How politicized, hateful, lack-of-context media reporting dehumanizes migrants Part 1

By Marivir Montebon

This 1st of 4 parts dissertation by Dr. Marivir Montebon examines how bridging the political divide of U.S. immigration is possible through Transformative Journalism.

 The struggle over how the U.S. talks about immigration is as old as the nation itself, shaping not only politics but also the stories people read, hear, and believe.

This two-year study, conducted in 2023-2024, argues that media coverage often fuels resentment and confusion by reporting on immigration without historical context, relying on demeaning language, and reducing a deep human issue to partisan conflict.

Since these patterns dominated coverage, they did more than inform the public; they reinforced fear, bias, and division. To The pattern dates back when the U..S was just starting off as a new country.

In the 1870s, a San Francisco newspaper, for instance, warned of a supposed “Chinese invasion,” framing the Chinese as threats to jobs and social order.

Espoused by competing White labor leaders and amplified by politicians, that rhetoric helped build support for the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first major U.S. immigration law to bar an entire nationality. The law emerged not from neutral reporting, but from years of racial hostility and media-amplified alarm.

Lack of historical context

Angilee Shah, senior editor of Global Nation for Public Radio International, has emphasized the need to “add information that provides historical background.” Without that context, reporting can leave audiences with fragments rather than understanding, making resentment, polarization, and disinformation easier to spread.

Many reports condemned Chinese workers without explaining why they were in the U.S. in the first place. Aside from the lure of the gold rush in California, Chinese labor was recruited in large numbers under the Burlingame-Seward Treaty of 1868.

The Chinese became essential to building the transcontinental railroad, along with the Irish, Italians, Black, and native slaves. About 20,000 Chinese laborers—roughly 80 percent of the railroad workforce—helped drive the country’s industrial and economic growth through the railroad that connected the East and the West Coasts.

Once the labor was no longer needed, the clamor for exclusion followed. A fuller historical lens will help journalists explain later policy shifts.

The restrictive 1924 Reed-Johnson Act, known as the National Origins Formula, which aimed to preserve American homogeneity, allowed immigrants from Western and Northern Europe only.

In contrast, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 opened new pathways for non-European immigrants as the United States sought labor and professional expertise in Asia, at the time when Europe could no longer provide White immigrants.

The Bracero Agreement with Mexico, which recruited temporary agricultural workers, all male, from 1942 to 1964, addressed shortage in agricultural labor.  Referencing those laws and socio-economic conditions can help journalists give the public a broader and more accurate picture of American society in the context of immigration.

Demeaning language

Demeaning language may well be considered the icing on the cake of a story that has no historical context.

Mainstream coverage has often adopted terms that reduce people to legal status or criminality, especially during periods of intense political rhetoric. During Donald Trump’s presidency and campaign, immigration slurs were widely repeated in public discourse and frequently echoed in media coverage.

A 2017 Media Matters study by Dina Radtke found that major television networks used labels such as “illegal immigrants” and “illegals” in reporting. ABC avoided using the terms frequently, while Fox News used them most often.

That pattern persisted despite guidance from journalism organizations and the Library of Congress, which have argued that describing a person as “illegal” is both dehumanizing and grammatically incorrect.

The National Association of Hispanic Journalists has similarly urged reporters to avoid terms such as “illegals” and “illegal aliens,” warning that such language imports the rhetoric of one side of the debate and implies criminality. Some newsrooms that choose terms like “undocumented immigrant” instead make a different ethical judgment: that no person is illegal. That distinction is not cosmetic. It shapes audiences to see migrants as human beings or as perceived threats.

Demeaning language is used within immigrant communities, even before digital technology. Among some Filipinos, the slang term “TNT” is used informally for undocumented people. But in the Filipino newsroom, professional standards differ. Asian Journal editor Momar Visaya has said the publication uses “undocumented immigrants” because “no person is illegal, only undocumented.”

The contrast shows that language choices are deliberate, and that they reflect either empathy and precision or stigma and exclusion.

Immigration as a partisan issue

Another persistent problem is treating immigration primarily as a contest between political parties. Mexican journalist Leon Krauze has argued that too much reporting asks only how a policy affects Washington: whether it helps or hurts a president, Republicans, or Democrats. That frame can crowd out the lived reality of migration and reduce people’s lives to strategy and polling.

Krauze has written that immigration coverage must reflect why many migrants leave home at all: gang violence, police brutality, domestic and sexual abuse, climate disasters, and economic desperation.

Shah has likewise urged journalists to speak directly with the people most affected by policy, noting that immigrants themselves often provide the expertise and context that political coverage omits.

If immigration reporting is to bridge political division rather than widen it, it must move beyond discordant rhetoric and partisan framing. It should place present-day controversies in historical context, reject language that dehumanizes, and center the people whose lives are most directly shaped by policy. Only then can journalism offer the fuller picture the public needs—and the dignity migrants deserve.  

Marivir R. Montebon is a New York-based journalist who runs her media company Awesome Media, Ltd. In 2012, she established the online magazine OSM! (awesome!) together with her daughter, Leani Alnica Auxilio. In 2022, she started her social media podcast Conversations with MM. She received a Harvard University Certification in August 2025 on “Citizen Politics in America: Public Opinion, Elections, Interest Groups, and the Media.”Montebon was president of the Filipino American Press Club of NY in 2018 and 2019 and now serves as a member of the Board of Directors for 2026 and 2027.  In May 2024, she finished her Doctoral Studies, with distinction, at the HJ International Graduate School for Peace and Public Leadership in New York City. She is a member of the Theta Alpha Kappa Honor Society.