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The Issue Of Immigration Reform Essay

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Immigration Reform
Tony Smith
HSE 430
November 17, 2016
Nick R. North

Immigration Reform
Introduction

Public Opinion
The American public seems to be aware of the issue in general, but is short of the details. There has certainly been a healthy amount of media coverage of immigration reform, but as the coverage itself is unclear as to how best to frame the problems, it mostly informs about the existence of the issue rather than informing about the issue itself. As such, there is conflicting public opinion about the issue. This mirrors the views of politicians. This could be the result of the fact that immigration reform is often framed as a singular issue when it is not. Immigration reform is an omnibus issue – a series of issues that are all loosely related to one another. There is little real connection between the H-1B visa issue and the undocumented immigrant issue. If the public and the politicians are slightly confused about immigration reform, the framing of multiple issues as a single one is part of the problem.
Thus there is no broad consensus for action among the public. This also creates issue for the politicians. While ideally elected officials would be information-seekers and aim to create policy based on careful analysis of the issues, this is the real world. The politicians are often unsure of how to deal with immigration reform because they are unsure of how the different voting stakeholders will react and which of these stakeholders matters

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