Arthur Helton: Thank you very much Utrice. We’re pleased to be part of this path-breaking conversation, and today we are concluding our sojourn with a discussion of immigration in general terms: its values, its impact, its consequences and causes. We are joined in this discussion by Peter Kwong who is professor of urban affairs and sociology at CUNY Graduate Center at Hunter College, as well as Annie Wilson who is program director at the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. We have made our way to this point through a discussion initially of immigration in New York City, looking at the high pro-immigrant rhetoric and the anti-immigrant nature of some of the policies that have been implemented recently, focusing more on the intangibles than the economics. Then we found ourselves discussing not only the joy of naturalization and citizenship and the issues of national identity but also the pain of naturalization and citizenship and acquiring or moderating dual or competing identities. Yesterday we found ourselves in the cross-hairs of a policy discussion about the human rights and foreign policy dimensions and immigration control priorities relating to refugee protection issues, asylum, refugee admissions globally, and refuge in the United States. That leads us now to a concluding discussion where I hope we’ll have an opportunity to draw on these themes and present an overview and ultimately a conclusion to this conversation.
Utrice Leid: Well lets get it started, Peter Kwong what in your view is the missed point about immigration?
Peter Kwong: Immigration is obviously a very very complex question. I think people tend to look at only one side of the issue. Those people want to see immigrants as a problem, and those people want to see immigrants as a tremendous contribution. Often times you don’t have any real dispassionate balanced discussion on this issue and so I hope all of us could get more involved in that type of discourse. Now, on illegal immigration we tend to have the most heated discussion and again my feeling is that some of that discussion is quite extreme in the final analysis when illegal immigration is very much connected to the legal immigration. In other words, when you talk about illegals, they come because people who are already here who are legal gave them the information and told them all the possibilities and also provided the initial money possible for them to come in.
Arthur Helton: Well, we haven’t really addressed the situation of undocumented persons and so called illegal immigration yet in our conversation in the depth that I think we must. When we looked at New York we examined the fact that legal immigrants outnumber illegal immigrants. We need to look at the policy manipulations, consequences, and causes of illegal immigration. I don’t, however, suggest that the distinction between legal and illegal is that clear; this is rather a gray area.
Peter Kwong: That’s right. I think often times you’ll find that the illegal immigration is right in the middle of legal immigration. There was one very simple financial matter. Most people from third world countries can’t afford to come here and even if they could come here they need some kind of support and that support often has to come from people already here. The other aspect is that people - know what possibility is there in the US, why is the US so good, and that kind of information again comes from people already here. And so that’s why I believe its very much connected.
Utrice Leid: Is it your view I should ask, what is your view of the opinion that in a sense immigration is contributing to a, well, a brokenization, if I could use that word, of communities rather than full fledged assimilation and that this is what is behind the argument and philosophy that is essentially anti-immigrant, to say that more and more we see immigrants making a decision, a conscious decision not to assimilate so much after they get here, they’re not as eager as let’s say the first wave was to become American, that they’re arriving with a strong sense of identity and are basically they have an operational identification with being an American as opposed to a full fledged cultural identification with it.
Peter Kwong: Well, I think all immigrants that first come to this country have problems adjusting to the society right away. They have to learn, they have to feel their way and - become part of America- so every immigrant goes through that process. I think there’s this myth that somehow Europeans did it easier. It took Europeans more than a generation to become part of the mainstream. So this is nothing at all, there’s no evidence whatsoever that immigrants are not making an attempt. There is however one particular aspect that is making the current issue a little more complicated and this has to do with some of the work I’ve done dealing with ethnic enclaves. Immigrants usually come first into their own communities but today the economy is structured a little bit different from the past. When the Europeans first came here, the US was developing huge factory complexes - Detroit, Brooklyn, and elsewhere. To make it, they had to go to those places to look for jobs. They only lived among the natives long enough to learn English. Now today we have something a little bit different, in this decentralization of the American economy, factories are scattered, small manufacturing places are locating at wherever they can get the cheapest labor and often times that’s where the immigrant communities are. So in Latino communities and Chinese communities you have sweatshops. Well in the past the sweatshops on 7th Avenue, now they are in Chinatown. Immigrants come right into Chinatown and get their job right in China town and they never really get the opportunity to be in touch with America. This kind of segregation is economic and market based, rather than they don’t want to be integrated. Everybody I’ve talked to wants to learn English, they’re desperate to learn English, but they don’t have the time, they don’t have the opportunity, they don’t come in touch with people who know English.
Arthur Helton: Everybody deplores what you mentioned in terms of sweatshops, at least formally deplores the phenomenon. Why then is it so difficult to regulate that circumstance? What can be done realistically to address those kinds of issues? We talked in an earlier program about the costs, and not only the economic costs, but the less tangible costs of such abuses being permitted in American Society.
Peter Kwong: Well the existence of sweatshops today has many dimensions to it. Number one is today’s capitalist logic. That is to say the competition is so intense, we could get things done in third world countries so much cheaper. If you want to enforce labor standards, if you want to up the standards here in the U.S., the owners will leave. So it is not only the employers trying to suppress the wages for their own interests, often times public officials, including unions, see that as well. That’s the number one factor. The second is the tendency to depend on government, depending on someone else to solve the problem that is never going to work. You got to have the workers themselves fight for it. I mean all the union movements in the US, the improvement comes from the education of workers, not by forcing the government and the others to take action. What’s unfortunate about today is that we have a very very weak labor movement. They can’t take care of their own membership. They are structurally and racially not in organizing immigrants, so that’s another problem.
Utrice Leid: If I could ask Annie Wilson a question - she is the program director of the Lutheran Immigration and refugee service. from the work that you do, what is your sense of the nature of change, the qualitative difference if you could point to it, both in terms of US policy regarding immigration and asylum and to what degree is there any legitimacy to the view that not only have policies changed, but they have changed in relation to the change occurring in the immigrant pool itself?
Annie Wilson: Hmm. Interesting question. I’ve been working in this field for about 16 years and I can say that several years ago, most of us, myself included, did notice a really serious qualitative change in the discussion about immigration across the country. We saw that followed by substantive policy changes, particularly in the area of immigration enforcement. The extent to which those are based on actual changes in the immigrant population or more likely misperceptions about the immigrant population, I don’t know, but I think that they reflect an ambivalence about the immigration that extends back for a long long time. There’s a pendulum that has swung back and forth in our nation’s approach to immigrants. The last couple of years I think have been characterized by a view of immigrants, particularly undocumented immigrants, as being linked to crime. There’s been a sort of criminalization of immigrants in general. Activities themselves have actually been criminalized, and I think a lot of immigrants have been treated as criminals. One of the issues that we’re most concerned about is the vast increase in immigration detention. It’s the fastest growing incarceration program in the country, and I think that really reflects a new harshness in the way that we treat immigrants and the way we approach immigration issues, that I haven’t seen in my 16 years of work in this field.
Utrice Leid: But isn’t that - couldn’t some of this be considered allowable- I mean if a country is going to admit groups of people, is it not reasonable to assume that the country would do everything possible to make sure that its getting the best of the best or that it is at least culling out form a potential pool that the people would consider undesirable.
Annie Wilson: Well, let me just sort of paint a picture of two ways at far ends of a spectrum that you might go about controlling the US land border. You could leave it open and allow people to walk back and forth across it in utter freedom without taking notice or doing anything about it, or you could treat it like the Berlin wall, and throw up big fortifications and machine gun people if they try to cross. Or you can take any number of approaches that fall along a spectrum between those two. And in a society that respects human rights and that has standards of law between those two extremes you look for an approach that would offer some control but approach those issues in a way that is humane and has respect for the law. So I think that what we’re seeing is pushing toward a very extreme and harsh approach that in my view is unnecessary to secure the ends that the government wants to secure - which is to see people appear for immigration proceedings and ultimately to comply with the requirements of immigration law. It’s not necessary to do some of the things that are being done in order to bring that about.
Arthur Helton: When you begin discussing these issues of immigration policy, perhaps the number one question always posed is “how many”. Any line is always arbitrary in that sense and its difficult to persuasively argue for any particular number. Then what kind of measure should be used? That’s where values are introduced, whether it be labor market, family, refugees, yacht people or whatever it is that you’re looking at, and then ultimately, fair treatment, in the process. We had a caller yesterday that likened the Immigration and Naturalization Service to a kind of mafia - It’s an image that sticks in my mind. But it raises the standard of a fairness and due process, non-discrimination, fair administration of the law. Finally, there is the issue of effective management, the good governance aspect, as well dealing with the general public interest has not been realized. For example, detention policies can be expensive. Are they necessary? These kinds of questions have to be asked. What is the ultimate fundamental underlying principle that should inform the answers to all those different questions - how many, what kind, what is fairness, and what is good management?
Peter Kwong: Well, I would actually look from
a different perspective. So much of the discussion about immigration is
one-sided That is to say they want to come - as if they are the ones
making us to decide if we want to do them a favor or not, and I think this
is not really addressing a very fundamental point. Immigrants who come
here, legal or illegal, they find jobs and they are working. There is a
very clear indication that there are employers who prefer to hire undocumented.
They believe that undocumented are more industrious. So there is a demands
side of the issue that we don’t talk about, we only talk about how they
want to come but in my research and in many other peoples research if you
ask employers particularly small business employers - you give them a choice
of American born or immigrants, they prefer immigrants. And some employers
specifically like to hire undocumented. Many industries here in the US
cannot survive without the illegal immigrants. The agro business in California,
the garment industry in New York City and elsewhere in the health care
services. We are addicted to undocumented.
Utrice Leid: I like these questions. They’re
four very simple ones but the answers are incredibly complex because you
have to navigate not the black and white but try to make some sense of
the vast seas of gray out there on this issue. But this is where the debate
has not gone, the debate has really circled around these four salient questions
and in the periphery we are basically getting race based arguments or we
are getting false economic theories or we’re getting bizarre things to
inform cock-eyed policy and I was wondering if you can tell us, Annie Wilson,
if you haven’t answered to any of the above, how many, what kind, what
is fairness, and what is good management?
Annie Wilson: You’re speaking about legal immigration?
Utrice Leid: Oh gosh, is this going to make it tough now---
Arthur Helton: You have to speak to some extent about legal immigration, I would suggest. Numbers and categories deal with legal immigration, but fairness and good management deals with enforcement, and certainly those who fall outside of the numbers and categories if you look beyond the category - one person beyond the quota and one person away from the category, then you’re dealing with fairness and good management. But I do think, unless those questions can be posed and answered, we will have simply a sort of battle of myths in terms of immigration debate. Research doesn’t always illuminate those questions as it turns out.
Utrice Leid: Well that’s a good thing because - a good point to make because the view also is that people who we can say are pro-immigration are somehow just holding on to an ideal in which there is just no basis in fact and they are anti-immigration they’re anti sensible immigration policy but my sense is that the argument is for a sane policy or at least a policy at all - we don’t seem to have a policy around it. The major institution charged with this question, the INS, is itself a yawning contradiction. It doesn’t know whether it is a policy implementing agency or a law enforcement agency - the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing, congress doesn’t even know it has these hands out there that don’t know what they do. So we have a confusion. I don’t mean to suggest that people who are saying ‘Look, we have to be practical about this thing simply because people want to come here in great numbers means that we have to let everybody in’ but at the same time they say ‘appreciate the context in which these petitions are being made’. Maybe they’re being made because the US was implicated in internal problems caused in their own countries and now they have to flee for their own safety maybe they fleeing because of multi-national corporations that have just raped and bled their countries to death. So the argument is really about moving the center - a focus, I should say, into devising a sensible policy that really everybody could live with, it seems to me.
Peter Kwong: Well that’s going to be very difficult. Clearly there is a human rights issue. We should have the maximum accommodation for people who escape from political persecution. But in this post-Cold War era, you have a lot of people coming here for economic reasons. Then you come to the very important issues that Arthur talks about - how many? - to what extent? - and what kind of conditions? Now again it’s a very difficult issue - I’m an immigrant myself - certainly I’m not anti-immigrant. But I’m an immigrant coming to the United State because I believe America could offer something that my country could not. I come here expecting equality, I come her expecting better opportunity. Now these may be very abstract issues but I think theses are some of the issues being violated today. That is to say that immigrants are specifically targeted for cheap labor, for their vulnerability. They are not provided with the kind of protection they ought to. So it seems clear to me that immigrants are coming here with a lot of disadvantages. They are not expecting to enjoy equality. But I think there ought to be understanding that they should be protected, that they should not be treated differently, and they should be seen as people that need to be incorporated in to our economy, our society. Now the fact that so many sweatshops exist across the country shows that we’ve done wrong. Why doesn’t the Labor Department go in to these communities and try to protect these people? I think there is a myth going the other way, that is to say ‘American people are not working as hard as the immigrants’. So we are really manipulating this ideology and I think that is wrong.
Utrice Leid: Annie?
Annie Wilson: I’m just reflecting that it’s so refreshing to sit here and to be having a reasoned and thoughtful discussion of immigration. I think that over the past several years there has been so much debate about immigration that’s been driven by fear and misinformation and myth. I think that the great hope is that we can continue to have this debate at a national level and that it will become a more deliberate and wise debate that will address some of these issues. I wouldn’t presume to speak for my entire nation on how that debate ought to- what the outcome of that debate ought to be, but I think that this is definitely the direction this debate ought to go.
(Music)
Utrice Leid: We return to our discussion on immigration and my co-host is Arthur Helton, who is director of migration programs at the OSI. This series that we’ve been doing this week is a collaborative effort here at WBAI.
Arthur Helton: Thanks Utrice. I suppose showing the persistence I’m capable of, I want to return to my four questions. And I guess Annie Wilson in particular, I want to take the asylum area that we’ve been touching upon and pose these four questions. This is the question of refugees who make their way to US territories and apply for protection in our asylum procedure. If you then asked the four questions - how many - our law says as many as can make it here. If you ask what kind, our law would identify those that have a well-founded fear of persecution, maybe that’s not broad enough. But if we broaden that definition and have no numerical limitations then of course we may be enfranchising much of the world’s population in terms of being able to come and apply for asylum in the United States. If we talk about fairness, we have new procedures where those that come without valid passports and visas are subject to summary removal as distinguished from those that come in a proper way and seek asylum. Is this distinction reasonable? And in terms of good governance, the INS still has a backlog of about 400,000 cases - how can this possibly be?
Annie Wilson: Well I’ll confess here on the
air that in my youth I watched Cold War TV shows like Mission Impossible
and Man from Uncle and maybe it was because of those television programs
or just the culture at large that I developed a picture of the typical
person who applied for political asylum as an eastern European, therefore
white, male, maybe a cello player who defected in the middle of a symphony
performance, I think that what we’ve seen recently is a really dramatic
change, and an improved understanding, of who it is that suffers from human
rights abuses and who it is that asylum seekers are. A lot of people in
the world were formerly written off. It was said, “Well those countries
just have those problems”. I think in particular of the example of rape
and war – “well that just is the way things are”. Now there are asylum
seekers coming to the US in larger numbers, thanks, in part to the ability
we now have to get from any one place in the world to get to any other
place in the world within 24 hours, assuming resources and visas are in
place. There is an increasing globalization of the movement of asylum seekers,
and there has been greater recognition of the human rights of many new
groups of people whose human rights were not respected or valued in the
past. An example is the very famous case of Fauzia Kasinga, which got a
lot of media attention. She is a woman from Togo who was fleeing female
genital mutilation. But there are many other cases. I just had brought
to my attention a letter from a young woman from Somalia who was from a
minority group that had historically been placed into servitude by other
groups within her country. And she was young, a child, and captured with
her sister and held in servitude for some time with a number of other women
of her group. Protected by the older women, she escaped some of the sexual
violence that was perpetrated on all the other women that were similarly
held and eventually made her way to the US and gained political asylum.
In fact I have this letter from her with me and it says ‘Life is hard for
me here in America but I am able to work and I am trying to put the bad
memories of my past behind me. I have found other Somalia refugees here
and we are all working to support ourselves and stay in school. I’m starting
to feel safe and secure again for the first time in many years and I have
big hopes for the future.’ This is just a young - 18 year old woman. How
many? You said, “ our laws say its whoever can find their way
here.’ Well, frankly, that’s not many. Out of the world refugee population,
the number of asylum seekers who find their way here - despite the new
global transportation networks - is still very minimal and the opportunity
to come is not very good. What kind? Well there’s people coming from a
lot of other parts of the world who didn’t come here in the past. In
my view that’s related to new enforcement measures that have cracked down
particularly hard on asylum seekers, including expedited procedures at
airports that create little opportunity for people to tell their stories
and telling their stories is after all the only way that they’ll be able
to get any kind of protection. That’s the question of fairness. We have
ambivalence about immigration expressed in the fact that we now have some
better asylum procedures in place that recognize the value of people from
other parts of the world and recognize their human rights, but at the same
time we have enforcement procedures that keep them out of our borders.
So I think the question of fairness is one you need to look at in a lot
of different ways, in how it has been expressed recently in our approach
to asylum seekers. I think there have been some steps forward, but there
have been some very significant steps backward that have eroded our participation
in the international human rights protection mechanisms.
Arthur Helton: One area that’s been given
special attention and presents difficult questions within asylum policy
over the past few years is the flows that result from China’s one child
policy. China’s a big country and many of its people fall into this
category. I suppose you could call it a global transportation network,
but that’s a nice way to put it - a kind of trafficking, smuggling network
really. And what we’ve done is hit upon a compromise where we actually
presume to grant refugee protection to those who are fleeing from the one
child policy, but at the same time, each year limit the number to 1,000.
Now how does this fit with the new faces of the asylum seekers - Annie?
Annie Wilson: My personal opinion is that’s an odd little policy anomaly- the number set aside for people fleeing the one child policy. The experience of practitioners who provide direct services to asylum seekers is that those who have just arrived in the country are still filled with the confusion of the experience that caused them to leave their country, the turmoil of the flight, and the adjustment to a new place. Any traveler experiences some exhaustion and turmoil, even those who go to a new country as tourists. Asylum seekers don’t necessarily have a game plan in place for how they’re going to present themselves and request protection from the country they’re going to. The degree of preparedness varies but that’s quite often true. Whether somebody, out of all the complex reasons that caused them to leave home and go to a new place, is going to lift up the particular tiny area of policy that’s been set aside for protection is a matter of sheer chance, unless they’re given advice by somebody. The top thing on somebody’s mind might be “I left because my children are hungry” and she might neglect to mention that her husband was taken away by armed security forces because that’s not what she was thinking of at the moment. If you were going through an expedited process at the airport and someone said ‘Why are you here?” And you said “ Well, I’d like to get a job” because you’re thinking of your hungry children back home, that wouldn’t cut it to get you through the process at the airport. Now in the case of the Chinese - I think that there are people who have a genuine and strong opposition to that policy and whose grant for asylum on those grounds would be quite legitimate, but I think that it creates a lot of oddities in the whole system to construe the grounds for asylum so narrowly and to set aside a limited set of numbers. It creates distortions that are very unfortunate in the broader system.
Arthur Helton: Peter, you looked at this sort of trafficking and irregular movement, whatever policy makers call it - particularly of Chinese. How does our asylum policy affect that movement of people? How does the offer of asylum in this very narrow category affect that movement? Is this really just the Golden Venture that we’re talking about, that celebrated arrival in New York Harbor a few years ago of a vessel overcrowded with people from China, or is this an example of the asylum cases of the next millennium?
Peter Kwong: To begin with I think using one child policy as the reason for political asylum is idiotic. It is China’s national policy, the United Stated may not agree with it, though a long time ago the United states supported China’s policy that tried to reduce the number of people. A lot of people in the U.S. believed that population growth was the greatest threat so we gave money to China to institute that policy in the early eighties. But then but then during the Reagan administration this was reversed. People actually coming for that reason are very very few. But this particular clause allows the smugglers to tell the people, ‘hey look, you know going to the United States is very easy because of this clause. You could come in and ask for political asylum, then you could stay. So hundreds, thousands of people actually come in on those grounds. If the US has to hold all those people until the grounds are adjudicated then we would have run out of detention spaces quickly. So this has been used by smugglers to recruit clients. Many of the people asking for the policy are men. I would think you’d really provide this policy for women. But in any event this was a policy Clinton administration wanted to change but in the 1996 law again the Congress did not want to. With all the other areas toughening, this particular one again allowing one thousand. Now, one thousand we think is a small number but insofar as from the smugglers’ side it means many thousands more.
Arthur Helton: Boat loads of a thousand in particular..
Peter Kwong: Exactly. So this is a very very inconsistent idiotic policy. It’s got to be gotten rid of. I think there are many many grounds for Chinese coming here to ask for political asylum, but using this particular one flat out is only helping the smugglers rather than really the people who needed help.
Utrice Leid: I’d like to ask you , Arthur, a question, in the last couple of days we’ve talked also about these mass migrations of people, this mass movement of people all over the world occasioned by war - and the vestiges and consequences of war. Is it wrong for me to say - at least the way I’m looking at it - the international community is not doing nearly enough to - this fact is not resonating enough in the international community so that, for example you can make a link between the crisis being experienced in different countries, the receiving countries as well as the sender nations they experience a human resources drain, they lose in other ways as well, families are severed and so forth. Why the unwillingness to link the two and to link hem in such a way that nations are compelled to address their conduct in the international arena in so far as it can create these kinds of crises?
Arthur Helton: This has been a particularly intense debate since the end of the Cold War. During the Cold War the concern was that any effort to intervene in a country that might be producing refugees might occasion a broader conflict, because often times that country was a proxy for one of the protagonists in the Cold War. This paradigm was played out particularly in Africa. You’d have refugee policies that were quite well articulated from the inception of the Cold War to it’s demise, which often times were determined to reinforce foreign policy interests. Indeed, the foreign policy establishment and bureaucracy were key in the formulation of those policies to the point where repatriation was disfavored and resettlement was favored because the notion of somebody returning to a Communist or Communist-dominated country or one of the proxies of a Communist or Communist-dominated country, would in some way have adverse foreign policy consequences for the other protagonist, namely the United States and its proxies. Resettlement in the United States became the norm instead of repatriation. Repatriation ascended as the favored approach after the demise of the Cold War. Policy makers said, “Well we really should look at the countries of origin, they are responsible”. And so the efforts to manage the outflow of people from Vietnam involved Vietnam in the negotiations. In respect to China, the US in the early 1990’s didn’t have many ways that it cooperated with China, but it certainly cooperated on trafficking and illegal immigration. With Cuba, there aren’t many agreements between the US and Cuba currently, but the prime one is a migration agreement to address illegal immigration from Cuba. There is a propensity to intervene more and more as the Cold War interests dissipate. But then we found it was hard and expensive and dangerous. So you had Somalia. When a few American peace enforcers were killed, the forces were withdrawn. And then you had northern Iraq, and it seems that that’s never going to end, because there will have to be no fly zones in northern and southern Iraq until Saddam Hussein no longer rules in Iraq. And then you have Bosnia and Herzegovina, where an intractable conflict proved difficult to resolve without great danger. Finally, a robust deployment suppressed the conflict. But now there’s Kosovo. Nobody expects a military intervention in Kosovo at this point. So going to the root causes, oftentimes political causes, of these mass displacements is difficult. We will for that reason always have these unsatisfactory refugee arrangements in the eyes of many. This includes war refugees and others who are forced to migrate who don’t fall within the narrow articulation of the refugee definition. They are Salvadorans who don’t like the fact that their farms are bombed. They moved instead to the US. They are Haitians now who are leaving because of the political impasse and the economic distress in Haiti, but none of them would ever be considered refugees under US law. So this turns out to be a migrant enforcement issue in the eyes of US authorities. This leads to policies such as swift high seas interception and return. That’s the reason that the US can keep such pristine asylum procedures, not very many people can reach and have access to them. The mixed message may be in the context of the Chines cases, but we will be managing these kinds of disorderly movements of people for the foreseeable future.
Utrice Leid: You’re listening to WBAI, 99.5 FM, New York. I’m Utrice Leid, the program is Talk Back and all week this week we’re taking a look at immigration and its impact in the United States. My co-host is the director of migration programs at the Open Society Institute and the program of course is a collaboration with the Open Society Institute. His name is Arthur Helton, he is a world renowned luminary in the field of immigrant and refugee law and I’m just so delighted Arthur that we teamed up on this one. This is wonderful to me.
Arthur Helton: This has been a terrific collaboration and I have to say the level and quality of the conversation is something that I’ve certainly learned from. It’s been extremely illuminating and enlightening.
Utrice Leid: Thanks. Well we go on to our next segment, and you get to introduce the first question.
Arthur Helton: Well I guess I’d like to offer a proposal to Peter. It seemed to me when I last thought about this question of how you deal with sweatshop abuses that this could easily be addressed if we simply amended our immigration law to provide that people could receive an immigrant visa if they made a complaint about work conditions, that was ultimately sustained. If you made one basis for an immigrant visa - we’re talking about the different roles of an immigration policy in workplace abuses - a complaint about labor standards conditions issues, if the complaint was made and sustained, this might enhance enforcement. What do you think of that proposal?
Peter Kwong: Well actually that’s the position I’ve been pushing for. A little bit more elaborate but basically that is to say if somebody who is undocumented and the employer takes advantage of him and if this undocumented is willing to come forward, provide testimony and stand in court to testify. So we are able to convict the perpetrator, then we should be willing to provide the person with what we now call the S visa. We would correct the sweatshop situation in a hurry. That is exactly the point I’m trying to make. What is going on today is that the victims are silent. If you are undocumented, if you’ve been abused, you can’t go to law enforcement because law enforcement will expel you. So there’s no incentive, so they keep quiet. And not only that - the employers would make it even worse. And that’s the dynamics. Now, some people would be alarmed to say “well that would mean granting status to thousands, hundreds of thousands of people”. Well, I don’t think so - the point is right now, smugglers and the employers believe they can get away with anything. We’re not talking about people not paying minimum wage, we’re talking about people who don’t pay workers. That’s a rampant violation. Under the present circumstances nobody could catch them. So your proposal coincides with the kind of things I’ve been talking about. One way to fix that is exactly that. If people come here are abused by smugglers, and having to pay $40,000, $30,000 to come here and this individual is willing to go to law enforcement, provide all information and willing to be as a witness in trial and convict the smugglers, we should be willing to give them exchange of immigration adjustment. Then we will see the smuggling network shaken. It will never be totally wiped out but right now there is absolutely no constraint on the trade. I mean, this is one of the biggest businesses, profitable businesses, going on and the people who are victimized can not speak out and the law enforcement can’t get at it. Every time you ask the question, law enforcement says, “we don’t have the people”. I don’t care how many people you have, if the people who are victimized don’t come and help you you’re never going to get them.
Arthur Helton: Well maybe the reasonableness of the work you have done on this proposal will be recognized, although I suspect there will be some alarmists in the immigration restrictionist camp who will be concerned about the short- term increase in immigration, although it might actually over the middle-term result in fewer people coming in these trafficked and dangerous situations.
Peter Kwong: Well there’s a lot of logic, I mean American people are working people they don’t want to see their labor standard to be deteriorated, to be eaten away by immigrants or by the undocumented. In fact immigrants don’t want to be mistreated either so if we do this, the by and large logic is that we are helping the American people too. We are protecting, maintaining the standard of American workers as well.
Utrice Leid: Annie Wilson, organizations like yours, the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service really are in the business of advocacy and providing particular services for this constituency. To what degree do you think your community, your advocacy community has had any impact at all on the national debate - (unclear) - on the national debate on immigration, perhaps mainly outline the specific challenges if you can in getting people in congress to listen to reason and to help foster some kind of logic as they formulate policy?
Annie Wilson: You just want to send me home depressed, right?
Utrice Leid: I realized midway through the answer I kind of knew what the answer was, but I said let me hold on to some hope that it might be different.
Annie Wilson: OK, I don’t want to undersell the work that we’ve done I think that we’ve made a number of very, very important advances in narrow areas. I think broadly, the tenor of the debate has softened. You know, we felt the flood of anti-immigrant sentiment washing over us several years ago and I really think that it isn’t as harsh now. There’s been a lot of work in the advocacy community to inject a little more reason into the discussion and into the debate and although I think the efforts over the past several years were more ameliorative than broad reform, I think that some very concrete successes can be pointed to there.
Arthur Helton: What about the area of immigration detention that you mentioned before. What have the advocacy groups and other actors been able to accomplish, or what do they hope to accomplish, even over the short term?
Annie Wilson: Well this is an area that has really captured the imagination of people that have been working with immigrants and refugees for a long time because its such a dramatic example of what is happening with the new policies. Last year our organization along with Catholic Legal Immigration Network and a wonderful program based in Arizona - the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Program - called a summit meeting on detention and we waited to see who would come. We thought maybe a dozen or so colleagues would come, but we were pleasantly surprised to discover that we had any number of organizations - immigration rights organizations and religious groups - that were really deeply concerned about this issue. It’s been one year since we’ve come together as the Detention Watch Network, and we now number in this loose coalition about 100 organizations, working on the issue of immigration detention from many different avenues without necessarily marching in lock step although I think we’ve got a lot of areas of commonality. What we’re trying to do with immigration detention is promote alternatives to detention wherever possible for a number of groups. There are, of course, a lot of people in detention. Topping the list for us in looking at groups for whom alternatives would be appropriate are asylum seekers, children, parents with children, families and many other people who are at risk including survivors of torture or others, people with strong community ties who have lived in the US for a long who just simply don’t need to be in detention. We’re very interested in exploring alternatives for those populations. We’ve also begun a series of discussions with policy makers in Washington to look at specific issues such as providing better access for legal and social and pastoral services for those who are in detention and to look at conditions. As I think I mentioned earlier, this is the fastest growing incarceration program going on in the country right now. Today 15,000 people will lay down their heads in a bed in immigration detention and by the year 2001, that’s expected to increase to 24,000 as a result of the 1996 immigration act. Sadly, the population of minors in immigration detention is increasing at double the rate of adults. About 60 per cent of people in immigration detention are scattered in city, state and county prisons and jails which are otherwise used for people serving criminal sentences. That situation is a lot of what in practical terms we see as the criminalization of immigration. When you take an asylum seeker and put her in the same cell as somebody who’s serving time for a criminal conviction it’s got the potential for being a really cruel and inhumane treatment of the asylum seeker. But it also gives her a criminal identity in the eyes of the workers in the facility, or potentially anyone who might see her, for example, in the court room where she shows up in her prison jumpsuit. She begins to look like a criminal and not like an asylum seeker. So we’re working very hard to develop policy solutions and also to develop practical solutions in service provision, just trying to get more lawyers involved, trying to get more religious workers involved. We’ve even got hopes this year of starting a pen pal program. We’re struggling with the translation problems but we’ve got some people who are willing to identify immigrants in detention who might need a friend on the outside, because really this is the most invisible population you can imagine, isolated by language, by immigration status, and physically locked away.
Utrice Leid: There is a view though and it’s a form of a criticism that in the world of advocacy the last people consulted on the immigrant communities, the expatriate communities here who know a thing or two and can bring some really important input in the formulation of policy and just - in terms of strategy - I refer again to Arthur Helton. You worked with a group of Filipinos to actually construct a new constitution right here in NY and it’s the only such, I mean the Irish community has been very forceful even in determining the peace negotiations we’ve got example after example, Sierra Leoneans here in the city have had an enormous impact on restoring order and peace in the homeland and so forth. To what degree is the advocacy community also missing a point, a valuable human resource by assuming that there isn’t very much that they can get, and this whole visit to China, this was so dramatic I thought - in all the conversations about China I didn’t see a single Chinese. I said, now I’m sure, I know there’s a shortage of lot of journalists but I’m positive we could find a Chinese journalist that could provide an accurate context for this visit, but completely excluded from the discussion. So I wondered whether that was also one of the small but very significant internal contradiction in this advocacy world.
Annie Wilson: I’m not going to address the advocacy world in general for all of the broad issues dealing with immigration - I think it’s certainly a criticism that has validity in some areas with some efforts. I know that in the effort related to immigration detention for example, we are not as strong as we need to be. Of course, immigrant’s rights groups are an important part of the coalition that’s dealing with these issues, but immigrants in detention are people who almost by definition don’t have a connection to the community outside and who don’t have a place outside. Of course some do, those who are picked up from their communities, and its very important that the communities in which these people have been living and working are part of the broad advocacy effort. But when you’re talking about people who’ve been picked up at the port of entry or from airplanes, and then locked away, this is something that really needs to be addressed by a broad range of groups that have the capacity to get in there and identify the problems and shed light on them. It’s a uniquely vulnerable, lonely and isolated group of people in many ways and I think that the coalition that has been addressing it is reflective of the particular nature of that community.
Utrice Leid: What’s your view Peter?
Peter Kwong: Well it touches on a sensitive
issue. Yes the community can be much more involved in dealing with a lot
of these issues relating to these immigration problems. On the other hand
you have to be aware that the community is not unified on those issues.
Undocumented are not very popular people in the Chinese community, because
they see them as taking away their jobs. But I do feel however that many
service organizations have a narrow focus on their responsibility. They
try to serve, they try to protect, making the suffering of all these people
easier. And this is where I have problems with it. These service organizations
must have longer perspective. In other words, you could have a situation
- the more these unfortunate people (unclear), the more service money will
be available, the more people could be working in sweatshops. And not thinking
in terms of, not only to minimize the pain these people have, but to get
at the larger issue. We can’t just allow this kind of population to continue
to grow. Making the suffering easier could even be making the smuggling
process even more prosperous. One of the very favorite tactics now used
by the smugglers is to bring teenagers to this country because they figure
if teenagers come to this country, INS can’t possibly lock them up. So
in fact INS is caught in the situation – it can’t lock these people away
and it can’t just send them home. So they devise a strategy to try to settle
them. Now this is very good and should be done. From the humanitarian point
of view it is absolutely correct, but on the other hand, the smugglers
know, the more teenagers are sent, the more they will be settled and they
would not be caught. How we prevent this kind of situation from happening
is both a law enforcement issue and a humanitarian issue.
Arthur Helton: You know, there’s a wonderful
way to resolve this, if genuine refugees were never detained, then smugglers
would have an incentive to smuggle out genuine refugees. It would resemble
the founding of the International Rescue Committee.
Peter Kwong: The only problem is genuine refugees probably don’t have 40,000 dollars to give.
Utrice Leid: Well how about we kind of arrive at a consensus as to what the last three days and today have meant, and what should be primary in the public’s view, in the public’s mind, about the subject of immigration and it’s impact in the United Sates.
Arthur Helton: I think the main consensus is that there’s no consensus. Using my own abbreviated formula, in terms of how many, the U.S. admits about a million legal immigrants each year, including bona-fide refugees and those who manage to make their way through the asylum process. We have about five million people who are not documented or do not have immigration status at this point in time. That figure increased at about 300,000 a year, and we now formally remove about 100,000 non-citizens per year. The number of the undocumented, or the underclass, of those without status, is growing. We’ve decided that family unification, labor market needs and refugees, as well as a minor program to diversify the immigrant stream, are the main categories. The so-called diversity visa program rewards Western European immigration and only by happenstance some African immigration. We also have a small program of investor immigration, and we have various narrow special interest programs, e.g. religious workers. I think in terms of fairness, we have terrible inequities and terrible disconnections in terms of policy and practice. In terms of good management, we have not had many defenders of the INS in our discussions and we’ve pointed to the terrible dilemma that policy implementers find themselves in, whether they are enforcers or whether they are service providers. But I suppose what has struck me most over the past few days as we have talked about myths of immigration, the values of immigration, the causes and consequences of immigration, is the power of the ideas and the values and in fact the myths. Perhaps we should simply accept that this upcoming Independence Day is a celebration of the myth that means more to who we are as Americans than any notion of a narrowly crafted immigration policy.
Utrice Leid: Well that sounds like a great place to take a break before we come back to questions and comments at (212) 209-2900. Our guests are Peter Kwong who is professor of urban affairs and sociology at CUNY Graduate Center and at Hunter College, and Annie Wilson who is program director at the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and my co-host is Arthur Helton, director of migration programs for the Open Society Institute. We’ll be back with your questions and comments again at (212) 209-2900, right after this.
(Music)
Utrice Leid: You’re listening to WBAI 99.5 FM in New York and that was Degari. He is from Madagascar and he’s singing a traditional song called dede. You’re on the air at --- and just to remind you, my co-host is Arthur Helton, of the Open Society Institute which is collaborating on this series and our in studio guests are Peter Kwong of the Graduate Center and at Hunter College, where he’s a professor of urban affairs and sociology, and Annie Wilson of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service where she is program director. Hello, you’re on the air. Hello? You’re on the air. nobody’s there. Okay. Hello, you’re on the air. Who’s calling?
Caller: This is Mohammed from Brooklyn.
Utrice Leid: Okay.
Caller: First, I listened to your program since Monday, not all of it, but a lot of it, and I found the discussion was somewhat biased that everybody was pro-immigration. I didn’t hear any speaker from the other side who had come with statistics or facts that would be not so much anti-immigration, but from the other side of the immigration picture.
Utrice Leid: Okay.
Caller: And I also have the - the gentleman who talked about the people being smuggled for $40,000? It’s hard for me to believe that anybody who could afford $40,000 to be smuggled into America is in real dire need to come here. I mean the average American citizen could hardly afford $40,000 to go anywhere. And number three, I would like to say that, I’ve traveled and anywhere (unclear) you find that government jobs - probably state federal jobs reserved for the citizenry. And here in New York and America - you find that - legal immigrants are allowed to be employed in the governmental structure. Schools, hospitals, and so forth. And I find that’s very much a threat.
Utrice Leid: Okay so it’s a three-parter.
Caller: ( unclear)
Utrice Leid: It’s a threefer.
Caller: Well it’s a whole lot more but we’ll start with that
Utrice Leid: We’ll deal with the three. All right, with regard to balance, anybody want to talk about that?
Arthur Helton: Well let me just defend our
collaboration. I have been party to many debates on immigration policy,
and, generally, they have not been accompanied by much in the way of facts
and substance. What we wanted to do in the past few days was to have
a more deliberate and, I hope, thoughtful conversation, bearing in mind
that we are approaching July 4th with its celebration of citizenship and
notions relating to immigration. I do take the point, however, that debate
can be useful and the advocacy of different positions can help narrow issues.
Yet, it doesn’t always do that, sometimes it masks a debate on other issues
which are contained within the immigration metaphor. But we’ve been talking
about how to pursue this series and the notion of continued debate.
Utrice Leid: Well if I would add to that,
and if you’ve been listening to this program you’ve heard, quote, of the
other side quite often. We got it from people like Bob Zellnick, who is
blatantly attacking immigration under the guise of affirmative action.
We heard it from Peter Brimelow, we heard it from Roy Beck and others who
have authored tomes on the subject denouncing any notion that America ought
to be far more evenhanded in the way it pursues immigration policy. And
I’ll have to say this too, I make no apologies for that, and I’ll tell
you this: I am not, I’ve said it before, I’m not one of those people, who
believes in objectivity. I don’t. I believe that to be objective about
subjective treatment is to suggest a certain psychological problem
that we have. And we have never had the opportunity to simply outline -
we’re having a discussion. We certainly could engage with the other side
if you will, on the fine points, but you’ve never heard this kind of analysis
either on the other side. We get the argument simply, “close the borders,
there’s too many of them here, they’re taking away jobs and causing
a general deterioration in our quality of life and we’ve never heard
a freewheeling discussion in this area. Again I don’t believe that we should
be compelled to give yet another opportunity to the other side to drag
the conversation into the rut it has been. This in fact is the reason we’re
having the program, to lift the issues up and once we have done that work,
then we can go into other arenas and we can fight fiercely but let us at
least appreciate from this perspective what the salient issues are, how
they are seen and let’s at least preliminary explore and highlight these
issues and how they impact on our daily lives. We could always fight everybody
else after that.
Peter Kwong: Let me answer the question about $40,000. I think you’re probably not informed of the fact that the 40,000 dollars is not that someone had the 40,000 already to pay for the smuggling. Rather, most of these people are working class people who want to make a better future for themselves, they offer to pay a smuggler $40,000 after they’ve arrived here and worked. So in other words, it will probably take them 3, 4, sometimes 10 years to pay off these debts. I think it’s a very bad system, this is against the law. I mean, we have a law against indentured servitude. In other words, you can’t forestall your future income in order to pay for coming to this country. So it is a system I’m fighting against. It’s a huge multi-billion dollar business. Not only that, because it’s profit motive, the smugglers are very sophisticated and are in fact a major factor of introducing undocumented immigrants to this country. So this is one area I believe we have to get a handle on, now you probably a few years back heard abut the Golden Venture. All the people on the Golden Venture had to pay the smuggler $30,000. They were held in prison for three years. The people who smuggled them in, who robbed them and raped them on the ship coming over, actually got out of the prison two years after the incident. There is something very wrong in terms of policy. We seem to be content with catching or trying to punish the undocumented and not really making enough effort to try to crack down on the smugglers.
Utrice Leid: Let’s take another call. Hello, you’re on the air.
Caller: Hello?
Utrice Leid: Yes.
Caller: Yes, good afternoon. Thank you very much for taking my call. My name is Zois, my case is rather different. For over a year - I am 60 years old, artist, living by myself, since about a year ago I have been diagnosed with lung cancer. I’ve been trying, writing to all senators, congressman, including twice to out president to please give a special visa to my nephew coming from Albania here who was born in a forced labor camp as a result of my fleeing Albania in 1964, and the Consul there, some Susan L---, has refused to not issue him a visa and has played some sort of an inhumane, dirty games, by excusing herself that due to the unrest in Albania there were no visas available at he time. Then later on ‘send hospital and doctor reports” which I did, later on ‘send fresher medical reports to see the progress of health and/or the ...cancer, and it’s still going on like this until she chooses to let my nephew of 28 years of age to come here and assist me. In a case of - no matter what happened - I canceled the surgery once because I (unclear) and without having the (unclear) hospital papers, some of the doctors refused to perform the surgery. However I don’t find the reason why such things are refused, why from Albania itself there are thousands and thousands of excommunists that have come and are still coming to this country every week. Is there anyone that could give some kind of help, or response on this please.
Utrice Leid: Well thank you Zois for your question.
Arthur Helton: I think mainly I’m just going to commiserate with the caller because this is a graphic illustration of one of the elements of terrible unfairness in US immigration policy. At issue is the way that consular officials have absolute discretion over the issuance of visas. When we celebrate the historical end of tyranny on July 4, we do so prematurely in the sense that there are still small tyrannies within our immigration system. These consular officials are the beginning and the end of the remedy for individuals who seek nonimmigrant visas to come to the U.S., including for humanitarian reasons such as described by the caller. These consular officials alone decide whether an individual will have to return or not and to a place like Albania, where there is great distress economically. These consular officials are oftentimes guided, or in fact instructed, we learned recently, to deny visas to certain categories of individuals. This is not the only place in the world where this happens, and these are things that Americans don’t often confront, even when crossing borders. But at any discussion among even foreign diplomats and others in the academic or artistic communities, you will find many people victimized by this absolute discretion and tyranny that exists in consular offices.
Peter Kwong: In addition to this I found this particular example poignant in the sense that most Americans don’t confront these officials. These immigration officers are most obnoxious, most arrogant and racist towards people coming from the third world, coming from poor countries. This projects a very negative image of the US and yet their wrongdoings are not going to be heard because people are not going to challenge this kind of power.
Utrice Leid: Well I guess that will have to suffice as a kind of answer Zois, but we clearly identify with your dilemma. Hello, you’re on the air. This is WBAI.
Caller: Hi Utrice. I like your program.
Utrice Leid: Thanks. Whose calling?
Caller: This is Roy -- and I am from Jamaica. I listen to you every day. I drive a van I supply oxygen. I just want to say a quick thing and then I’m going to hang up and let you answer. First I want to (unclear) the Chinese restaurant business, owned by Chinese. Okay? And number two I hear everybody talking about people migrating to the US but I’m not hearing nobody talk about Americans migrating to other countries. There’s a lot of Americans living in Jamaica and I would like you to ask those Americans the kind of treatment they get in Jamaica and why do they stay and why do they let their friends come. When we come here it sounds like we are the only ones coming here, but lots of Americans living in Jamaica and lot of Americans migrating to Jamaica.
Utrice Leid: Well that’s a good point we haven’t really -
Caller: Sorry, I’m going to hang up. We don’t treat them like they want to treat us here. We be treated royalty. And they love it and half them call it earthly paradise, so I’m sure it should be two sides.
Utrice Leid: Thank you , Roy, thanks a lot. This is an interesting thing, we’ve never really discussed the contrast in treatment, we only touched on it for a nanosecond and, but I talked about this very same phenomenon where Americans going abroad where they are the immigrants, receive an entirely different kind of treatment, entirely.
It’s funny, there was a small, cottage industry recently in wealthy Americans giving up their citizenship and going abroad for favorable tax treatment, that’s the only thing that comes to mind and I don’t know if Jamaica is such a jurisdiction but it might be.
Utrice Leid: Interesting. Thanks Roy, thank you so much for your question. hello you’re on the air with Peter Kwong, Annie Wilson, Arthur Helton and Utrice Leid.
Caller: Good afternoon Utrice this is Victor from Queens.
Utrice Leid: Hello Victor.
Caller: Let me preface my question by saying that my parents were immigrants from Central Europe. They had to wait two years before they were allowed into the country and my father couldn’t wait to become a citizen. My concern is the issue of citizenship. There seems to be a premise that his is a democratic republic whereas it seems really to have become a (unclear) confederacy, over a hundred years ago. I mean there are countries in the world that don't like America and a had a vested interest on destroying our constitutional system. Infiltration is a method of warfare and there are countries that would seek to bring in people who are contrary to American interests. And I’m really not so much concerned about the poor people I’m concerned about - they have a lot of money, who can buy in and buy out and basically just pirate the nation.
Utrice Leid: But I’m having some difficulty Victor, just basically identifying the kernel of your argument.
Caller: Well if you’re going to allow people to immigrate and become citizens, shouldn’t there be some protection against those who are undermining citizenship? There’s a national defense issue of a deliberate effort to destroy the constitution. To give a specific example, Eisenhower brought in tens of thousands of former ( u) Not only rocket scientists, whose case is well known but there are the large op. mercenaries. As I understand it the father of the last chairman of the joint chiefs of staff his father was a -- SS Colonel, a member of the Georgian legion. These are members of the European aristocracy against whom we fought a war. The Justice Department officials who brought them in were not punished, there’s no accountability. So I’m kind of going back to your comment of yesterday that there is a mafia within the naturalization service.
Utrice Leid: Well let’s get a reaction to your question Victor, thank you for - .
Arthur Helton: Well, one thing that comes to mind to me is there is and has been a small provision in the immigration laws for visas for those sponsored by the US intelligence community. Its not many, but these are people who are deemed important to the national interest and I suppose this really is a seamy side of immigration policy where you have these kinds of interests being pursued in the context of immigration policy. The other thing that comes to mind are investor visa programs. This problem is reconciled to some extent by the notion that those who are to be admitted must be able to invest up to 500,000 dollars and create ten jobs for Americans. This provision was enacted when Hong Kong was being considered for handover, and to provide an option that would benefit the U.S., by the admission of persons of wealth. As it turned out however it was a complicated option, and most of those who left Hong Kong went either to Canada or Australia.
Utrice Leid: Thank you Victor for your call. Hello, you’re listening to WBAI, 99.5 FM and you’re on the air.
Caller: Yes, hello.
Utrice Leid: Yes, whose calling?
Caller: Carol.
Utrice Leid: Thank you Carol. Want to turn your radio down a bit?
Caller: I’m not near a radio, I’m at a payphone.
Utrice Leid: Okay.
Caller: The questions I have are: .... this oath of allegiance that you take, if you object to any part of it, or object to taking an oath at all, do you have to take it, and I have something that says that the US does not recognize dual citizenship but you can ask your consulate about that. But how does that really stand if you’re taking an oath? Okay?
Utrice Leid: We’re listening.
Caller: That’s it.
Utrice Leid: Okay thank you.
Arthur Helton: Well, an oath would be required in order to naturalize and it’s an oath to uphold the principles espoused in the US constitution. It was badly interpreted in the event described by the caller yesterday where the examiner somehow managed to communicate that the individual would have to be prepared to kill for the U.S.. That I think was a clear overstatement of the legal obligation. In terms of dual citizenship, it is becoming increasingly prevalent. Dual citizenship is not recognized by the U.S. and in principle is incompatible with the oath. But it’s not a question of recognition by the US, it’s a question of recognition by the country of dual citizenship. So if that country does not attach any importance to the oath taking, and it’s not a cause to expatriate the individual in question, they can still remain a dual citizen.
Utrice Leid: Well thank you I hope that suffices, Carol, thank you so much for your question. Hello, you’re on the air. The is WBAI.
Caller: Good evening Utrice and good evening to your friends.
Utrice Leid: Thank you very much.
Caller: (Unclear)
Utrice Leid: That’s a question?
Caller: Yes.
Arthur Helton: I think I’d like someone else to answer that question.
Utrice Leid: I wouldn’t know the answer - I don’t. I think that’s called stump the panel.
Arthur Helton: Yes.
Utrice Leid: It’s an interesting notation, an interesting comment, thank you very much. Well we have a couple minute remaining, perhaps we can reflect a little bit, and wax slightly philosophic about whether - you know Mohammed’s point was well taken and I didn’t mean to suggest that it had no validity. But I’m thinking that the range of discussion that we’ve had all week - I’ve just never heard in it you know a lump sum. And you come in earlier Annie about - you were reflecting in the fact that - and you’ve been in this business 16 years- that finally here is an opportunity to explore in an in depth way issues that are important, so vitally important, misunderstood by media, absolutely distorted by mainstream media, or completely ignored by mainstream media. And then exploited by p with political interests to have us move our attention away from the focal issues. And that’s really what I was trying to say to him that I think that we have a pretty decent appreciation of that kind of argument but it hasn’t put us any closer to getting p to appreciate the issue and begin earnest dialogue about it.
Annie Wilson: Yes, I think there’s been a lot of knee-jerk reactions to this very complex and interesting topic. It’s not the only major social issue that’s been dealt with in a summary way, but this has certainly been one of the major ones in the last ten years in this country and I think this kind if dialogue that you’ve been having all week and that you’ve given me the honor to participate in today is a wonderful step in the right direction.
Utrice Leid: Well, I would conclude that it is subjective. But subjectivity doesn’t preclude fairness I think. I think we’re being eminently fair.
Annie Wilson: I believe so to.
Utrice Leid: I really do, only because, basically I think we also are outlining where weak spots are, and it’s not a republican thing it’s not a democrat it’s not a conservative, it’s simply -let’s deal with the situation as it is and I think that’s the mission that we’ve accomplished a bit. Any thoughts Peter?
Peter Kwong: Well I think one of the messages that seems very important is that we ought to be more reflective on immigration issues. We’re dealing with people we don’t know, people we’re not familiar with, often very different and maybe not easy to communicate with, and so there’s a tendency to imagine all kinds of things about how these people may undermine our society. I want to go back to the same point that America is an immigrant country. Immigrants came here wave by wave and they all go through the same experience. In the past immigrants always suffered and it seems to me it would be a lot more rational to try to change the pattern.
Utrice Leid: I want to thank you Arthur Helton for co-hosting as gallantly as you have, and keeping us in focus and bringing your vast expertise to this discussion. I want to thank Eliana Jacobs, who produced this discussion and I want to thank the OSI for making available not just Arthur Helton but other guests as well.