This slide shows the race and ethnic makeup on District 6 in 2007 and 2017, respectively. This data was provided through census.gov and its American Fact Finder service. The main observations are that the white population size has decreased, the Asian and Latino population has increased, the overall foreign born population increased, and Asians and Blacks are an increasing fraction of the foreign born population. These observations reinforce the awareness that immigration to America has increasingly become non-white, leading us to see its effects on the slide below.

 

This slide indicates the findings of immigration scholars around the immigrant population’s effects on media coverage, public opinion, and immigrant experience. The general composition of this slide highlights the negative portrayal of immigrants by the media, which in turn, leads white to hold negative views of immigrants and shift their partisanship to the Republican Party, known for its firm anti-immigrant status. On a local level, immigrants are expected to be received coldly by the native population and undergo assimilation into the white population’s political organizations. An implication of this research is that now the Spanish language is tagged as ‘the immigrants’ language’, deepening the binary between native Americans and foreign born Americans. As a result, we can see how communities that push against bilingual services in the community are preserving the language that highlights the downsides of immigration in the media. Ultimately, there is a cyclical relationship identified, in which the media negatively depicts immigrants, which causes public opinion on immigration to sour, worsening the reception of immigrants, which will the be recorded in the news under the heading of titles like “Border Security”.

 

These hypotheses begin with the premise that District 6 is a primarily white congressional district and from there, it is safe to assume that the news will be in primarily in English. Based on the research, if District 6 shows it news in English, then immigration-related news will depict immigrants negatively. In effect, more whites in District 6 will shift to the Republican Party and hold more hostile views on immigration, then immigrants will undergo a cold reception in their locality and assimilate into white-dominated political structures. It seems that based on the conditions created where the native group wants to preserve their cultural practices, immigrant groups will find it difficult to integrate unless they assimilate to the dominant culture.

 

 

My research will be interview-based as the virginia.gop website provides many contact numbers of local Republican Party organizations. The Virginia Democrat party provides some contact information, as well. I am a bit skeptical of McDermott’s graphic and how it applies to Virginia’s District 6. Since I predicted that immigrants in District 6 will not have the most welcoming reception, I am investigating whether or not they will integrate into the political structures/ organizations. If there are immigrants participating, I will consider their race and/or ethnicity to determine if different immigrants in District 6 participate more than others in the political environment.