
toxic waste in Love Canal portrayed the devastating health effects these pollut-
ants had on ordinary people. Creating an emotional and personal connection
with the victims magnified and concretized the problem and intensified the
call for a governmental response.^* Dangers of immigration are portrayed in
similar ways through representations of disrupted community life and through
images of the physical and social ills brought on by immigration.
According to network news coverage, immigration, like toxic waste, poses
a threat to the peace and harmony of American communities. One impor-
tant parallel to the visual rhetoric of pollution is the physical identities of
immigration's victims. In Fox's show Hannity & Colmes, while the hosts talk
to James Cilchrist and Chris Simcox, codirectors of the Arizona Minuteman
Project, images of protesters standing in the desert holding signs are shown
on the screen. One sign reads "STOP illegal invasion," while another identi-
fies the "Californians for Secure Borders."^' An adolescent of 14 or 15 years is
carrying a sign and protesting the influx of illegal immigrants into the coun-
try while standing next to an older woman, presumably his mother. Images of
the protestors, many of them women and children, mirror the pictures of Love
Canal residents' protests circulated in news media. In this footage, as in images
from Love Canal, we see women and children driven from their homes into the
streets to protest the dangers. Images of immigration's dangers convey that the
problem has grown so great that ordinary people are driven into the desert bor-
derlands to bring awareness to their plight.
Images of immigration's consequences often feature middle-aged and elderly
men and women, who either protest or patrol the border with binoculars and
two-way radios. The diverse makeup of these groups connotes the extent of
the problem of immigration. During the report on the Arizona minutemen on
Hannity & Colmes, organizer Chris Simcox praises the efforts of these ordinary
"citizen patrols" who, "spread out along a 23-mile stretch of desert," have "pro-
tected" Arizona from over "260 illegal immigrants" over the course of several
weeks. Meanwhile the screen shows video of tbese volunteers patrolling hills or
standing guard.^*' Minutemen stand next to cars or on top of recreational vehi-
cles, looking tbrougb binoculars into tbe distant desert. In one segment, sev-
eral men stand with their backs to the border, while in tbe foreground a well-
dressed, middle-aged woman surveys the horizon for border breacbes. Her
clotbes distinguish her from tbe other volunteers and seem to mark a bigber
social and economic status; sbe wears black pants and a green sweater, witb a
flower pattern scarf wrapped around ber neck. Likewise, other images of min-
utemen in tbe Fox News report portray all kinds of people, from "soccer moms"
to "old ladies," mobilized by the threat of immigration to use "cell phones and
lawn cbairs" to keep tbe border intact.^'
According to Simcox, tbe volunteers in Arizona alone—people wuling to belp
control a problem tbat the government fails to address—exceed 1,000 in number
and come from all over tbe country. Tbough their efforts are supposedly success-
ful, botb volunteers and protestors point to the need for swift and decisive action
by tbe government to stem tbe tide of "contamination." As Simcox argues:
This area has been neglected, and the citizens here have had enough. In fact,
they're coming out of their homes now, pleading with us not to leave, because
for thefirsttime in years, they've been able to sleep through the night, and they
have peace and quiet.*^
Like the images of Love Canal, the coverage of tbese anti-immigration efforts
points to tbe "total disruption of community, of settled, everyday life."*' In place
of images of abandoned streets or scbool yards, coverage of immigration features
individuals driven out into the desert to protest about tbe problem of immi-
gration and to take matters into tbeir own bands. Tbe danger is so great tbat
women, children, and the elderly have left tbeir homes and joined the ranks of
tbose patrolling tbe border, protecting tbeir communities from contamination.
Besides tbe identity of immigration's victims, anotber important element
in the metapboric construction of "tbe dangers of immigration" is tbe visual
framing of tbe images. Videos of protestors and amateur border watcbers
are filmed in close proximity so that their age, sex, and ethnicity are evident.
Mostly, tbese are middle-class wbites of varied ages, from young adults to tbe
elderly. Videos of protestors and minutemen feature every age, from middle-
aged motbers, young cbildren, and tbe elderly, gatbered togetber to address the
growing "problem" of immigration. Tbus, the diversity of volunteers' age and
gender implies that the effects of immigration bave reached so far tbat tbose
groups of people traditionally relegated to tbe private spbere (sucb as cbildren
and women) can justifiably come out into tbe public. On tbe otber band, tbe
uniformity of tbeir etbnicity subtly speaks to the racial fears underlying the
concerns over immigration. The camera often sits behind the volunteers, creat-
ing identification with the minutemen as they patrol the border. Meanwhile the
camera faces protestors, much like the photograph of a Love Canal mother pro-
testing government inaction. Portraying the "victims" of immigration in such
vivid proximity brings the viewer into the image and makes the disruption and
distortion of ordinary life seem ever more palpable.^''
News media representations of immigration mirror the ways in which media
coverage of Love Canal portrayed the dangers of toxic waste pollution. Toxic
waste poisons communities and brings them to a standstill, while immigra-
tion supposedly paralyzes communities across the United States both economi-
cally and socially. The threats of immigration are represented through ordinary
people forced from their homes, protesting and calling for more governmental
attention; lives are brought to a halt and people are forced to fight their own
battles to protect their communities from pollution.
Yet like the framing of pollution discourse, the dangers of immigration are
also expressed in more menacing terms through concrete stories and emotional
appeals. Szasz notes that later coverage of Love Canal focused on "interviews
with distraught citizens" as their "emotional core."*^ Centering coverage on
the stories of individuals helped to establish a connection with the victims of
Love Canal and convey the human impact of the crisis. Ultimately this per-
sonal connection was used to heighten the lack of governmental cleanup of
the pollution. Here the discourse of immigration differs from the rhetoric of
the Love Canal crisis. Inasmuch as it is difficult to trace the particular, indi-
vidual impacts of illegal immigration, the coverage of immigration in popular
media often focuses on the systemic, large-scale social ills that illegal immigra-
tion supposedly brings.
The concrete dangers of immigration are usually traced to heightened crime,
economic burden, and the threat of terrorism. Many of the stories during the
time period analyzed featured images of immigrants in crowded jails being
detained and processed by police officers and border officials.^^ Nevertheless,
in the context of metaphoric framings of immigrants as stationary and mobile
pollution, metaphoric meanings of pollution and contamination are activated.
Immigrants collect on street corners supposedly contaminating our way of life
and our culture. According to reports by Fox News and CNN, immigrants can
pollute society by taking jobs and contributing to crime and delinquency.
In addition to images of crime and terrorism, there is also a subtle envi-
ronmental dimension to these images of immigration. Eor example, several
reports show video of trash and debris left in the desert by moving groups of
immigrants. Whether a can of Fiesta cola or a pile of tattered clothes, these
images convey a literal sense of pollution that accompanies the metaphorical
pollution of culture and lifestyle these immigrants supposedly bring. Often
news coverage shows these physical traces of pollution through extremely close
shots, contributing to a sense that the contamination left in the wake of immi-
gration is palpable. These images of immigration's consequences add to the
general sense of disarray, disorder, and defilement conveyed by discourses of
immigration's dangers. Not only are images of crime and terrorism used to
connote the dangers of unchecked illegal immigration, they also provide ave-
nues for media to call for particular governmental actions to address these
problems. Images of the governmental response to immigration form the third
dimension of the metaphor immigrant as pollutant.
Representations of the Governmental Response
Like the discourse of the toxic waste crisis at Love Canal, visual rhetoric of
immigration portrays immigrants as dangerous pollutants who pose devastat-
ing consequences for communities. And, like the toxic waste at Love Canal,
immigration is a pollutant whose spread can be contained and cleansed. The
call for "cleanup" of immigration forms the third representational dimen-
sion of the metaphor of immigrant as pollutant. In the context of Love Canal,
Szasz notes that the shocking images of life in Love Canal "might have been
less frightening if . . . government regulators had been shown to be compe-
tent to protect public health." Instead of receiving a picture of a responsive and
concerned government, viewers "got just the opposite impression."^^ Through
images such as the photograph of EPA officials loading a barrel of toxic waste
into a truck for disposal, officials were often portrayed doing their individual
part to help the citizens of Love Canal. In general, however, the government's
response was "grossly inadequate" and "infinitesimal in comparison to the size
of the problem."^^ Individual images of governmental officials disposing of
waste only heightened the need for comprehensive action by the government.
"Without a larger enforcement staff," one reporter noted, "few expect that the
new law will quickly clean up the toxic waste problem."^'
Representations of immigration in popular discourse follow a similar for-
mat in portraying the government's role in regulating and controlling the pol-
lutant. News media praise the individual contributions of law enforcement
officials while criticizing the overall governmental response. For example, while
Hannity and Colmes celebrate the success of the Arizona minutemen on their
program, organizer Chris Simcox explicitly addresses the failure of the govern-
ment to do its job. "We've created a model that works," he argues, "a model that
border control cannot implement because they don't have the resources to do
this." The border patrol, though well intentioned, "just do not have the person-
nel to watch [the border] continuously 24 hours a day like we've... been doing
here for the last 18 days."^°
CONTAMINATEO COMMUNITIES! T H E METAPHOR OF "IMMIGRANT AS POLLUTANT" 587
Other reports on immigration mirror Simcox's view of government bor-

der officials; the verbal and visual messages construct a picture of governmen-
tal negligence and inadequacy in the face of an ominous problem. In another
episode of Hannity & Colmes airing on October 4, as images of border agents
putting Mexicans in handcuffs and pushing them into large vans are shown
on the screen, the caption "Border Patrol Agents Intercept Illegal Immigrants"
takes up the bottom third of the screen. The camera sits behind the border
official while he pushes the immigrant into the back of a truck for deporta-
tion. Meanwhile, Hannity emphasizes that these immigrants were arrested "less
than a quarter of a mile from the border."^' Throughout the interview with
Luis Cabrera, a Mexican government official, clips show immigrants with their
hands placed on U.S. government vans and their feet spread as they are searched
by police. Other footage from this same show features immigrants standing
in a straight line with their hands behind their heads in the presence of bor-
der officials. "It's happening by the hundreds every night in this area," Hannity
warns, "it's happening all along the border."^^ During Bill O'Reilly's November
8 interview of Rep. Duncan Hunter, the camera focuses on a Mexican man
in a police station being booked by a police officer. While the officer finger-
prints and jails the immigrant, a caption informs the viewer that approximately
480,000 illegal immigrants cross the border each year and that three-quarters
of California's tuberculosis cases "occur among immigrants." Rep. Hunter talks
about the need for more government assistance to prevent illegal immigration.
"You need fences. You need roads. You need light, and you need the people to
man them, the great people of the border patrol"; "we can do it," says Hunter,
but we need more help and attention from the government.^^ In a CNN report
from November 28, video footage of INS officials making arrests and patrol-
ling the border are shown on the screen, while reporter Casey Wian demands
increased funds and support from the federal government to combat immi-
gration.'''' Another report from November 29 identifies the need to "control
the border and crack down inside the country" to prevent more illegal entry.^^
While the image content offers multiple interpretations of the immigrant
threat, the visual framing of this footage contributes to the dehumanization
of the immigrant. Immigrants are portrayed as pollutants that the government
must clean up.
Like the government agents in the Love Canal coverage, INS and bor-
der patrol officials are generally praised; their efforts to protect the borders,
apprehend illegal immigrants, and send them back over the border are lauded.
Most of the journalists' and advocates' criticisms fall squarely on the govern-
ment for failing to fund and support these brave agents who are trying to
protect the nation. The visual and verbal image-text creates an argument for
more governmental accountability by showing pictures of border violations
and apprehensions while making claims about the magnitude of the problem
and the lack of enforcement. Whereas the content of this discourse creates an
image of governmental incompetence and negligence, the framing of the gov-
ernment agents, ordinary citizens, and immigrants in these images also con-
tributes to the metaphor of immigrant as pollutant.
One important visual element of these images of the governmental response
to immigration is the position of the camera in much of the news media cover-
age. Shots of the officials' interactions with immigrants are taken at close range
and from angles that associate the viewer with the government agent. Most of
these images are taken at close range, highlighting the differences between the
immigrants and the officers. The hierarchy between the two is reified through
their positioning in the images. For example, immigrants are restrained or inter-
rogated, which connotes their status as physical dangers, deviants, and crimi-
nals. Like the photos of government officials dealing with drums of waste, the
border patrol is usually moving immigrants into vans to ship them back across
the border. Love Canal images of governmental officials transporting drums of
waste show the EPA agents wearing chemical-proof suits and gas masks as they
struggle to load the drum of toxic waste onto the truck and away from Love
Canal. Similarly, the border officials in Fox News and CNN reports wrestle the
illegal immigrants into the back of vans that will carry them first into custody
and then across the border. Both sets of images portray the immediate danger
posed by these "pollutants" through the agents' protective uniforms. The EPA
agents in Love Canal coverage often wore protective suits that shielded them
from the hazardous effects of the chemicals. Border patrol officials also wear
protective gear in the visual rhetoric of immigration—in the form of police
uniforms and weapons—that convey legal authority and a sense of danger
inherent in their jobs.
One particular example is the Fox News interview with Chris Simcox from
Hannity & Colmes titled "Sean Hannity Visits the Minutemen Volunteers in
Arizona." Here video footage shows images of border officials apprehending
immigrants. The border official's firearm and nightstick are visible on his belt,
assuring the viewer that this job is very dangerous.^* Tbe position of the camera
and the framing of the shots are important as well. Very few images of immi-
grants being apprebended by border officials show the immigrants' faces. In
the Fox News footage too, video of the arrest is taken entirely from behind the
officers. The viewer sees the officer handcuff, search, and push the immigrant
into the back of a van. Tbe immigrant remains faceless and nameless; there are
no particularities shown for the individual being arrested other than his ethnic
and legal status, thus transforming the immigrant into a dangerous substance
being taken into custody.^^ This framing puts the viewer on the side of the
border patrol official, creating identification with government agents. These
images convey no human connection to the immigrant just as they convey no
connection to tbe drum of waste being shipped away; tbey are botb objects to
be discarded. Since tbe camera sits behind the officer, tbe immigrant/object is
being taken away from tbe viewer. Visually and psychologically, tbe audience is
relieved of tbe burden of its presence by tbe border patrol agent.
Similar to scenes in wbicb viewers saw EPA officials struggling carefully to
dispose of dangerous barrels of waste, news media rhetoric of immigration
reminds the viewer tbat tbese immigrants carry disease and pose tbreats to tbe
brave border officials wbo struggle to remove tbem. Immigrants are carefully
but forcefully wrestled into the back of trucks or vans to be sbipped away. Tbey
are portrayed as dangerous substances tbat must be dealt witb quickly to assure
everyone's safety. Immigrants are lined up, organized, searcbed, and removed.
Tbe officers wear protective gear, and tbe immigrants are marked as racial otb-
ers. W^en tbe positioning of immigrant and border official in tbese images is
coupled witb tbe aural and textual messages tbat convey a need for funding to
complete tbese "cleanup" efforts, tbe image-text makes a powerful appeal for
more government support of efforts to combat illegal immigration.^^ Instead
of featuring successful government efforts, tbe stories focus on limited attempts
tbat are "grossly inadequate" and fail to address tbe problem of illegal immigra-
tion. "Witbout a larger enforcement staff," tbey argue, tbere can be few expecta-
tions tbat tbe problem can be quickly addressed.''
The three topoi discussed above—images of immigrants, images of tbe dan-
gers of immigration, and images of tbe government's response—mirror tbe
visual rbetoric of Love Canal and otber pollution crises in tbeir visual framing
and composition. Tbe framing of tbe images, tbeir content, and tbeir textual
and aural messages cooperate to construct a metapboric framing for immigra-
tion. Table 3 outlines tbe metapbor of immigrant as pollutant as constructed
in tbis news coverage.
As witb tbe coverage of Love Canal, tbe representations of immigrants
portray tbem as botb stationary pollutants gatbered on street corners and as
mobile waste moving across the border. Tbe dangers of immigration are visual-
ized tbrough images of disrupted community life, including protesters and dis-
located families. Images of tbe social contamination brougbt by immigration,
such as crime or poverty, further concretize tbe danger. Finally, discourse about
tbe government's response praises individual efforts by valiant government
agents to combat tbe spread of immigration wbile decrying tbe overall govern-
mental response to the border crisis. News media discourse, particularly visual
rbetoric, works to frame immigrants as dangerous pollutants tbat tbreaten tbe
American community. Tbis metapboric representation is not witbout conse-
quences for tbe ways immigration is understood and approacbed. I now con-
sider tbe implications of tbe metapbor immigrant as pollutant.
Table 3
The Immigrant The Dangers of Immigration Governmental Response
Stationary pollutant Disrupted community life Praise for individual agents
• Disorganized groups • Protesting citizens • Capture of immigrants
• Immigrants resting • Individuals "forced" • Deportations
along the border from their homes Criticism ofgovernment efforts
Mobile waste • Citizen border enforcement • No funding for Border Patrol
' Immigrants crossing Social effects • Refusal to build a fence
the border ' Crime
• Approaching groups • Poverty
• Pollution/Litter
IMMIGRATION, IDEOLOGY, AND THE POLITICS OF METAPHOR
Representations of illegal immigration in popular media, from television

shows to news photographs, provide a complex view of the immigrant "prob-
lem." Scholars have identified a variety of metaphors that serve as conceptual
tools by which we understand immigration and its eftect on our society. Some
of these metaphors are the immigrant as invader, as criminal, and as disease,
yet the preceding analysis of recent news media discourse about immigration
illustrates another metaphor by which media articulate this controversy: immi-
grant as pollutant.
Constructions of immigration as a danger have a complex history. Lisa
Flores, for example, describes the narratives of fear deployed about immigrants
in the 1930s. She argues that these narratives of danger portrayed immigrants
through common themes:
Large populations of people with little knowledge of or interest in America

arrived. These groups, unlike earlier western European immigrants, were likely
to be the dregs of society. Illiterate, diseased, or morally suspect, these southern
and eastern Europeans threatened to pollute and dilute the homogenous stock
of America.^"
Similar images and narratives inform the rhetoric of immigration through-

out history.*' Strikingly, "the ease with which these constructions appear,"
states Flores, "suggests that they have become deeply embedded within the cul-
tural commonsense."*^ As Mercedes Lynn de Uriarte notes, television news has
become a modern medium through which ethnic minorities, including immi-
grants, are discursively constructed as dangers and threats.^'
The preceding analysis of contemporary news media discourse illustrates
that these same dominant logics continue to permeate rhetoric about immigra-
* What, then, are the consequences of these constructions, and how does
the metaphor of immigrant as pollutant differ from other metaphoric under-
standings of immigration? Constructing immigration as a social danger pro-
vides an opportunity to define the other and solidify the self. As Mary Douglas
outlines, discourses of danger construct difference as a means of constituting
shared national and cultural identity.^^ Metaphoric representations are a cru-
cial component of this identity construction. Examining this prevalent meta-
phoric representation of immigrant as pollutant, then, provides an opportu-
nity to critique dominant logics by exploring the ideological implications of
contemporary immigration rhetoric.^^
The metaphor of immigrant as pollutant articulated in popular discourse
is significant for the ways in which it constructs immigrants, through racial
and xenophobic stereotypes, as objects, aberrations, and dangers. This dis-
course propagates overly simplistic understandings of immigration that sug-
gest equally simplistic solutions. Metaphors serve as terminological filters on
reality. Our observations and actions "are but implications of the particular ter-
minology in terms of which observations are made."^^ The ways in which news
media images and textual fragments construct immigration as a danger is prob-
lematic, for they inform society's relationship to immigrants and they influence
the direction of public policy on immigration.
Analysis of the metaphor of immigrant as pollutant uncovers how popu-
lar discourse of immigration contributes to understandings of immigrants as
individuals and notions of immigration as a social phenomenon. The discur-
sive construction of the other as a threat, in the words of David Campbell,
"naturalize[s] the self (as normal, healthy, civilized, or something equally
positive) by estranging the other (as pathological, sick, barbaric, or some-
thing equally negative)."^^ Images of immigrants as dangerous and destruc-
tive pollutants dehumanize immigrants by constructing them as threaten-
ing substances, denying them agency and reinforcing common stereotypes.
Immigrants' primary identity is marked by their racial difference and ille-
gal migrant status. Their brown bodies are portrayed as dirty and dangerous
because of their ethnicity.^^ Their legal status as outsiders is marked by their
sneaking and seeping through borders as well as their apprehension by law
enforcement officials.^"
Even as this metaphoric articulation divides immigrants from mainstream
America, "immigration as pollution" also serves a unifying function, bring-
ing together disparate groups of Americans under the banner of protecting
the sanctity and integrity of the nation. People of all ages and economic back-
grounds are on the front lines protesting and working together to stop the
influx of illegal immigration. The metaphor of pollution normalizes American
identity, an identity based on racial and cultural "purity." The construction
of self and other through the metaphor of immigrant as pollutant makes this
normalized American identity visible while painting immigrants as contami-
nants. Alan Nadel notes that "the container and the contained" are "each in
themselves fiuid and not discrete entities."" As such their identities must be
redrawn and reaffirmed through narratives and discourses of contamination
and cleanup. The metaphor of immigrant as pollutant present in media dis-
course pushes immigrants to the periphery—threats to be feared and problems
to be dealt with—to draw a border between differing identities. These images
of contamination license popular stereotypes and "institutional discrimina-
tion."'^ As Donald Macedo writes, the result is often that
both documented and undocumented immigrants materially experience the

loss of their dignity, the denial of their humanity, and, in many cases, outright
violence Language such as "border rats," "wetbacks," "aliens," "illegals," "wel-
fare queens," and "non-White hordes," used by the popular press not only dehu-
manizes other cultural beings, but also serves to justify the violence perpetrated
against subordinated groups.'^
The identities of self and other constructed by the metaphoric representations

of immigrants as pollutants encourage social relationships that, as Macedo
notes, materially affect immigrants and non-immigrants alike.
Every selection is also a ''reflection" and "deflection" of reality; thus meta-
phors of immigration close off other possibilities for understanding immigra-
tion.^'' The "metaphorical plot" becomes so standard that other explanations
or alternatives begin to seem "unrealistic or ridiculous."^^ Popular media por-
tray immigrants as threats that must be isolated and removed rather than as
subjects with concrete human stories. Likewise, immigration is portrayed as
an encroaching danger that precludes consideration of immigration as a natu-
ral effect of a shrinking global society. Considerations of the reasons underly-
ing migration or the potentially positive contributions of immigrants are often
ignored in the face of the metaphoric language of danger and threat. Instead,
news media discourses often portray immigrants as toxic substances polluting
the country. Migration is depicted as a kinetic seepage of another area's social
problem into America. These narratives of contamination and pollution cre-
ate a moral order. Mary Douglas explains this organizing function of pollution
metaphors:
ideas about separating, purifying, demarcating and punishing transgressions

have as their main function to impose system on an inherently untidy experience.
It is only by exaggerating the difference between within and without, above and
below, male and female, with and against, that a semblance of order is created.'*
These metaphoric understandings of the immigration "problem" create con-

ceptual and societal hierarchies that lend themselves to particular solutions. The
best option to deal with the mobile threat presented in news media discourse is
to corral and quarantine the pollutants. The process of rounding up and deport-
ing immigrants seems the "natural" solution, just as cleaning up and disposing
of the toxic waste of Love Canal seemed the only logical option. Metaphors of
pollution and contamination are also evident in popular narratives concerning
the need to secure the border with a fence. In this case, the metaphoric under-
standing of immigrants as dangerous waste is not only evident in recent news
media discourse but influences government initiatives and legislative debate
on immigration reform, as well. For example, the Secure Fence Act of 2006,
which called for the building of a 700-mile border fence along areas of the U.S.-
Mexico border, arguably draws on an understanding of immigrants as invad-
ers or pollutants that must be restrained behind a barrier. Plans for extended
fences as well as stricter border patrols and more stringent deportation efforts
continue to constitute debate about immigration reform.'^ As a terminological
filter, the metaphor of immigrant as pollutant in popular news discourse reifies
popular stereotypes of immigrants and strengthens institutional responses that
deal with immigrants as threats to be contained and eliminated.
Of course the metaphor of immigrant as pollutant is not the only meta-
phor at work in this media coverage. Immigrants are also portrayed as invaders,
criminals, diseases, infestations, physical burdens, and destructive flood waters.
Immigration as a phenomenon is presented through the metaphors of genetic
defect or societal balkanization. Yet the environmental metaphor of pollution
plays an important role in the rhetoric of immigration. Pristine nature, with
the threat posed to it by toxic chemicals, is deployed discursively as a repos-
itory for metaphoric understandings of immigrants. These metaphors work
together, "weav[ing] a congruent web of marginalization and aspersion."^^
Representations of immigration implicitly make a connection to images of
pollution, waste, and contamination that form part of popular consciousness
and historical memory. Comparing news images of pollution from toxic waste
crises such as Love Canal to recent news media images of immigration uncov-
ers another metaphor by which immigration and its effects are articulated to
mass audiences. The ways in which these images position the viewer in relation
to the immigrants, and the contexts into which the immigrants are placed, can
create a connection that helps explain and interpret the message for its view-
ers. Furthermore, these images operate rhetorically alongside verbal and tex-
tual calls for the "cleaning" of immigrants and the sealing of the border from
further contamination. Exposing these forms of representation and their ideo-
logical assumptions can be an important step in weakening their conceptual
bold and constructing more open metaphors for understanding tbe people
wbo cross tbe border every day.
NOTES
1. Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life,
2nd ed. (New York: Perennial, 2002). Some scholars have objected to the use of the term
"immigrant" to refer to migrants coming into the tJnited States. Recognizing the xenopho-
bic assumptions that often underlie the use of the term, I will use it in this essay because the
discourse I analyze conceives of immigrants from the perspective of the landed U.S. citizen.
See Daniels, Coming to America, 3-4.
2. The scholarship on popular discourse about immigration is extensive and diverse. It features
studies of representations surrounding particular controversies and larger surveys of immi-
gration discourse. For example, see Anne Demo, "Sovereignty Discourse and Contemporary
Immigration Politics," Quarterly Journal of Speech 91 (2005): 291-311; Hugh Mehan, "The
Discourse of the Illegal Immigration Debate: A Case Study in the Politics of Representation,"
Discourse & Society 8 (1997): 249-70; Kent A. Ono and John M. Sloop, Shifting Borders:
Rhetoric, Immigration, and California's Proposition 187 (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 2002).
3. Otto Santa Ana, Brown Tide Rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary American Public
Discourse (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002).
4. Francis A. Beer and Christ'l De Landtsheer, eds.. Metaphorical World Politics (East Lansing:
Michigan State University Press, 2004), 6.
5. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2003). For more discussion of the cognitive function of metaphor, see also Rosamund
Moon and Murray Knowles, Introducing Metaphor (New York: Routledge, 2006), 3-5; Robert
L. Ivie, "Metaphor and the Rhetorical Invention of Cold War 'Idealists,'" Communication
Monographs 54 (1987): 166-68. Scholars have used the framework of metaphor to ground
theoretical and critical studies of discourse. For some examples, see William A. Ausmus,
"Pragmatic Uses of Metaphor: Models and Metaphor in the Nuclear Winter Scenario,"
Communication Monographs 65 (1998): 67-82; John E. Fritch and Karla K. Leeper, "Poetic
Logic: The Metaphoric Form as a Foundation for a Theory of Tropological Argument,"
Argumentation and Advocacy 29 (1993): 186-94; Michael C. Leff, "Topical Invention and
Metaphoric Interaction," Southern States Communication Journal 48 (1983): 214-29; Michael
Osborn, "Archetypal Metaphor in Rhetoric: The Light-Dark Family," Quarterly Journal of
Speech 53 (1967): 115-26.
6. Josef Stern, Metaphor in Context (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000).
7. Santa Ana, Brown Tide Rising, 8-9.
8. Mark Ellis and Richard Wright, "The Balkanization Metaphor in the Analysis of U.S.
Immigration" Annals of the Association of American Geographers SS (1998): 688.
9. George Lakoff and Sam Ferguson, "The Framing of Immigration," The Rockridge Institute,
http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/research/rockridge/immigration (accessed October 28,2006).
See also Ono and Sloop, Shifting Borders, ch. 5.
10. Raymie E. McKerrow, "Gritical Rhetoric: Theory and Praxis," Communication Monographs
56 (1989): 91.
11. Mehan, "Discourse," 251.
12. Ono and Sloop, Shifting Borders, 28. Ono and Sloop's book provides a thorough discussion
of the many discursive strategies by which conventional logics of immigration, which dis-
empower immigrants, are entrenched through media and public debate. Moreover, Ono and
Sloop uncover more subversive vernacular discourses that, by virtue of their incommensura-
bility with dominant logics, challenge dominant assumptions about immigrants in popular
discourse. The relevance of Ono and Sloop's work to tbe current study lies in its catalogue of
metapboric representations of immigrants in the coverage of Proposition 187.
13. Ono and Sloop, Shifting Borders, 156.
14. Dorothy Nelkin and Mark Michaels, "Biological Categories and Border Controls: The
Revival of Eugenics in Anti-Immigration Rhetoric," International Journal of Sociology and
Social Policy 18, no. 5/6 (1998): 35.
15. Ellis and Wright, "Balkanization," 688.
16. Leo R. Chavez, Covering Immigration: Popular Images and the Politics of the Nation (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2001).
17. Santa Ana, Brown Tide Rising. See also Otto Santa Ana, Juan Moran, and Cynthia Sanchez,
"Awash under a Brown Tide: Immigration Metaphors in California Public and Print Media
Discourse," Az(tó« 23 (1998): 137-76.
18. Scholarship on visual rbetoric has increasingly become a mainstay of rhetorical criticism as
more and more critics turn to analyzing images and other "visual artifacts" for their persua-
sive and constitutive elements. Yet as Cara Finnegan and Jiyeon Kang note, "it is no longer
useful to simply 'add images and stir.'" Scholars need to move beyond justifying the study of
images to begin theorizing "how images and vision operate" and how visual modes of rhet-
oric interact with other rhetorical elements like the verbal or aural. Cara A. Finnegan and
Jiyeon Kang, "'Sighting' tbe Public: Iconoclasm and Public Sphere Theory," Quarterly Journal
of Speech 90 (2004): 379. For further discussion of the importance of the study of visual
rhetoric as well as examples of visual rhetorical criticism, see Kevin Michael DeLuca, Image
Politics: The New Rhetoric of Environmental Activism (New York: Guilford Press, 1999); Kevin
M. DeLuca and Anne Teresa Demo, "Imagining Nature: Watkins, Yosemite, and the Birth of
Environmentalism," Critical Studies in Media Communication 17 (2000): 241-26; Cara A.
Finnegan, "Tbe Naturalistic Enthymeme and Visual Argument: Photographic Representation
in the 'Skull Controversy,'" Argumentation and Advocacy 37 (2001): 133-49; Sonja Foss, "A
Rhetorical Schema for the Evaluation of Visual Imagery," Communication Studies 45 (1994):
213-24; Christine Harold and Kevin Michael DeLuca, "Behold the Corpse: Violent Images
and the Case of Emmett Till," Rhetoric & Public Affairs 8 (2005): 263-86. In tbis paper I fol-
low Finnegan and Kang's call and examine how visual rhetoric creates images of immigrants
that influence contemporary immigration debates.
19. Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites,"Performing Civic Identity: The Iconic Photograph
of the Flag Raising on Iwo Jima," Quarterly Journal of Speech 88 (2002): 365.
20. Hariman and Lucaites, "Performing Civic Identity," 366.
21. Cori E. Dauber, "The Shots Seen 'Round the World: The Impact of the Images of Mogadishu
on American Military Operations," Rhetoric & Public Affairs A (2001): 654. For furtber dis-
cussion of the myth of objectivity and naturalism tied to photographs and visual images, see
Roland Bartbes, "Rbetoric of tbe Image," in Image, Music, Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New
York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 32-51; Finnegan, "Tbe Naturalistic Enthymeme and Visual
Argument."
22. Margaret Morse, "News as Performance: The Image as Event," in The Television Studies
Reader, ed. Robert C. Allen and Annette Hill (New York: Routledge, 2004), 222. For further
discussion of the ideological elements of news media discourse, see Shawn J. Parry-Giles,
"Mediating Hillary Rodham Clinton: Television News Practices and Image-Making in the
Postmodern Age," Critical Studies in Media Communication 17 (2000): 205-26; Mimi White,
"Ideological Analysis and Television," in Channels of Discourse, Reassembled, ed. Robert C.
Allen (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 161-202.
23. My approach to address this visual deficiency is not to examine the visual images of news
media discourse in isolation. The focus on the visual alone is also deficient because it fails
to recognize the relationship among the visual, the textual, and the aural parts of the mes-
sage, an approach that is necessary to understand the construction of contemporary media
discourse. Cara Finnegan notes in her discussion of the "image-text" the need to look at how
the visual "taps into, shapes, and contests" the verbal and aural messages of the text to illus-
trate how these relationships negotiate meaning. Cara A. Finnegan, "Recognizing Lincoln:
Image Vernaculars in Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture," R/ietoricc^PuWicAjJ^flirs 8 (2005):
35. See also Cara A. Finnegan, "Social Engineering, Visual Politics, and the New Deal: FSA
Photography in Survey Graphic" Rhetoric & Public Affairs 3 (2000): 333-62. For an example
of this comprehensive approach toward metaphoric representations, see Martin J. Medhurst,
"The Rhetorical Structure of Oliver Stone's JFK" Critical Studies in Mass Communication 10
(1993): 128-43.
24. Concepts like "nature" and "wilderness" are often used in popular arguments to frame
minorities or women in certain symbolic relationships with dominant culture. Conceptions
of women as closer to nature or more emotional and empathetic in contrast to rational
and self-willed men serve to underpin patriarchal gender roles. See, for example. Sherry B.
Ortner, "Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?" in Woman, Culture, and Society, ed.
Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
1974), 67-87. Similarly, ethnic and cultural minorities like Native Americans have faced rac-
ism and subjugation through a supposed closeness to a virgin and pliable nature. William
Cronon, "The Trouble with Wilderness, or, Cetting Back to the Wrong Nature," in The Great
New Wilderness Debate, eds. J. Baird Callicott and Michael P. Nelson (Athens: LJniversity of
Georgia Press, 1998), 471-99. These are just a few examples of the myriad ways in which
terms like "nature" are deployed to make racist, sexist, or xenophobic arguments, pointing to
the need for examining the ways in which "nature," and its attendant concepts, is deployed
rhetorically.
25. My focus was on television segments aired on Fox News and CNN that were later available
on their websites (n=16, 8 from each network). I chose to search for the texts on the net-
works' respective websites to obtain the most comprehensive body of broadcasts possible;
I was able to analyze reports airing at a variety of times over a stretch of several months. 1
searched these websites for all news stories that contained the words "immigrant," "immigra-
tion," "immigrate," or "border." I narrowed these results by topic—by eliminating stories that
were not explicitly about immigration and border issues (visa laws or taxes, for example),
and by format—by focusing on those messages that contained images and video clips (not
only discursive information).
26. News coverage of immigration in mainstream media evolved as the controversy over immi-
gration reform developed throughout 2005. Popular concern over growing numbers of
undocumented immigrants and the Bush administration's call for immigration reform
policy culminated in several months of intense debate through September and October.
As part of President Bush's Homeland Security appropriation bill, signed in October, the
government contributed over $5 billion for security and surveillance technology for border
checkpoints. Arguing that "to defend this country, we've got to enforce our borders," Bush
called for further action by Congress to craft a "comprehensive immigration reform pro-
gram," including border enforcement, a guest worker program, and provisions for undocu-
mented immigrants already in the country. See George W. Bush, "Remarks on Signing the
Department of Homeland Security Appropriations," October 18,2005, Weekly Compilation
of Presidential Documents 41 (2005): 1555, 1557. Responding to congressional debate on
immigration reform. Bush toured Arizona and Texas in November, speaking to border secu-
rity officials in each state and continuing a push for action on immigration. Congressional
debate resulted in the passage of HR 4437 in December of 2005, providing a clear end point
for this analysis. The controversy continues, however, with a debate between competing
Senate and House proposals as well as the passage of the Secure Fence Act of 2006, calling
for a 700-mile border fence. "Secure Fence Act of 2006," (PL 109-367, October 26, 2006),
available from THOMAS (Library of Congress), http://thomas.toc.gov (accessed December
14,2006).
27. Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (1945; rpt., Berkeley: University of California Press,
1969), 503.
28. Andrew Szasz, Ecopopulism: Toxic Waste and the Movement for Environmental Justice. Vol.
1, Social Movements, Protest, and Contention (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1994), 42.
29. Szasz, Ecopopulism, 41.
32. For a particularly thorough explanation of the visual elements in news media discourse on
the Love Canal crisis, see Szasz, Eccpopulism, ch. 3. Szasz provides a comprehensive table of
all images (both photograph and video) from news coverage of Love Canal (49). I describe
several examples from the discourse on Love Canal in more detail to outline some of the rhe-
torical elements of these images.
33. Rebecca Chase, ABC World News Tonight, ABC, November 20, 1980. For a photographic
example, see the photo by Bill Snead from the Washington Post available in Christine Russell,
"Placing Risk Between Panic and Apathy: A New Industry Emerges," APF Reporter 11, Alicia
PatteTson¥oundation, http://www.aliciapatterson.org/APF1101/RusseU/Russell.html {accessed
November 8,2006).
34. For the impact of media coverage on public opinion, see Szasz, Ecopopulism, 50-56.
37. Image available on the EPA webpage. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "Continuing
the Promise of Earth Day," in Superfund 20th Anniversary Report (Washington, D.C:
Environmental Protection Agency, 2000), 3, http://www.epa.gov/superfund/20years/20yrptl.
pdf (accessed November 8, 2005). Several television news reports featured similar visual
images including Walter Cronkite, CBS Evening News, CBS, May 21, 1980.
39. The photograph is available in Russell, "Placing Risk Between Panic and Apathy."
41. "Shocking New Video of Illegal Immigrants Crossing the Border," Hannity & Colmes, Fox
News Network, November 14, 2005, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,175481,00.html
(accessed November 21, 2005).
42. "Just How Dangerous Is It to Cross the Border Illegally?" Hannity & Colmes, Fox News
Network, October 18, 2005, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,I72598,00.html (accessed
November 21, 2005). See also Anita Vogel, "Is Illegal Immigration Grounds for State
of Emergency?" Fox News Channel, October 18, 2005, http://www.foxnews.com/story/
0,2933,17253l,OO.html (accessed October 21,2006).
43. Candy Crowley, "GOP Struggles with Immigration," Cable News Network, November 29,
2005.
44. Crowley, "GOP Struggles with Immigration."
45. Chavez, Covering Immigration, 69.
46. Close-ups can often provide a sense of honesty and veracity to the images being shown in
video coverage as close-up shots are associated with a curious, penetrating gaze. These close-
ups also magnify the evidentiary status of images by conveying a sense of journalistic integ-
rity. See Parry-Giles, "Mediating Hillary Rodham Clinton," 215-16.
47. This video sequence of immigrants jumping over a fence and running through the streets
quickly became a stock component of immigration coverage on CNN. See Louise Schiavone,
"Broken Borders," Cable News Network, October 14, 2005. As scholars such as Shawn Parry-
Giles have noted, news networks often recycle visual images and sequences, repurposing
and recontextualizing them to fit into later stories. Parry-Giles, "Mediating Hillary Rodham
Clinton," 212-13.
48. Casey Wian, "Bush on Border Issues," Cable News Network, November 28, 2005.
49. This imagery of border seepage and pollution abounds. Another interesting example features
a shot of the Rio Grande from the American bank of the river. On the other side a group of
Mexican men sit and crouch idly in the shade. The camera angle is wide, which prevents
identifying many of their particular features, but the men stare across the river at the camera
as if caught in the act of breaking the law. As with these other images, they sit pooled and
waiting for the camera crews to leave so that they can resume their trek across the border.
Schiavone, "Broken Borders."
50. "Shocking New Video."
51. "We don't want people walkin' across the border here and blowing something up," argues
one minuteman volunteer at the Canadian border. Concern over border crossings grew to
such heights that minutemen groups began to patrol the Canada-U.S. border for poten-
tial illegal crossings, even though such crossings are very rare. Dan Springer, "Locals Fret
Over Minutemen Patrol," Fox News Channel, October 19, 2005, http://www.foxnews.com/
story/0,2933,172803,00.html (accessed October 21,2006).
52. "Rep. Duncan Hunter on Border Security," The O'Reilly Factor, Fox News Network, November
8, 2005, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,175030,00.html (accessed October 21, 2006).
See also Vogel, "Is Illegal Immigration Grounds for State of Emergency?"
53. Chavez, Covering Immigration, 54.
54. Santa Ana, Brown Tide Rising, 76.
55. Chavez, Covering Immigration, 69. For another example, see Elaine Quijano, "Bush on
Immigration," Cable News Network, November 29, 2005.
56. Condit et al. argue that a discussion of the metaphors within a text must take note of the
polysemy of metaphoric representations. Depending on the linguistic and situational con-
text of the rhetoric, different meanings and intersections of metaphors can be "activated" or
obscured. Thus, it is important to note that multiple metaphors are at work in this discourse.
I cannot offer a singular metaphoric interpretation but only point to a metaphor that has
been heretofore underexamined by critics. Celeste M. Condit et al., "Recipes of Blueprints

for Our Genes? How Contexts Selectively Activate the Multiple Meanings of Metaphors,"
Quarterly Journal of Speech SS (2002): 303-26.
58. Szasz, Ecopopulism, 43-48.
59. "Sean Hannity Visits the Minutemen Volunteers in Arizona," Hannity & Colmes, Fox News
Network, April 19, 2005, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,153908,00.html (accessed
November 21, 2005). Though this segment of Hannity & Golmes was initially aired before
the specific time period of my investigation in this essay, the video footage of protestors and
minutemen was replayed later in the year. See supra note 47. This illustrates, arguably, that
some of the representational themes described in this essay are evident in other news media
discourse as well.
60. "Sean Hannity Visits the Minutemen Volunteers in Arizona"; Schiavone, "Broken Borders."
61. Springer, "Locals Eret Over Minutemen Patrol."
62. "Sean Hannity Visits the Minutemen Volunteers in Arizona."
64. See Parry-Giles, "Mediating Hillary Rodham Glinton," 212.
66. Kristine Roman, "Immigration Pressures," Lou Dobbs Tonight, Cable News Network, October
7,2005; Casey Wian, "Bush on Border Issues."
70. "Sean Hannity Visits the Minutemen Volunteers in Arizona."
71. "What Role Can Mexico Play in Preventing Illegal Immigration?" Hannity & Colmes, Eox
News Network, October 4, 2005, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,17I202,00.html
(accessed November 21, 2005).
72. "What Role Can Mexico Play."
73. "Immigration Woes: Is the U.S. Doing Enough?" Hannity & Colmes, Eox News Network,
October 5, 2005, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,171327,00.html (accessed November
21,2005).
74. Wian, "Bush on Border Issues."
75. Crowley, "GOP Struggles with Immigration." Also Roman, "Immigration Pressures" and
Vogel, "Is Illegal Immigration Grounds for State of Emergency?" among others.
76. See "Sean Hannity Visits the Minutemen Volunteers in Arizona." These representational pat-
terns are evident in other videos as well; see Roman, "Immigration Pressures"; Schiavone,
"Broken Borders."
77. Importantly, the only detail of the immigrant that is obviously recognizable is his or her eth-
nicity. Subsequently, it is this ethnic status that differentiates the immigrant from the officer
and makes him or her a threat. See Mehan, "Discourse," for further discussion of the ethnic
element of the metaphor.
78. Other examples include Kristine Roman, "Broken Borders: Visa Overstays," Lou Dobbs
Tonight, Cable News Network, October 25, 2005; Wian, "Bush on Border Issues."
80. Lisa A. Flores, "Constructing Rhetorical Borders: Peons, Illegal Aliens, and Competing
Narratives of Immigration," Critical Studies in Media Communication 20 (2003): 368.
81. For further work on historical representations of immigrants, see for example Leroy G.
Dorsey and Rachel M. Harlow, "'We Want Americans Pure and Simple': Theodore Roosevelt
and the Myth of Americanism," Rhetoric & Public Affairs 6 (2003): 55-78; Joseph Nevins,
Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the "Illegal Alien" and the Making of the U.S.-Mexico
Boundary {New York: Routledge, 2002).
82. Flores, "Constructing Rhetorical Borders," 381.
83. Mercedes Lynn de Uriarte, "Exploring (and Exploding) the U.S. Media Prism," Media Studies
Journal8 (1994): 163-75.
84. Ono and Sloop define dominant logics as the "logics of judgment" "that work within the
most commonly accepted (and institutionally supported) understandings of what is just or
unjust, good or bad" {Shifting Borders, 14). They argue that these dominant logics demand
critical attention because they form the overarching understandings and discursive patterns
of social issues.
85. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London:
Routledge, 1984).
86. I draw my understanding of the ideology of discourse from the work of scholars such as
Philip Wander, Raymie McKerrow, Kent Ono, and John Sloop. I consider the ideological
implications of discourse to be the ways in which it works to serve dominant interests and
construct dominant interpretations. As Wander notes, "ideological criticism joined with rhe-
torical theory is prepared to critique rhetoric legitimizing actions, policies, and silences rel-
evant to the great issues of our time." Philip C. Wander, "The Third Persona: An Ideological
Turn in Rhetorical Theory," Central States Speech Journal 35 (1984): 199. See also McKerrow,
"Critical Rhetoric."
87. Kenneth Burke, Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Aiefhod (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1966), 46.
88. David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), 101.
89. Flores, "Constructing Rhetorical Borders," 381. For a discussion of the racial politics of
immigration, see Rogers M. Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S.
History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997). For further discussion of the racial
elements of Latino/a identity, see Bernadette Marie Calafell, "Disrupting the Dichotomy: 'Yo
Soy Chicana/o?' in the New Latina/o South," Communication Review 7 (2004): 175-204.
90. Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 229.
91. Alan Nadel, Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 297.
92. Donaldo Macedo, "The Colonialism of the English Only Movement," Educational Researcher
29(2000): 15.
93. Macedo, "The Colonialism of the English Only Movement," 15.
94. Burke, Language as Symbolic Action, 45.
95. Riikka Kuusisto, "Heroic Tale, Game, and Business Deal? Western Metaphors in Action
in Kosovo," Quarterly Journal of Speech 88 (2002): 53. Examples of metaphoric represen-
tations creating mainstream interpretations of situations or events abound. See Robert L.
Ivie, "Literalizing the Metaphor of Soviet Savagery: President Truman's Plain Style," Southern
speech Gommunication Journal 51 (1986): 91-105; Ivie, "Metaphor and the Rhetorical
Invention of Cold War'Idealists,'" 165-82.
96. Douglas, Purity and Danger, 5.
97. One example of this move toward stricter "barriers" and more "cleanup" is House of
Representatives Bill 4437, colloquially called the "Sensenbrenner Bill" for its sponsor in the
House of Representatives, James Sensenbrenner (R-WI). The House passed HR 4437 on
December 16, 2005. In its original form, the Sensenbrenner Bill authorized a number of
stricter initiatives to control undocumented immigration. Among many changes, it called
for the building of a larger fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, mandated immediate depor-
tation of undocumented immigrants by ending the policy of "catch and release," and clas-
sified both undocumented entry and the aiding of undocumented immigrants as felonies.
"Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005" (HR 4437,
December 16, 2005), available from THQMAS (Library of Gongress), http://thomas.loc.gov
(accessed December 14,2006). The Sensenbrenner Bill was split up into individual proposals,
one of which was the Secure Eence Act of 2006, which passed Congress on December 14.
98. Santa Ana, Brown Tide Rising, 284.

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CONTAMINATED COMMUNITIES: THE METAPHOR

OF "IMMIGRANT AS POLLUTANT" IN MEOIA

Popular rhetoric about immigration often operates by constructing metaphoric

/. David Cisneros is a doctoral candidate in Speech Communication at the University of Georgia,

© 2008 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved.

[Metaphors] represent competing views, some more distinct than others, of

As repositories of cultural understandings, metaphors are some of the princi-

METAPHORIC REPRESENTATIONS OF MIGRANTS

The study of metaphoric representations of immigration helps to create a broad-

ization through metaphors of "pollution,"infection,' and'infestation.'"''^ These

Metaphoric constructions can be broadly categorized into those metaphors

Because these images are presented in a context of "authenticity," they tend to be

must examine how visual images either co-construct or challenge domi-

of immigrant as pollutant, I review representations of toxic pollution, specifi-

A POINT OF COMPARISON: LOVE CANAL AND COVERAGE OF

repeated the limited, highly stereotyped, emotionally charged visual vocabulary

As a point of comparison to the discourse of immigration, attention to this

The Pollutant The Pollutant's Effects Governmental Response

Images of the pollutant displayed both stationary and mobile pollution.

¡mages of the Undocumented Immigrant

Popular media coverage of public issues such as immigration botb respond

too, immigrants stand in disorganized groups on street corners and sidewalks.

also an intelligence in the immigrants that makes the threat of contamination

constructs images of immigration's consequences, which form the second

The Dangers of Illegal Immigration

Representations of the Governmental Response

Other reports on immigration mirror Simcox's view of government bor-

IMMIGRATION, IDEOLOGY, AND THE POLITICS OF METAPHOR

Representations of illegal immigration in popular media, from television

Large populations of people with little knowledge of or interest in America

Similar images and narratives inform the rhetoric of immigration through-

both documented and undocumented immigrants materially experience the

The identities of self and other constructed by the metaphoric representations

ideas about separating, purifying, demarcating and punishing transgressions

These metaphoric understandings of the immigration "problem" create con-

been heretofore underexamined by critics. Celeste M. Condit et al., "Recipes of Blueprints

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