IMMIGRATION

JORGE RAMOS, Noticiero Univision Anchor, February 7, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: In your observations, in recent times, has the nature and incidences of racial profiling changed?
RAMOS: Every single immigrant could suffer the consequences of racial profiling. My position is that immigrants should not be the scapegoats for the enormous failures in intelligence work before September 11th.
Yes, more precise, accurate, effective intelligence work is needed to fight terrorism. But immigrants should not be the scapegoats.

GITA SAEDI, “The New Americans” Series Producer, March 20, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: We note that Baltimore and other cities have created immigrant offices that help immigrants thrive as a community. They are encouraged to work and assist each other and to reside nearly each other in marginal neighborhoods. This seems to be successful in stopping the spread of urban decay and turning it around. Have you observed this, and what has been your impression of these efforts?
SAEDI: I have seen this and tonight you’ll meet the Flores family, and their experience in the U.S. shows you a community that helps and a community that doesn’t have the infrastructure to help. After working on this film I see what an incredible difference that community effort makes.

AUDREY SINGER, Brookings Institution Visiting Fellow, June 4, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: Baltimore and other communities have encouraged and assisted immigrants to move into marginal neighborhoods, establish a stable community, and reverse the past spread of urban decline. Do you see this as a possibility in other cities, and what needs to be done to allow such efforts to be successful?
SINGER: Really, what will revitalize declining communities in cities with dropping population is job opportunities. For Cleveland or Baltimore of Philadelphia to have success in their campaigns to attract immigrants, it should come with some economic development plan as well. Then the available housing and commercial stock that exists and is vacant can be utilized.
I do think leadership that sends a symbolic welcoming message is important to this process too.

JORGE RAMOS, Univision News Anchor, March 30, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: Our nation’s history has been acceptance of immigrants into a country of opportunity, followed by those residents then seeking to close entrance to others. Isn’t this no different from other times in history and, if so, wouldn’t it be interesting to watch the descendants of subsequent waves of immigration explain why immigration laws should restrict immigration now rather than before their ancestors arrived?
RAMOS: There is nothing more sad in the US than to see an immigrant criticize other immigrants. The identity of the US is linked to our diversity and to our acceptance of immigrants. On the other hand, the US needs more immigrants. For example, the white working age population is going to decrease five million in the next 20 years. And who is going to replace those workers? Who will pay for their social security? Immigrants.

MICHELE WUCKER, author, May 30, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: Would you please describe how the rate of retirement is higher than the rate of new employees being created and the role that immigrants could play in filing jobs that otherwise will be unfilled? WUCKER: The aging of the Baby Boomers is a very big story in this country, as is the growing need for health care personnel to attend to their medical care as they retire. Because the U.S. birth rate in recent years has been much lower, not enough new people are entering the work force. Some industries are already reporting shortages—including, interesting enough, in manufacturing—and others predict rapidly growing worker shortages, particularly in health care. Immigrants generally come when they are at prime working age, so this helps to balance some of the demographic trend.

LIZ STERN, Baker and McKenzie LLP Partner, May 24, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: What is the point of requiring people to return to their home country before they may become a legal citizen? Doesn’t this make such people a greater potential security risk as any criminal interests back in their home country would know which people were applying for American citizenship? They would know which people to contact while they were back in their home country in hopes of recruiting them to engage in criminal activity when they return to American. Wouldn’t it make more sense not to require people to return to their home countries?
STERN: The home country return allows for security checks to occur in full before return to the U.S., hence that’s part of the current political compromise. Remember this is only for folks who have not been in legal status, or are in the pool of guest workers that is now being created and which, in a sense, have to earn the ability to return. The professional corps will still have the ability to adjust status is the U.S., provided they have maintained their status throughout their tenure in the U.S.

JOHN T. STIRRUP, Prince William County (Va.) Supervisor, July 16, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: I understand your concern, yet I don’t believe you understand the motivation of many of the illegal immigrants. They wish to be here illegally because it is still a better life, with better opportunities, than what they left behind. Throughout our history, the issue has been the same. People arrive in American, and then wish to shut the entrances and not allow anyone else after them. Our nation has grown with new immigrants, and without new immigrants, our economy will not grow as it should.
STIRRUP: I agree with you to a point. What we are discussing is the Rule of Law. We have always welcomed immigrants to the United States, legally. By giving illegal immigrants the same status as those who have waited and entered legally, you do an incredible disservice to those who entered legally.

ORIANNA ZILL DE GRANADOS, PBS Frontline/World producer, May 28, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: About how much smuggling (across the Mexican-US border) is human traffic, how much is drugs, and what are some of the other things being smuggled across the border?
DE GRANADOS: We were very surprised to learn that the US government does not have estimates or research studies about how many people or drugs are actually being smuggled across the border. The UC San Diego study we referred to in the piece (“Crimes at the Border”) estimates that slightly less than 50 percent of the people who cross get apprehended and there about 800,000 apprehended last year along the southern border.
In terms of drugs, there is no way to know how much is getting across, but it’s a large amount.
Guns are one thing that are actually smuggled from the US INTO Mexico because it is illegal to sell guns in Mexico. Money (from drugs) is also smuggled back the other way from US into Mexico.
CZIKOWSKY: The introduction states that smuggling has a corrupting influence on guards. Yet, are these payoffs creating the corruption, or might some of these guards have been corrupt to begin with and perhaps that is why some sought to become guards?
DE GRANADOS: We learned that some smuggling organizations ARE actively trying to recruit guards. And some use tactics like offers of sex and money to do that.
Obviously, if the guard takes the bait, he is corrupt, but what we found interesting as that in the old days, the smuggling business did not have enough money to really tempt these guards to throw away their careers. Now, the money is plentiful and it presents a temptation that some people find hard to resist.
Most border agents are not corrupt and do not succumb to that temptation.