The Immigrant as Bogeyman: Examining Donald Trump and the Right’s Anti-immigrant, Anti-PC Rhetoric

Abstract

This article examines the rhetoric used by President Trump and his administration with respect to immigrants and immigration policy. We argue that Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric can be understood as (1) a response against current norms associated with political correctness, which include a heightened sensitivity to racially offensive language, xenophobia, and social injustice, and (2) a rejection of the tendency to subordinate patriotism, U.S. sovereignty, and national interests to a neoliberal political economy that emphasizes “globalism” and prioritizes “free trade” over the interests of working Americans. In order to highlight how much of Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric is developed as a response to political correctness and the neoliberal tendency toward globalism, we employ the concept of “collective action frames” to suggest that Trump’s (and much of the Right’s) efforts to legitimize their strict agenda on immigration relies on frames related to (1) crime and the threat immigrants pose to Americans’ safety, (2) the notion that immigrants and free trade deals lower Americans’ wages and compromise their job security, and (3) the claim that Democrats and other liberals are driven by a politically correct orthodoxy that hurts American workers by being “weak on immigration” and supportive of “open borders.” The article concludes with recommendations for fighting the normalization of scapegoating immigrants.