Melding a New Immigration Narrative? President George W. Bush and the Immigration Debate

Abstract

The rhetoric of immigration in the United States is grounded in a cultural dialectic featuring themes of inclusion and exclusion. Throughout American history, one of these themes has usually been ascendant, while the other has been in decline. In this article, the authors analyze how President George W. Bush attempted to construct and manage the immigration issue as he pushed for comprehensive reform. They argue President Bush attempted to accommodate both sides of the immigration debate by using themes of inclusion and exclusion at the same time. Although Bush failed in his attempts to pass immigration reform, his conflicted rhetoric may actually carry with it the key to understanding how future presidents will construct and manage this issue in the near future.

KEYTERMS:

• George W. Bush
• immigration
• inclusion and exclusion
• presidential rhetoric

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2008 Rhetoric Society of America Conference, Seattle, WA.

We thank Mary Stuckey, the members of the Athens of American Rhetoric Group, and the anonymous reviewers for helping to improve this essay.

Notes

Some scholars might argue that Karen Pinkus's (2009) work on the theory of ambivalence would be an appropriate theoretical framework for our work. Although we certainly recognize the potential utility of the theory for analyzing the ambivalent status of immigrants in national discourse, we ultimately concluded that Pinkus's theoretical template may not be a good match for a discussion of situations in which presidents must deal with several competing exigencies.

Studies that reference presidential immigration rhetoric include Cisneros (2008), Demo (2005, 2007), Flores (2003), Hungerford (2007), Kim (2007), Ono and Sloop (2002), and Sohoni (2006).