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Using critical cultural studies and semiotics, the essay describes the video’s content while interpreting the “myth of American freedom” it promotes, including how this myth can erase the struggles of marginalized groups. It analyzes the deployment of diversity and considers implications for immigrants who overlap with marginalized or absent communities.",{"@graph":69,"@context":114},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/reading-the-myth-of-american-freedom-the-us-immigration-video/310216/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/reading-the-myth-of-american-freedom-the-us-immigration-video/310216.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Miles","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-23","2026-09-20",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":39},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What questions does the essay aim to address about immigration and freedom?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"It asks how immigrants are communicated to amid hostile rhetoric and what notion of freedom is conveyed to prospective citizens during turbulent political times.","Answer","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":116,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":118,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":120,"site_id":62},310216,1790195012,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":123},{"doc_id":120,"user_id":124,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":125,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":126,"file_id":127,"file_url":128,"file_type":129,"file_size":130,"view_count":39,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":131,"language":132,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":133,"faqs":134,"seo_title":135,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":136,"read_time":137,"preview_page_count":4},13056703019404,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_29158cc5080c5b710cf443261637dec0","Reading the Myth of American Freedom: The U.S. Immigration Video  \nCamille Reyes 1  \nDepartment of Communication, Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, United States  \nAbstract: The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) department offers immigrants wishing to naturalize, or become citizens, a package of study aids for the citizenship test, including a video. This essay argues that the video is much more than a study aid; it furthersthe myth of American freedom, a myth that effectively erases the struggles of marginalized groups. Situated within critical cultural studies and semiotics, the essay describes the content of the video and interprets the myth. The deployment of diversity is considered, along with implications for immigrants who intersect with some of the  \nmarginalized or absent groups.  \nKeywords: citizenship, cultural studies, immigration, marginalization,  \nsemiotics.  \nIntroduction  \nPerhaps nothing is more emblematic of the “good life” in the American imagination as the immigrant experience. People both within and outside of the United States identify with the notion that America is the “land of opportunity,” and importantly for immigrants2, a “melting pot” of ethnicities and perspectives. (Although, as Berray (2019) asserted, such food metaphors are deeply problematic for their coercive, homogenizing effects.) Alongside these dominant narratives, however, exist material conditions challenging the vision of equal access to the American experiment in the pursuit of happiness. These conditions seem especially fraught for immigrants trying to attain “the good life” both for themselves and often for families “back home.” Nationalist rancor, hostile political environments, income inequality, language barriers, and digital divides are several of the obstacles prevalent in the contemporary immigrant experience.  \nImmigrants, as subjects of media, become politically charged sites of contestation. As Benson (2013) detailed, U.S. (and French) media employ myriad frames, or perspectives, on the“issue” of immigration from immigrant-as-victim to hero to threat. These frames have consistently helped to make immigration a perennial hot-button issue in American politics. Although the Trump administration has overshadowed many controversies of the Obama administration related to immigration, President Obama was dubbed the “Deporter in Chief”—a reference to the then recordbreaking number of undocumented immigrants deported from the United States during his tenure. In 2018, even the definition of “citizen” was called into question as the Trump administration reportedly revoked U.S. passports at the Texas-Mexico border due to doubts about the legitimacy of birth certificates (Sieff, 2018) . The following summer, the border patrol faced harsh publicity as a young American was detained for 23 days “in conditions that made him so desperate he almost opted to self-deport” before his release (Manuel, 2019) . This news, combined with the separation of children from their parents by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at the  \n1 Correspondent e-mail: [creyes3@trinity.edu](creyes3@trinity.edu)  \n2 Despite its contested political use in globalization studies, the term ‘immigrant’ is used throughout the text in order to be consistent with the government’s usage.  \nU.S./Mexico border in 2018 and 2019, as well as other high profile policy shifts and ugly rhetoric about immigrants from President Trump prompts questions about the government’s public relations efforts aimed at those people it ostensibly wants to join the union, in other words prospective citizens willing and able to pay significant amounts of money and time to clear the hurdles of‘naturalization’.  \nDespite the material and political chaos of migration, especially for Latinx immigrants, there are still hundreds of thousands of people who wish to undertake the long process of becoming naturalized U.S. citizens. How is this group communicated to given the frequently v","cbCaiccpDfRV8AOs","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiccpDfRV8AOs","pdf",213392,15,"English","# Introduction\n## The “good life” and immigrant narratives\n## Media framing and political contestation\n## Research questions and the study approach","[{\"question\":\"What questions does the essay aim to address about immigration and freedom?\",\"answer\":\"It asks how immigrants are communicated to amid hostile rhetoric and what notion of freedom is conveyed to prospective citizens during turbulent political times.\"}]","Reading the Myth of American Freedom - The U.S. Immigration Video | PDF",1789877864,38]