Don't give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses: The Trump administration, public charge, and rhetorical constructions of citizenship

Abstract

In August 2019, President Donald Trump and his administration announced a rule that restricted immigrants’ access to visas if they used a variety of social programs, including: Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Supplemental Security Income, among numerous others. Expanding the definition of public charge from the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), the Trump administration’s change risked the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of immigrants in the United States. This thesis examines the way that Trump administration publicly defended the public charge rule, paying particular attention to the values that were embedded in the Trump administration’s justifications. Using a variety of rhetorical methods, including cluster analysis, God terms and constitutive rhetoric, I argue that the Trump administration’s defenses of the public charge rule reflected, and simultaneously constituted, a market fundamentalist conception of citizenship that necessitated an erosion of inclusive immigration policy and discourse. Furthermore, I argue that in response to objections about the negative consequences of the public charge rule, the Trump administration relied on arguments about administrative and congressional intent to strategically maneuver from difficult rhetorical challenges. This analysis highlights potential rhetorical methods for decoding value-laden discourse and reveals the ways that market fundamentalism and citizenship operate as powerful social and discursive forces.