RALLYchat — The Age of Uncertainty
Part 2: Keeping America Open and Welcoming to All.
Kevin Singer: Hello everyone, and welcome to #rallychats, a semi-regular series of discussions among RALLY experts. Today’s topic is about communications and advocacy around immigration, featuring Manny Rivera, Jacob Hay, Rachele Huennekens, Sam Garrett-Pate, and Andrea Flores. Thanks to all of you for taking the time to participate!
I want to start us off by focusing on the work we’ve been doing here at RALLY over the past couple of months…
We know that personal stories can have a giant impact on public opinion. Thinking about RALLY’s impact litigation work, and the work we did for Daniel Ramirez and SFILEN, how can lawsuits, protests, and community organizing on the frontline help to shift a national narrative in the long run, and do we have thoughts on what that narrative looks like?
Manny Rivera: Much of the work being done on the frontlines are conversation starters. They provide moments in time that can help elevate discourse and highlight the impact of policy. But the only way that they are going to help shift the national narrative long-term is through a coordinated effort to harness these public moments and use them to build upon each other.
So before jumping on the narrative, I think we should agree that coordination at an unprecedented scale needs to happen.
SGP: Right. It can’t start with a national narrative, it has to start with the “personal.” As long as immigrants are “others” or some abstract group — a policy conversation, not a personal one — then it’s easy to see immigration as an issue to solve, rather than something personal that impacts all of us — whether we realize it or not.
Manny Rivera: Agreed. It not only needs to be personal, but also values-based. And through coordinated, lockstep messaging.
Kevin Singer: So let’s expand on that for a sec. What are the universal values here?
SGP: The universal value is human dignity.
That as Americans, we should all have dignity and worth, an opportunity to work hard and get ahead — a shot at the American Dream.
Manny Rivera: I have some thoughts here… as a movement we tend to root our messaging on the liberal value system that we most closely adhere to — we talk about these issues under the umbrella of fairness, inclusion, diversity.
But if we want to start shifting the way people think, we should meet people (in this case the opposition) on their terms.
This means working with messaging that touches on conservative values, such as traditionalism, patriotism, etc.
SGP: Right — I think that’s where the emphasis on individual worth has to come in. Fairness isn’t a liberal value. Especially when we’re talking about fairness in terms of personal responsibility — the chance to succeed if you’re willing to work hard.
Rachele Huennekens: I think universal values relate to immigration also encompass family, (a sense of) home, safety, and community/being together. Organizing & visibility at the local/community level are essential to building this narrative, as you’ve said, Kevin Singer, Manny Rivera, Sam Garrett-Pate.
Jacob Hay: Rachele makes a good point. Is it a question of messaging or activating/organizing?
SGP: It’s both.
Look at what President Obama said [last week] in Chicago. People need to see immigrants “as people — not as the other.” So that involves how you talk about immigrants *and* your work to organize locally in support of immigrant communities.
And show people that immigrants are real people living in our communities, working at the small business we go to every day, down the hall from us in the office, at our children’s schools.
Look at the various communities that overwhelmingly supported Trump, then were outraged when the immigrant *they knew* got detained or deported. It’s because they see the immigrants that POTUS (shudder) talks about as others — bad guys — but the immigrants they know as…one of them.
Kevin Singer: Alright, last thoughts, then I want to pivot because I think this segways nicely into my next question.
Rachele Huennekens: My last thought is seconding Manny’s point about making sure local moments ladder up to a national narrative. Because local feel-good moments (recognizing immigrants as our neighbors, for example) must be harnessed to build national momentum for policy change.
Kevin Singer: DREAMers, like Daniel, represent an interesting case study for immigration advocates to balance their priorities, because they arrived in the United States as children, and many have lived here for most of their lives, making it easier to convince some conservatives that they should be allowed to remain. But, does emphasizing “blamelessness” of this select group undermine larger efforts to welcome all immigrants to our neighborhoods and provide a path to citizenship?
Rachele Huennekens: Excellent question.
Manny Rivera: This is an interesting question. I don’t think talking about DREAMers as an entry point to broader immigration issues harms the larger efforts. DREAMers present an opportunity to get into the conversation on a more fertile ground.
First and foremost, I believe the public broadly holds that its wrong to punish children for the sins of their parents.
Second, these kids only know this country as their own — sending them away to a foreign country that they don’t recognize seems unnecessarily cruel.
And finally, DREAMers, through the DACA program — are already demonstrating what real and meaningful contributions they can make to society if they are offered a path out of the shadows.
Jacob Hay: I agree and we’ve seen DREAMers are some of the strongest messengers for themselves and their families.
SGP: Exactly. It’s a journey, and you have to start where you can get the most agreement among persuadable audiences, and then continue from there.
Kevin Singer: But separating out DREAMers as a group seems to (if subconsciously) enforce the argument that most undocumented immigrants don’t deserve the same consideration, doesn’t it?
SGP: Kevin, but what’s the alternative?
Jacob Hay: Blame or fault is not the right focus. It’s about not having a choice. People don’t sympathize with DREAMers because they weren’t at fault, it’s because they never had a choice.
Manny Rivera: So emphasizing DREAMers, I believe, provides an entry-point to talk about the broader immigration experience and tout the benefits of immigrants who just want to work, serve in the military, and contribute to strengthening our society.
Said differently, the stories shared by DREAMers can help lift all boats.
Jacob Hay: And other immigrant groups also are without a choice — whether they are fleeing persecution, a violent situation, or doing whatever it takes to provide for their family.
Andrea Flores: DREAMers are also often the spokespeople for the rest of their family members or communities who do not have DACA and cannot or choose not to participate in the public discourse…
SGP: Another good point Andrea.
Andrea Flores: DREAMers are not only helping us see the immigrant contributions to our society, but also represent the hope that their families have. I second Manny in that their stories help to lift all boats.
Rachele Huennekens: I think that employing a frame of “blamelessness” is very effective to counter the most common anti-immigrant narrative: “criminalization.” The DREAMers’ sit-ins in Congressional offices around 2010–2012 were a watershed moment for the modern immigrant rights movement. By publicly saying they were “undocumented and unafraid” the DREAMers shifted the narrative and showed the actual reasons why the vast majority of people migrate to the U.S. — fleeing violence, poverty, or other difficult circumstances.
Kevin Singer: SGP, with regard to the alternative, I want to touch on what Jacob is hinting at here and maybe flesh it out a little bit more. Are there ways that we can communicate around DREAMers that avoid this potential pitfall? I like the idea of focusing on “choice,” which is a universal theme exemplified in DREAMers, but that still applies to other groups of immigrants.
Any other thoughts on this before we move on?
SGP: Sure, I mean…if you’re asking whether we should stop using the line “who came here through no fault of their own,” then the answer is yes.
But if the question is whether it makes sense to focus on lifting up DREAMers and their stories as champions for immigrant communities more broadly, it definitely does make sense — and I don’t see a smart alternative.
Rachele Huennekens: The answer may be linking the stories of DREAMers and their parents/families, as Andrea said — showing that these immigrants are all seeking better lives.
SGP: Rachele Right, which was the point of DAPA. After protecting DREAMers, the Obama Admin tried to move on to protecting their parents and families.
Which was the next most compelling step in the journey.
Unfortunately, the courts didn’t agree…
Jacob Hay: That’s right Rachele. DREAMers have embraced a powerful narrative which is what makes them such great people to lead the movement. The question is, how can we expand that narrative to benefit other immigrant communities?
SGP: I still think it’s their parents and families, just think we need a new tactic.
Rachele Huennekens: Courts didn’t agree with DACA either, sadly. U.S. v. Texas affected both policies.
SGP: But DACA is still law.
Kevin Singer: Okay, we’ve focused a lot on personal narratives and stories (you communications consultants, you), but are there groups who may be moved by an argument about US economic dependency on immigrants? When should those arguments be deployed, if at all?
SGP: I still think that argument has to be framed in a personal way. You aren’t going to move masses by talking about immigrant communities’ impact on the GDP.
Manny Rivera: Sure, there are going to be groups moved by different arguments. But it’s not just an economic argument that we should be making — it’s strategically segmenting messaging that is rooted in the values of the audiences we want to shift.
SGP: You may move people if you show the real impact that harmful anti-immigrant policies have on their local community, the price of food and other goods at the supermarket, etc.
If you show that when an immigrant who runs a local small business is detained or deported, his employees lose their jobs, etc…that can change people’s minds.
But if you tell an anti-immigration voter that Trump’s policies are going to hurt the US economy, they won’t believe you because it contradicts their frame.
In their mind, immigrants are moochers — takers. You have to show them otherwise, through personal stories.
Manny Rivera: An interesting note: At the end of last week, CATO submitted an amicus brief to the 9th Circuit in support of the Plaintiffs in one of the entry ban and refugee program suspension cases, Hawaii v. Trump (I think they’ve also submitted in support of plaintiffs for other ban cases). The brief makes me think about the question you are raising — there are some smart people working at CATO, and they felt it necessary to weigh in. And CATO, which has over the years put out some great research on the net benefits of immigrants to the US economy and to US workers, is a solid messenger to help shift opposing views.
My point being, we need to not only know how to talk about these issues in a relatable voice, but we also need to make sure we are identifying the right messengers to deliver the narrative shift. Those messengers are out there, and we should be working with them.
SGP: I don’t think CATO is changing voters’ minds. Their research is important. It can help with legal and policy audiences. But it’s not going to move voters.
Manny Rivera: But if we’re going to use litigation or other policy milestones to frame issues for the public, don’t we need the CATOs of the world?
Rachele Huennekens: I personally hate the “immigrants do jobs Americans don’t want to do” line. I feel like it tees up excuses for exploitation, low-wages, and bad workplace conditions for immigrant workers.
Maybe hard numbers would be more effective for some audiences.
Jacob Hay: Rachele I agree. And, it furthers the division between immigrant workers and other under-valued workers.
SGP: It shouldn’t be about immigrants doing jobs Americans don’t want to do. That argument doesn’t work — even if it’s true. It’s about immigrants helping create more jobs for non-immigrants and immigrants alike.
Kevin Singer: I think that’s a perfect note to move forward on.
We’re heading into home stretch here. I would feel remiss if I didn’t set aside some time to discuss refugee immigration and some of the inherent messaging differences.
There seems to be a huge gap between the way people view refugee immigration and immigration across the Southern border. A quick look at public opinion polling shows that large majorities support comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship, but small majorities in some polls support the temporary ban on immigrants from countries in the middle east.
This is despite egregious human rights violations in Syria that sent shockwaves through the country, leading to retaliation by the US Government.
Andrea Flores: This goes back to the choice vs. blame frame.
Kevin Singer: Agree Andrea, so here’s my question:
Andrea Flores: Are you asking why refugees are viewed differently than immigrants who cross the Southern border?
Kevin Singer: That’s part one, part two is what can be done to focus media attention on bringing in refugees as a solution, rather than military retaliation?
SGP: I mean, I think the blowback following the rollout of the ban was illustrative.
Regardless of exactly where public opinion is now, there was definitely a shift in a short amount of time.
And part of that was almost certainly due to storytelling — wall-to-wall coverage of children being handcuffed in airports, people who had assisted US troops abroad being detained or turned away, people being arbitrarily separated from family members.
Kevin Singer: SGP true. But I can’t help but feel like that was in part due to a botched roll out, not because people’s views of immigrants from the middle-east shifted in a fundamental way.
SGP: I disagree. We certainly took advantage of the botched rollout, and were able to effectively communicate while they just figured out what the EO even said…
Rachele Huennekens: I’ve heard the term “unrecognized refugee” emerging, applied to immigrants from Central America fleeing the horrific violence there. This might be one way to shift the way people view immigrants crossing into the U.S. from our southern border, vs. refugees fleeing Syria.
Part of the answer may be making their plight more immediate in people’s minds and linking their plight to immigrants whose stories are more proximate to us and our daily lives. Similar to the question about DREAMers, maybe we don’t want to single out Syrian refugees.
Andrea Flores: Rachele maybe it’s not singling out but expanding that story to more groups of refugees, wherever they may be coming from.
Kevin Singer: Well, it looks like we’ve hit the end of our allotted time. Thanks to all of our participants for your time and expertise. Until next time, everyone!
Jacob Hay: Thanks Kevin. Please edit to put my name on smart things said by the rest of the group.
