Immigrant Legal Resource Center
20,000 signatures reached
To: Gary Pruitt, President of The Associated Press
This is Not Normal: "Chain Migration" is Harmful Rhetoric
This campaign has ended.
Repudiate the term "Chain Migration" to Describe Family Migration in News Reporting
Why is this important?
In its eagerness to convince the American public to break with our decades-strong family-based immigration system, the Trump Administration is perpetuating the dehumanizing term "chain migration." It has revived it from relative obscurity, with the help of right-wing media, to hide their true objective of separating families and curtailing immigration, largely from Africa, Latin America, and Asia.
We do not need a new term to describe the bonds that we all know. Family migration and family sponsorships shouldn't be turned into a derogatory buzzword to fuel hate and fear because an anti-immigrant president or policymakers want to disguise that they are anti-family too.
Though they've already used the term nearly 300 times this year, Media Matters for America found that Fox News didn't use the term at all in 2016 and only five times in 2015. Similarly, Breitbart applied the tag "chain migration" to over 70 articles in 2017, compared to one article in 2016 and two articles in 2015.
While other media outlets have included qualifying language or quotation marks around the term, it is already becoming a dangerous part of our lexicon and code for families of color, individuals who share their talents in the service-industry or other low-wage industries dominated by immigrants.
News outlets must address this term with an official policy prohibiting the use of the term and all the ugly connotations and harmful consequences that its widespread use will bring our immigration debate, our communities, schools, and homes.
As an individual who has benefited from family immigration myself, allowing me to live near members of my tight-knit family, the term is deeply offensive and hurtful. My family members and I are not inanimate metal objects, we are people who are part of the very fabric of the United States concerned by the prospect of a life without those who raised us, who we raise, and who make our lives and our communities richer.
Please sign this petition to urge media outlets to stop using the term "chain migration."
We do not need a new term to describe the bonds that we all know. Family migration and family sponsorships shouldn't be turned into a derogatory buzzword to fuel hate and fear because an anti-immigrant president or policymakers want to disguise that they are anti-family too.
Though they've already used the term nearly 300 times this year, Media Matters for America found that Fox News didn't use the term at all in 2016 and only five times in 2015. Similarly, Breitbart applied the tag "chain migration" to over 70 articles in 2017, compared to one article in 2016 and two articles in 2015.
While other media outlets have included qualifying language or quotation marks around the term, it is already becoming a dangerous part of our lexicon and code for families of color, individuals who share their talents in the service-industry or other low-wage industries dominated by immigrants.
News outlets must address this term with an official policy prohibiting the use of the term and all the ugly connotations and harmful consequences that its widespread use will bring our immigration debate, our communities, schools, and homes.
As an individual who has benefited from family immigration myself, allowing me to live near members of my tight-knit family, the term is deeply offensive and hurtful. My family members and I are not inanimate metal objects, we are people who are part of the very fabric of the United States concerned by the prospect of a life without those who raised us, who we raise, and who make our lives and our communities richer.
Please sign this petition to urge media outlets to stop using the term "chain migration."