Upon initially thinking about immigration and the task of developing a research design, I wanted to address research that would look at the rights of undocumented Haitian Migrants in the United States and the Dominican Republic. I wanted to look at the two countries and identify the similarities the two countries were experiencing in the handling of the influx of Haitians. I knew both countries had been engaged in restrictionism immigration approaches when it came to Haitian and other racialized or visible minority groups.

After reviewing the course reading materials and initial lecture video by Ian Shapiro on research design I realized – “the research design had to be problem driven and that it was not a linear method but a reciprocal approach”.(Shapiro, n.d.) I also knew from the course direction that my system of methods, and collection of data would have to be broadened on one hand but narrowed or focused on just looking at immigration in the United States and the challenges Haitian migrants face in the U.S.

 The research design and the research question evolved throughout the course. Having done some scholarly work on Haitians being scrutinized and seeking asylum in the Dominican Republic led me to look at the plight of Haitian migrants and the challenges they faced coming into the United States. Once I began searching for journal articles, and other sources I decided that I needed to align the Research Question to fit the data sets of Caribbean America and Central America. I took six articles that best suited the research and began the coding process using MAXQDA. I primarily used word search, word explorer to identify the frequency of the most used corpus in the dataset. The research question was next adjusted to fit the available data sets. The Research Question then became, “How has the restrictionism immigration policies affected asylum seekers from the Caribbean and Central America?”

During the Building Block Module 3 Unit it became evident that through the journal readings that there was quite a bit of documented evidence of abusive discriminatory practices within contemporary U.S. Immigration Policy towards Haiti. Historically the United States had taken advantage of Haiti. An example of that could be seen in the Bush administration forcibly repatriation of Haitian refugees.

After examining social media and News datasets I began auto coding the data sets to begin the process of designing the Comparative Case Study. The next step was to auto code the reoccurring themes into the activated documents. Using MAXQDA initially led me to select the Arizona Republic and Washington Post as the two cases to compare. Next, I created two Excel Spreadsheets that highlighted code schemes and keywords in context. The final Research Question was developed and opened the opportunity to explore the research in a more defined manner. The project files were too large for me to isolate and analyze the documents. Due to my limited and incomplete understanding of MAXQDA, it was difficult to isolate and create sets of documents that I would be working on. MAXQDA continuously crashed due to the large amount of data from News Articles, Facebook, and ASU Event Transcripts. My computer was having memory issues and was unable to handle the enormous amounts of data it was trying to auto code and analyze.

AntConc – The software was downloaded and installed to look at two very different ideological perspectives on my Research Question that was unfolding. After a few attempts I eventually was able to export and import the News Files as raw data into AntConc software. Of course, I experienced difficulty trying to get the raw data to load into Target Corpus Files to do a corpus analysis. To salvage my work, I went back to MAXQDA and utilized the tools to create Excel Worksheets, random code articles specifically I would use as Case 1 & 2. And I successfully gathered empirical evidence from the Washington Examiner and the Arizona Republic to support my research question. By taking a second look at the coded segments it became increasingly clearer that the Washington Post and the Washington Examiner would be better case studies to systematically identify any patterns across the cases.

While building a dictionary using the two software programs, I looked at the news frequency of strong terms – discrimination, deportation, restrictionism, asylum, parole, border patrol, xenophobia, immigration issues and I additionally looked at the articles to see the context connection with those terms associated with migrants from Haiti and Central America.  

Revised Research Question – How are the lives of racialized or visible minorities from the Caribbean and Central America impacted by restrictions on asylum being covered in the news?

Approach – Qualitative Methodology

 Case Study Analysis

After defining the cases and revising my research question I began to explore how to just focus in on a smaller MAXQDA Data Set. Essentially, I needed to create a smaller project file. There were many articles that simply were not relevant to the research design. Several of the news articles addressed discrimination but after reading the articles they weren’t linked to immigration. For example: “Putin openly criticizes U.S. foreign policy, discusses mutually assured destruction, reflects on Russia's decision to offer NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden asylum in 2013 and praises his controversial legislation that critics argue serves as discrimination against homosexuals.” (Washington Examiner 2017/06/06 1910493081, Pos. 6)

In addition to creating a smaller project file using the MAXQDA software the decision was made to concentrate on 2016 beginning with the Trump presidency to 2023 and the Biden administration. I wanted to comparatively look at the News reporting of xenophobia, use of dehumanizing language, campaign rhetoric and how restrictions on asylum were being covered by the news outlets. 

Analysis:

MAXQDA allowed for better organization of my thoughts and organizing the issues while qualitatively coding the segments. The News Outlets frequently engaged in using racialized language rather than addressing the issues of discrimination in Immigration Policies. The words journalists from both the Washington Post and Washington Examiner used can serve as a contribution to the divisiveness in this country on the issue of immigration. In 2019 Washington Examiner reported Trump blasted some nations as "shit hole countries," employed ethnic tropes to cast asylum seekers as gang members and criminals and launched his campaign by lumping in all Mexican immigrants with rapists and criminals.  (Washington Examiner 2019/04/10 2207458212, Pos. 3)

Public perception helps to shape immigration policy, and the importance of transparency in disseminating the news is important. When journalists report asylum seekers not showing up to court it is no doubt troubling to the general public, especially given the backlog of court cases and taxpayers footing the bill for the cases. Although Trump has repeatedly cited the need for tough penalties for asylum seekers who won't show up in court, Homeland Security statistics show that that is not true — asylum seekers, it turns out, mostly do show up. (Washington Examiner 2019/04/10 2207458212, Pos. 3) Negative portrayals of immigrants, racialized or visible minorities increase prejudice.

Representations of immigrants are often marked by negative connotations and labels – A qualitative example from the Washinton Post involved the description phrase “Frivolous asylum claims” – Administration officials said that the Supreme Court has upheld the president's broad executive powers on such matters and that the restrictions rolled out Thursday represent a reasonable response as the nation's immigration system is drowning in what they characterized as frivolous asylum claims by migrants who cross illegally. (Washington Post 2018/11/09 2131049644, Pos. 6)

The Washington Post reported the fear of meritless claims for asylum in 9/11/2018 “Our nation is experiencing an unprecedented crisis on our Southern Border," the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement. "Low standards for claiming a fear of persecution have allowed aliens with meritless claims to illegally enter our country, claim 'credible fear,' and then in many cases be released pending lengthy proceedings." (Washington Post 2018/11/09 2131049644, Pos. 10)

News coverage by both case studies proves to lean towards politicization in their analytic approach to reporting. Recently if you look at the news coverage of immigration in general when political leaders and their position on immigration become part of the conversation you see an increase in the coverage of immigration. An example with the Washington Post coverage of Obama administration ending of wet foot, dry foot policy on January 12, 2017, it was said “to encourage illegal immigration”. There was a significant increase in news coverage across all outlets.

It should be noted that migrants/ waves of boat people from Cuba and Haiti were intercepted at sea, not permitted to enter the United States, and sent to Guantanamo. The very real threat of deportation, removal hearings and human smugglers must affect migrants who still attempt to cross into the United States in an attempt to seek sanctuary or asylum.