A virtuous nation and its deserving immigrants. How the immigrant rights movement embraced nationalism

Immigrants, and particularly undocumented immigrants, are oftentimes seen as disrupting the nation state and destabilizing its boundaries. This paper develops the argument that immigrants can, under certain conditions, actively employ nationalist frames and language to support their rights claims. It presents a two-prong argument to explain for this outcome. First, immigrant rights advocates needed to select a ‘master frame’ that would will resonate with audiences in different regions of the country and counter the anti-immigrant discourses of their adversaries. These constraints favored the selection of a frame that was nationalist enough to make sense to middle-of-the-road Americans and liberal enough to provide ‘deserving immigrants’ a pathway to citizenship. Second, advocates needed to ensure that their frames were delivered with a degree of consistency in different localities across the country. This favored a robust and centralized discursive infrastructure that could exercise dominance over the production and diffusion of core messages. The paper uses a range of sources – including interviews with leaders of immigrant rights associations, organization documents, training materials – support the argument.