Radio Show

Caution - Immigrant Families

Host Intro: In the United States, five million children States have at least one immigrant parent who lacks legal work papers and faces deportation if arrested. Millions of children in the United States have at least one parent who lacks legal papers, which means that parent, even if working and otherwise law-abiding, can be deported at any time.  The same is true for children who were not born in the U-S, even if they’ve lived in the United States for most of their lives.  These issues worry teens at Casey Middle School who are part of the Latino community.  Journalists from this community chose the topic of immigration to investigate this year.  Casey Middle School Journalism teacher Lee Lazar, assisted them. KGNU's Shelley Schlender also helped them, and she's the executive producer.  We also want to thank the Boulder Youth Opportunities Advisory Board for the seed grant that made this project possible.

Here’s this teen journalism report about immigration.   A call-in show follows this program:  http://overdub.kgnu.net/overdubradioshow.php?show_id=373
Groups Featured in this report include:

Full Text:

MUSIC UP

My name is David
I’m Raul
Hi, I’m Andrea
My name is Alidra.

Here’s a story that David shared with us about his mom coming to the United States for the first time, when she was 12.

BIRD SOUNDS UP

DAVID
She got to see the United States for the first time, and my mom says she was amazed because she got to see green grass.  She saw trees that had life—like squirrels, birds.  She would rarely see life except dogs, cats, chickens, pigs, cows, pigeons.

ANDREA
Pigeons!

DAVID
And that’s all she saw until she came to the United States and saw different life.  Her real main job was to get a diploma from high school and go to college, which she succeeded.  Right now, she is a dentist assistant.  My goal for my future is to achieve college, as my mom did, and from there on choose my own path.  This fits a dream come true for me because, if my mom didn’t cross illegally, or if she didn’t come to the U-S at all, I would have been born in Mexico and I would have been struggling.

ALIDRA
This is Alidra.  There’s some good dreams out there, but . . .

ANDREA
. . . sometimes it’s a nightmare to come to the United States.  

ALIDRA
These nightmares are that you may get killed in the border, or you may not see your family ever again.

SHOT

ANDREA
The worst sound is gunshots when they’re getting killed because they’re trying to cross the border or getting hit with sticks, getting tasered.  I know people, cause I used to live in Mexico.  We lived right by the border and we would always see people trying to cross with their kids and their families.  It was at night, so we saw the shadows.  And then there’s these police that stayed by the border, and when they see someone passing by the border, they turn on their sirens.  

SIRENS

ANDREA
They start going after them.

ALIDRA
They shoot right away.

SFX GUNS

ALIDRA
I think that’s just messed up.  They think that every Mexican that comes to the United States is here to do criminal stuff.  They don’t know that some of us are just here to come forward in our future.  They just think that we’re all bad.

MUSIC UP PLUS SOUNDS OF INTERVIEW BEGINNING.

RAUL

This is Raul.  And now we’re going to tell you our story about immigration, and why it’s so important to us.

LEE LAZAR
We're going to start over, because we want really good sound.

ANDREA
Our journalism teacher, Ms. Lazar, was very excited that we were going to do this story.

LEE LAZAR
Why were you interested in doing a story on immigration?

ALIDRA
We did this because we’re Mexicans.

ANDREA
There’s different things that are occurring in the world right now about racism and illegal immigrants.

LEE LAZAR
What do you think are some of the stereotypes that people have about Mexicans?

ALIDRA
That we’re lazy.  That we don’t work, that we just came here to ruin the United States. That we’re the ones that brought drugs in.   I hate that they don’t see the positive side of us that we just came here to come out of the world and try harder and make a life here that we can’t have in Mexico.  

ANDREA
Some of us are trying to get a good education and trying to maintain a good job. If they don’t let us do that, how can we fix the problem.  

LEE LAZAR
When you say they, who’s the they?

ANDREA
I don’t know.  Just people in general.  

ALIDRA
Americans.  The U-S government that wants to throw us out.

LEE LAZAR
If you’re born in the United States but your parents are born in Mexico, Do you think of yourselves as Americans or Mexicans or something else?
  
ANDREA/ALIDRA
We think of ourselves as Latinas because we have both cultures in our blood.  So we can’t really pick a side because we're both . . . . If we’re born here, we’re obviously Americans.  Mexican Americans.  I feel I have more blood as a Mexican than as an American.  They raised me as a Mexican, and I like it that way.  I hate the stereotypes that are going around that they should throw out the Mexicans.  

LEE LAZAR
What questions are you hoping to answer as you do your investigation for the radio?

ANDREA/ALIDRA
Why do they do this to us?  Why do they make us go through all of this when everyone could have a better life here if they just leave out the problems.

LEE LAZAR
So who are you going to talk to to figure out why THEY do this to you?

MUSIC

TEAM
No!  We know what Immigration is.  Immigration and Customs Enforcement?  ICE is Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

RAUL
Before we start being journalists, we couldn’t decide who might be safe to talk to.  

ALIDRA
We were scared because we all know people who are illegal immigrants here, and we don’t want to get them in trouble.

RAUL
I’m going to search for immigration attorney.

ALIDRA.
Yeah, but he could pressure us and ask, where does your family live?  I’ll be like, AAAH!

ANDREA
I’ll be like, shut up, buddy.  I’m the one asking questions here.

RAUL
Andrea’s trying to make the immigration group feel more braver.  This made me feel good.  Yeah, more brave.

ALIDRA
He’s an immigration attorney, dude.  

ANDREA
Wait, an immigration attorney is the people that help the immigration?

ALIDRA
Oh, I was thinking, like ICE.

DAVID
I’m going to figure this out by searching the internet.

ALIDRA
I think I’m going to ask.  I don’t know.  Um.  Do we go to the cop station?  

ANDREA
At the beginning when we started doing this story, we thought about telling a cop or ICE or someone not really safe to talk to.

DAVID
I think the safest person is the immigration attorney because I’m not sure what they do, but they might talk about the rights you might have or not.  I'm not sure.

ALIDRA
I think the safest person is the cop.  Because immigration involves cops and people that have outfits that look like cops.  (EMBARRASSED LAUGHTER)  La Migra!

ALIDRA/ANDREA
One-two-three-four.  La Migra is the Mexican word for ICE.

ALIDRA
La Migra means people that take Mexicans and other people back to other places.  It’s a powerful word to all of us that are immigrants.  

ANDREA
When we yell La Migra in my neighborhood, people start running, grab their kids by the hair if they’re at the park and tell them, come one,  hurry up, let’s get inside, they lock the windows, close their doors, they hide in trees, behind a car, under cars.

DAVID
I think ICE is I guess patrollers that separate you from your family if they don’t have legal documents, and we don’t really like them.  But for USA, they’re saying the US is getting overpopulated, so maybe that’s the main reason they’re doing this, and cause they own the USA, not us.  The hard thing is we’re just looking for a better life.  And they’re just making it worse.

ALIDRA
They sound mean.

MUSIC BREAK

ALIDRA.  
As a journalist, I was afraid to talk to people because I didn't know how to hide some stuff or how to react.  So we got advice from the assistant principal.  He told us we should use some fake names, and here's Drew Adams.


ADAMS
So I would probably avoid using real names.  You might use pseudonyms, which is replacing a real name with someone else’s name. You could always use the excuse, I have a friend who is undocumented, and I’m wondering what would happen if this friend . . . and you could create the scenario that way.

ALIDRA
As journalists, we used our real names.  But when we talked about people, we used other names.  After we had advice from our assistant principal, we talked to other people, and we talked to Heather.  

HEATHER
My name’s Heather Schmidt and I’m the Middle School Coordinator at the Family Learning Center.

ALIDRA
We choose Heather because we know her by the Family Learning Center and she works around a lot of kids and knows how to motivate them.  We just practiced on her how to talk with other people, and she was a good person to talk with.

ALIDRA
What do you think about immigration?

HEATHER
It’s a really tough issue.  On a personal level, I know a lot of people who are here illegally and they’re amazing, hard-working people that should have a path legally into this country and there isn’t a clear way for them to gain legal citizenship.

DAVID
Do you think this economy would fall apart if there was no immigrants in this country?

HEATHER
That’s an awesome question.  I used to work in a restaurant and the people who typically did the jobs that a lot of people didn’t want to do were illegal workers.  There are a lot of undocumented workers doing jobs that American citizens don’t want to do.  So yeah, in a sense, I do think the economy would fall apart because there’s this underbelly of society that’s not recognized, that takes out our trash, that raises our babies, that cleans our homes, that washes our dishes, and cleans our hospitals, yet who’s going to give them a pathway into this country.  I mean, who’s going to do that work?

TALKING WITH SARA --- LAUGHTER

RAUL
That’s Sarah.  She’s like a counselor to me.  We tell her questions about Mexico, about how hard it is to come over here and start over here.  

ALIDRA
Have you heard of any students parents getting deported?

SARAH
A lot.

ALIDRA
The question we asked Sarah is if our parents were safe.  And that mattered to us because if our parents aren't safe, we aren't safe.  Without them, we can't have food on our table, we can't have a roof and it's just hard without our parents.

SARAH
For me, it’s really sad, and it’s here in boulder Valley.  Families who are separated, and sometimes it’s the mother, sometimes it’s the father.


ALIDRA/ANDREA
What do you do to help the kids?  For the parents who are getting deported, what kind of advice do you have for kids.

SARAH
Usually the kids are not in danger because they are citizens.  Who are in danger, it’s the parents who are undocumented.

ALIDRA
Let’s say that my friend’s parents were deported and she was alone and she didn’t have any of her uncles here.  What would you give her for advice?

SARAH
Well, to work hard.  All the Mexicans, we are really hard workers.  I worry about a lot of my families.  I’m always worried, and especially the kids, who they don’t have any clue what’s going on.  Even 11 12 years old in middle school, they don’t understand why they take the parents away. Why they deported them.

DAVID
Do you think most people who deport immigrants are cold-blooded or are they just doing their job?

SARAH
They’re nasty people, course they’re doing their job.  But they don’t want us here.  They don’t want the immigrants here.  A lot of those people.  Even if it’s part of their job, they don’t like us here.

RAUL
We asked her if she’s afraid of policemen, but she says she’s not.

SARAH
I’m not afraid of immigration or police officers.  You know, they’re supposed to protect you!

RAUL
I think, yeah . . .  she said the truth.

MUSIC

RAUL
We were kind of scared to talk to a police officer, but Ms. Lazar told us to get brave and just tell her questions and see what she says.

MORRIS
I’m officer Morris, M-O-R-R-I-S and I work for the Boulder Police Department.  And I’m currently a school resource officer, assigned to Casey and Centennial middle school.

ANDREA
Say they were jaywalking and a police officer asked, Can I see your papers?  What are some things that we can tell them?

MORRIS
Is this an immigrant who’s in the country legally or illegally?

ANDREA
Illegally.

MORRIS
Okay.  So, jaywalking could, I guess technically be considered a crime, we would ask anyone we stop for some type of identification, so we know at least who we’re talking to, and that they’re really who they say they are.  So that would be a standard question we would ask anyone whether it be someone here illegally or legally or whatever.  If that person wants to tell us that they’re here illegally, that’s their business, but that’s not a question we would normally ask in that situation.

ANDREA
Would you ask for their passport or . . .

MORRIS
Well . . . We would ask for some kind of identifying information.  I guess it would depend on what they had available.  Sometimes people from Mexico will give us their Mexican driver’s license.  

ALIDRA
What do you think about the stereotypes that are made against Mexicans?

MORRIS
Oh, that’s not good, if I hear it around school, and other places, it bothers me a lot.  Like, sometimes I’ll get, oh, you’re the SOR over at Casey and I’ll go, yeah.  And they’re like, Is it okay over there, and I go, yeah, it’s fine.  It makes me mad because people sometimes have that misconception.  I get just as many calls at my other school as I do at this school.  It’s frustrating a little bit. I kind have to education them.


RAUL
Next we talked to Lee Shainis.

MUSIC UP

SHAINIS
My name is Lee Shainis, and I’m the excutive director of a non-profit organization called Intercambio de Communidades.  We train volunteers to teach adult immigrants English . .

RAUL
He has classes that he does with immigrants.

SHAINIS
And our mission to provide people with the skills to be able to communicate here and also to integrate the immigrant and non immigrant communities.

ANDREA
Well, my name is Andrea.  Do you believe there will be immigration reform?

SHAINIS
Eventually, yes.  This year, I don’t think so, unfortunately.  There’s too much conflict around the issue right now.  Ninety nine percent of the people I know are pro-immigration.  The one percent are usually outside the organization.  I like talking with those people to hear, what are their concerns, because what I hear is mostly pro-immigration.  I know there are a lot of people with concerns about immigration.  If the both sides aren’t acknowledging that they’re listening to the other side, then change is less likely to happen.  And that’s one thing I think the pro-immigration people need to do a little bit more.  Is look at the other side and say, Hey, we hear you.  We understand that drug smuggling is a concern, and there is some validity to it, we understand that the overcrowding of schools is a real concern.  It’s not just racism.  It’s a real concern for people.  My mom is a schoolteacher in Maryland.  She has a lot of diversity, a lot of immigrants in her school, and her school has grown a lot and they need to hire more teachers, they need more money, they need more resources.  She’s very pro-immigration, but she has some concerns about that piece of that.  She is very pro immigration but she has some concerns about that piece of it.  So there are some concerns that are out there. Usually it’s just people arguing, this is my side, and this is my side . . .

MUSIC UP

ALIDRA
Next, we went to Mr Lurry's 6th grade social studies class. We went there to find the other voice of the non pro immigrant.

SAM
Hi, my name is Sam, and in this class, we’re studying immigration and it’s pretty fun, and today we’ll be talking about the new Arizona law, and I hope you enjoy.

ALIDRA
Mr. Lurry told them to pretend they were going to support the Arizona law.

LURRY
What are people going to say if they’re against people coming into the country, and especially if they’re not documented.

STUDENT 1
Say someone comes in illegally and they want to do a job, and they can do it for less money than someone who’s legal can do it, that person that’s legal might lose their job.

STUDENT 2
Cause it seems like the Arizona people kind of like this law . . .

ALIDRA
It was frustrating sometimes to hear the other side, because it's our race.

RAUL
Sometimes me and Andrea were like, what are you thinking?

ANDREA
For me, the experience was really good to see and what they thought about it and what they felt, but sometimes I just wanted to scream at the people that agreed with the law.  Because it’s my culture, and it’s tough to see them going through that.  At the same time when they gave us some reasons why they thought about it, I don’t agree with the Arizona law, but to hear what they had to say about it and why they thought it should be approved or whatever was like, Okay.

MR. LURRY
Remember we looked at the state department website.

STUDENTS
Yeah

LURRY
Remember how long it takes for your average family to become legal if they’re coming from Mexico.  How long was it?

STUDENTS
Eighteen years.

MUSIC UP

ALIDRA
When we were talking to Mr. Lurry's class, we were kind of okay with them telling us stuff.  But when there are stereotypes on TV, we can't do anything about it.
ALIDRA
In TV, they were like making us Mexicans or other immigrants as aliens, as like bad people, as the weird people that don’t exist.  They were not treating us like people on TV.

ANDREA
They were treating us like animals.  Or different creatures.  They called us aliens and we’re not aliens.

ALIDRA
I don’t have an antenna.  That’s all I know.

ANDREA
When they’d call us aliens, they thought it was funny.

ALIDRA
We all need someone to believe in us.  In school or in our lives to see if we're going to have a happy future.  Or just fail, because they don't believe in us.

ILLEGAL AMIGOS SONG
No nut's no glory, hear the whole story
I'll be on stage, when you kill that punk for me
Pick up your ride, luxurious or sporty.
Money is no object, in this killer project.

ALIDRA
In those lyrics, it says that about like killer gangster rides.  That’s practically the whole gangster life.  Hit and run.  (SHARP LAUGH!)

ILLEGAL AMIGOS SONG
Who can hang with Illegal Amigos
Illegal Amigos, from LB's to Kilos
Who can hang with Illegal Amigos
Illegal Amigos, stackin 'em c-noes

ANDREA
Yeah, it’s kind of cool to talk about gangsters and gangs and what they do, but when you’re in it, it’s not.  And the way that people think that when there’s this little group or something of Mexicans that are in gangs or that do drugs or steal, right away, they suspect all Mexicans to do that.  Like when a Mexican girl is pregnant at the age of 14, they think every girl that’s Mexican, will get pregnant at the age of 14.  For other people to say all Mexicans will do that, they don’t know that.

ALIDRA
They don’t know what we go through every day.  They don’t know if we could be shot out of our driveway.  They don’t know that.  We go through like the difficult-est stuff.  And they come and like, tell us, oh, you’re a wetback.  Okay.  Yeah we’re wetbacks, but we come here to have a better future.  

ANDREA
And we struggle to try to get . . .  

ALIDRA
Out of our neighborhood.  Out of our neighborhood is the dangerous-est place we could ever be.

ANDREA
And they say that home is the safest to be and sometimes it not.

MUSIC UP

ALIDRA
I love how I am.  I love like my people.  But sometimes it gets me so tired, I swear I wish I could be white.  They have a better life.  

ANDREA
We’ll put bags on the windows, just to have a car.  White people think that having the best car is, like, oh, yeah, you know, we have this and that.  But some people don’t have that.

ALIDRA
We have to start working at 14.   I know how to work.  I know how to drive a car.  I know how to do anything.  

ANDREA
How to cook, how to clean, how to take care of our siblings, our little siblings.  Three year olds, four year old.

ALIDRA
I love my family.  I love my race.  I love everything about me.

ANDREA
It’s just the advantages that we can’t have.  Things that we can’t do because of our culture.

BIRD SOUNDS UP

ALIDRA
I think that every Mexican has a dream to come to the United States because there’s a lot of pretty things over here to see.  Any immigrant would be the most happiest person in the world, if they got to come over here and see life and see like . . .

ANDREA
. . . the United States and how we live our lives here.  

ALIDRA
Dreams are based over there.  We start our dreams over there, then when we come here, we make our dreams come true.