Study: Immigrant TV characters are more likely to be portrayed as less educated and more prone to criminality

The Hollywood Reporter

Immigrant rights group Define American teamed with The Hollywood Reporter and The Norman Lear Center to study how TV portrays immigrants. "With immigrants, everything seems to fall into two categories: the criminal hustling the system, or the high-achieving, pristinely perfect 'good' immigrant," says Noelle S. Lindsay Stewart of Define American. "That doesn't allow for the complexity or humanity that real people have. We believe that by humanizing people on television, you cause audiences to be emotionally invested in characters, and then take that emotional investment and project them onto the people in their lives." ALSO: Study also found that Asian immigrant stories are especially underrepresented on TV.