Engaging

To rave about this piece -- and I recently suggested this in connection with Jake Warga's productions -- is like preaching to the choir. "Immigration 2007-2008" has already been licensed by five public radio stations, including the legendary WNYC in the Big Apple. Far from millions of listeners in New York, we have KUT in Austin and Latino USA to thank for Maria Hinojosa's hour-long, year's worth of immigration stories.

As with any medley, this compilation of a dozen crossing-the-border tales may be excerpted, chopped into twelve drop-ins. The cumulative effect of this piece, however, is more than the sum of its parts. As Hinojosa comments in her postscript, in 2006 the immigration issue was "dead, no longer sexy." In 2007 and 2008, especially during this election year, it has come alive again. Although the issue hasn't emerged noisily during the past few months, this autumn it may well resurface like a drowned corpse.

Speaking of which: one of the strangest stories included here involves a statue of Jesus floating facedown in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, Texas. Whoever launched the statue possibly had in mind the image of an undocumented border-crossing Christ. The image of Jesus doing the dead man's float like a dirt-poor immigrant without official papers inspired one brave local pastor to declare, "Our lives should always be based in terms of the human person because a human person in Judeo-Christian thought is the image and likeness of God, and God's entire focus is His love of each and every single human being."

Another story I find particularly compelling has to do with the way the Department of Homeland Security has singled out land owned by Mexican-Americans for hundreds of years to build a 370-mile border wall that would supposedly deter illegal immigrants -- while bypassing wealthy Anglos. Billionaire Roy L. Hunt's 6000 acres of borderland are exempt from Michael Chertoff's land grab, whereas Dr. Eloisa Tamez's acres, held by her family for centuries, are threatened with a ridiculous segmented fence. Is this racism or what?

Who among us can turn a deaf ear to what Hillary Clinton, interviewed here, calls the "immigration challenge"? The fact that Clinton voted in favor of the border wall is certainly another tidbit to savor in this comprehensive wrap-up.

James Reiss
Wilmette, IL
June 3, 2008

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