Two Articles: The Washington Post

The newspaper I chose to analyze was The Washington Post. The racial group I decided to analyze was Hispanic. All of the articles I analyzed focused on illegal immigration as well as the often offensive terminology used when describing this particular group, "illegal aliens."

The first article I read, "Mexican cartel violence prompts calls for bigger National Guard deployment along the border," 1,200 Arizona National Guardsmen deployed to the border in an attempt to crackdown on illegal immigration and  to give U.S. Customs and Border Protection time to hire more agents. The article pointed out the fact that despite worsened drug cartel violence, illegal immigration and crime have declined. The first person interviewed was Brig. Gen. Jose Salinas of the Arizona National Guard. I think the article sort of winks at the fact that the individual sent to secure the border is in fact Hispanic himself. The article focuses specifically on the drug problem on the border; it doesn't really recognize the number of innocent families who try to make it into the country every year with no affiliation to these cartels. Mexican immigrants in this article  are referred to as "illegal immigrants" or illegal migrants" not "illegal aliens." I feel the story is sort of reinforcing the notion that Mexicans only want to migrate into this country to sell drugs. The article did have a diverse range of sources' a Hispanic National Guardsmen, a republican representative and a democrat, female representative.

"U.S. program to deport criminal illegal immigrants has deported high percentages of noncriminals in some areas" portrayed Hispanics and Latinos very fairly and actually in some cases defended them. The article stated 25% percent of deported immigrants had not in fact been convicted of any sort of crime. There were a wide range of individuals interviewed for the story such as Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, whose comments obviously give depth to the story, Gustavo Andrade, organizing director of an immigrant rights group that is active in the county, who provides a defense and sympathetic view of immigrants and a spokesman for the Prince George's County Department of Corrections. This particular county has a deportation rate that is the second highest in the country so interviewing someone from the county's Department of Corrections was necessary. The article does not use derogatory terminology when referring to illegal Hispanic immigrants. There are two sides to every story and both sides were interviewed for this story.