US immigration policies and citizenship on the screen

Always a controversial issue, the US ‘immigration problem’ expresses anxieties over the nation’s changing ethnic demographics, leading to the creation of exclusionary boundaries that are manifested in media prejudices and immigration rhetoric, controversial enforcement policies and questions about citizenship. Gregory Nava’s Bordertown, Sergio Arau’s A Day Without a Mexican, and Nickleodeon’s Dora the Explorer critically address the immigration issue using an outlaw discourse that seeks to challenge the effects of a pervasive ideological anti-immigration rhetoric threatening to destroy an old national ethos.