"No Human Being is Illegal"

Abstract

Immigration policy has undoubtedly taken a forefront spot in the national dialogue in our contemporary political moment. However, there is considerable disagreement among and within political parties about how to address this issue. This paper seeks to better understand the priorities of immigrant rights activists in the U.S. by executing case studies on 11 immigrant rights organizations. I explore which framing strategies each group uses to push for its goals and theorize about how these social movement organizations (SMOs) arrive at the strategic frames that they do. Through discourse analysis and coding of interviews, websites, and other media sources, I conclude that the most relevant factors in determining what frame a group arrives at are its external resource environment and how professionalized the organization is. There is additional evidence to suggest that the political opportunity structure, salience of a previously successful ‘master frame,’ and the age of leaders also affect framing processes. Finally, my data does not suggest that being immigrant-led versus led by non-immigrant ‘allies’ directly affects an SMOs’ framing strategies, but it does affect the external resource environment from which it is able to draw.