Minnesota state senate candidate evokes fears about immigrants

I’ve been thinking and writing a lot lately about how issues are framed, focusing primarily on environmental issues.

Yesterday I received an inflammatory mass mailing from friends of Minnesota State Senate candidate Brenda Johnson, raising fear and confusion about foreign immigrant workers. The campaign literature relied on language and images of fear, criminality and otherness, showing hazy images of people climbing over walls or through the holes in fences. It got me to thinking about how central framing, the use and misuse of language, is to what passes for political discourse.

Of course, the mailer is misleading. Here, far from the southern border, is a state level candidate focusing on issues of immigration that are primarily set by the federal government. The literature creates a climate of fear about foreign immigrants, many of whom provide their labor at rates that make it possible for area farmers and other businesses to prosper. The images on the mailer evoke dark skinned people; there’s no danger of confusing these with illegal Canadians, for example.

The United States has been debating who to let into our country since the mid 1800s, and those of us who have been comfortable here for many generations have forgotten our roots. Johnson’s own Scandinavian ancestors probably came here for the same reason today’s immigrants do: to escape political or religious oppression and poverty. Norwegian Einar Haugen wrote a ballad about immigration in the 1880s. A verse in his ballad says: “We desired to show we were grateful, And were anxious to be of some use; We took hold of the roughest of jobs here, Just to show them what we could produce.”

The political world right now is being run by the undecideds. In 2005 GOP pollster and strategist Frank Luntz traveled to the UK to examine voter’s moods. Luntz discovered that "nothing riles the undecideds ... more than immigration." It is very distressing to see political talking points developed in a national context, being used to manipulate responses at a local level.

Another verse from good ole Einar says: “We were not in the ranks of the wealthy, And our homes took a long time to build, We sought work that would earn us some money, For our youngsters were hungry and chilled.” Who are these people, who move out of the undecided column only when motivated by fear? And why haven’t we found a way to make the humanitarian issues posed by immigrants part of the frame?