This article was posted by CNN on January 1, 2023 and is titled “A pregnant mom crossed the Rio Grande decades ago to give her unborn child a better life. Now her daughter is becoming a member of congress.” Delia Ramirez won a United States Representative position for Illinois in the last election and was sworn in early 2023. Ramirez’s mother came over into the United States from Guatemala while pregnant with her. Her husband, Boris Hernandez, receives DACA and is originally from Guatemala.
The central message of this story seemed to center around a more recent narrative of immigration and immigrant families within the United States. There was a lot of focus on the difficulties of becoming a citizen and housing, not just for immigrants but for everyone. The inclusion of the husband, a DACA recipient, highlights the idea that becoming a citizen was much too hard. Although married to a representative of Illinois Hernandez still risks deportation. The journalist used a lot of direct quotations from Delia Ramirez to tell the story. Immigrants are overall depicted to be hard workers.
The article provides statistics on mixed-status families and the Latino population within the district that Ramirez won. There are no charts presented in this article to display this data, it is rather worked in through the section about Ramirez’s husband. Their first one presented is that the Congressional district she won was “nearly 50% Latino” and won “66%” of the general election vote (Shoichet 2023). CNN says they got these statistics from WLS, a news station in Chicago, Illinois. Almost immediately after the statistic that “22 million people in the United States live in mixed-status family” followed (Shoichet 2023). This statistic came from fwd.us, an immigrant advocacy group. These statistics were used together to emphasize that Ramierez’s story is not unique and deserves more representation. The article could have included statistics about DACA recipients, border crossings, or numbers on Latinos in Congress. These statistics would have helped support the article and its argument.
Throughout the article the story of Ramierez’s family is told alongside other information about bills that Ramirez has and hopes to pass. The family stories include the story of her pregnant mother crossing the Rio Grande to give birth to her in America, as the title suggests and some of the struggles her husband has faced gaining citizenship. These stories help make the article more personal and humanizes immigrant stories beyond numbers. Including what bills Ramirez hopes to pass allows readers to understand how politics can be used to make immigration better for families such as Ramirez’s. DACA for Dreamers is one that is discussed due to it being so closely related to her husband (Soichet 2023). More information on what housing reform Ramierz is interested in would have added to the story, but many shifted it away from being immigrant focused.
I think the journalist used evidence effectively. The article told three different stories about three different ways immigration may affect someone and weaved them together with politics. I think this relates to the class theme of historical bills and acts and what causes them to pass. Right now there is a lot of push and pull from different countries that often get brushed over in immigration stories that tend to just focus on numbers. In our readings we talk about how immigration policy passes depending on social and economic factors. Now in 2023 an important social factor is the amount of children of immigrants and immigrants who are finding political power and voice within the United States.
Source
Soichet, C. (2023,January 1). A pregnant mom crossed the Rio Grande decades ago to give her unborn child a better life. Now her daughter is becoming a member of congress. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/01/politics/delia-ramirez-latina-congress-cec/index.html