Since the first pushes for immigration reform in the mid-1800s, immigration policy has increasingly become a core issue in American politics and Presidential elections. Perhaps that has never been more evident than in the 2016 election, as 70 percent of voters say immigration is a “very important factor” in their ballot decision this month.

But where along the way did immigration turn from a fact-based appeal to a more emotional one?

In 2013, evidence of the shift can be found in an appeal for immigration reform by President Obama: “This is not just a debate about policy, it’s about people… who want nothing more than a chance to earn their way into the American story.”

Although this appeal was made in conjunction with bipartisan efforts at immigration reform (an undeniably factual and economical subject of legislature), the language that President Obama used to explain his support was sentimental. He appealed to basic human and American values of inclusivity rather than employing rational argument to feed his particular immigration narrative.

Blanketing immigration issues with emotion is also evident in the 2016 election, especially with candidate Donald Trump. A man who poses himself as a savior to a nation in crisis, Trump’s campaign has been centered around hard-hitting immigration reform and building his infamous wall between America and Mexico.

His opinions are divisive and clear-cut. His processes for achieving his immigration proposals are little less so. So how is Trump’s rhetoric managing to gain traction with voters?

He is successfully appealing to Americans’ – especially conservative Americans – fears that our country isn’t safe. He uses immigrants as pawns and characters in his fear narrative, creating his own definition of them and their threat to “our country as we know it.” In the process, he’s generalized the issue of immigration and especially immigrants themselves. With this generalization, it becomes easier for Americans to turn to emotion rather than facts to make their ballot decision, because the issue has been condensed into a seemingly black and white decision, when it undeniably isn’t so.

Capitalizing on Americans lack of knowledge on the particulars of certain policy issues is nothing new, but with the help of modern media, it’s becoming increasingly easier to win votes based on emotional appeals that are backed with little rational substance.

At our core, humans are emotional beings. As Drew Westen notes in The Political Brain, “In politics, when reason and emotion collide, emotion invariably wins.” This is particularly illustrated with Trump’s immigration narrative in 2016.

Throughout the 2016 election, both candidates have painted their own picture of what America looks like. On one hand, Donald Trump’s America is in danger, and he’s the hero that will restore safety and order. On the other, Hillary Clinton’s America is one of beautiful diversity and endless potential, mostly thanks to the Obama administration’s last four years of work.

Clinton and Trump have now spent months solidifying the images of their respective Americas in the minds of voters. On a policy level, immigration has been a key idea in creating these two distinct pictures of our country. But, as a recent Politico Magazine research effort shows, the two candidates have incorrectly construed their own immigration stories to fit the immigration rhetorics in their campaigns. And in doing so, they’ve thrown one thing to the wayside: the true solution to the immigration problem.

Let’s look at Hillary Clinton’s illustration of this problem.

Why Clinton’s Story Doesn’t Add Up:

As a nation built on immigrants, America will always welcome immigrants.

This is the most basic idea of Hillary’s immigration rhetoric. Clinton touts the deep immigrant background in her own family, invoking her grandfather from England several times during her campaign.

As Politico discovered, some of Hillary’s first ancestors living in the U.S. began to blame the influx of immigrants for their own job displacements. Working in the mines, Clinton’s great uncles did experience the opportunity associated with the American Dream. However, industrialization and technological advancement led to increased competition in the coal industry, and Hillary’s Rodham ancestors began to suffer from the consequences of outsourced labor, and America began to see its first serious debates on immigration.

The underlying issue in the immigration problems of past and present: “economic fundamentals.” Although Clinton invokes her immigrant-working family, she fails to include in her current immigration rhetoric the most basic problem that hindered her ancestors’ American Dream – the way to address immigration is with economic fixes. Clinton has led those Americans wary of her immigration policies to feel inherently un-American because of their doubts. Really, her rhetoric should incorporate more of an economic background to fully tell the immigration story she has frequently used in her own rhetoric.

Clinton spends an ample amount of time downplaying the immigration fears that her opponent has based his campaign on. Perhaps, an economical approach to Clinton would align better with the ancestry that she often calls into play to further her “stronger together” narrative.

Check out this video for a more detailed account of Clinton’s ancestry and its immigration story.

Since the beginning of his race for the Presidency, Donald Trump has consistently used his particular brand of immigration rhetoric to bolster his image as a hard-hitting challenger candidate that has come to save America from ultimate disaster. Although his views have become undeniably less radical after becoming the Republican nominee, his immigration narrative is the unmistakable foundation of “no-mercy” campaign. Trump’s audience knows how he feels about immigrants. But, some aren’t receiving the message so clearly, mostly because Mr. Trump doesn’t consider a large portion of people when creating his message in the first place.

Latinos in the media feel like Trump has failed to address his immigration policies in the recent Presidential debates, although his stance on immigration “has been a centerpiece of Donald Trump’s campaign for over a year.”

So, why is it that Trump’s immigration policies seem nearly as rampant in the media and present in his discourse as his sexual assault allegations? (Which are undeniably rampant.)

The answer can be found in every instance that Trump uses his stance on immigration as a crutch – as a defense strategy to avoid addressing the more immediate topic at hand.

In the most recent debate, when asked by Anderson Cooper if Trump has assaulted the women that claimed he had, Trump replied by saying:

“And I will tell you: No, I have not. And I will tell you that I’m going to make our country safe. We’re going to have borders in our country, which we don’t have now. People are pouring into our country, and they’re coming in from the Middle East and other places.”
Instead of fully addressing the allegations, Trump remained in his immigration safe zone and retreated into a rhetorical area that he’s become the most comfortable in. Although this message is somewhat successful at distracting the particular audience it was designed for, it leaves the audiences he didn’t consider – like the Latino journalists mentioned above – more confused and dissatisfied with his discourse as ever.

As the 2016 election grinds on, we’ve seen the same policy issues arise over and over again. With the refugee crisis worsening on an international scale, the United States is under pressure to reform its immigration policies accordingly, and both Presidential candidates have their own proposals for moving forward.

The way Americans receive and decide which policies they will align with has much to do with the connotation of the words surrounding the entire immigration debate. For some, the word “immigrant,” especially “illegal immigrant,” is synonymous with “Latino” or “Hispanic.” With Donald Trump’s call to build a wall along the Mexican-American border, this is especially true. But, when looking at the numbers from a Pew Research study, Asians are actually on track to become the largest immigrant group in the United States.

In an NPR interview with Erika Lee, a professor of Asian-American history at the University of Minnesota, Lee says that Americans see Latino immigration as much more of a problem than Asian immigration, even though the numbers are smaller. This is because Asians are viewed as a “model minority” – as a group that achieves academically and economically across the board. Lee says that this label is largely “misleading,” and she is worried that the stigma surrounding Asian immigration will turn sour, as it was several decades ago in the U.S.

Lee illustrates the ability of an entire candidate’s policy stance to be grounded on an idea that is based as heavily on a stigma as it is on actual facts. Through years and years of immigration policy discussion in the public arena, Americans have begun to think of immigration very specifically, rather than considering new trends and studies that actually change the entire landscape.