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August 28, 2001

Host: Michael Grant
Topic: Community Roundtable
"Immigration"
Producer: Paul Atkinson
In-Studio Guests:
Dr. Bruce Merrill, director of KAET poll and the Walter Cronkite media research program at ASU;
Carlos Duarte, community organizer with Valley Interfaith Project and candidate for a Ph.D in social anthropology at ASU;
Karen Kurtz, human services director for the city of Mesa;
F. C. Slaght, III, president of Westwood Village & Estates Neighborhood Association in Central Phoenix and a facilitator for the Maie Barlett Heard Community Partnership of Neighborhoods, Businesses and Heard Elementary

MICHAEL GRANT: "Tonight, immigration is under the microscope of local leaders on the Community Roundtable. They'll discuss the impact new immigrants have on our neighborhoods and schools. Plus, results of a new Channel 8 poll on the stadium. Would the public ever feel completely safe at the Tempe site?"

MICHAEL GRANT: "Good evening, I'm Michael Grant. If a stadium for the Arizona Cardinals is built at the proposed site in Tempe just east of Sky Harbor Airport, about half of Maricopa County voters say they'd feel safe attending events there. About the same number of people say they would not feel safe even if the proposed stadium is shifted off the center line of Sky Harbor's north runway. That, according to the latest KAET poll of 414 registered voters living in Maricopa County.

Voters were also asked where the stadium should be built if safety issues at the Tempe site are adequately resolved. Only 28% want it to remain in Tempe. 36% prefer the west valley. 6%, the Tempe-Mesa border. 3% downtown Phoenix. And 5% said don't build it at all. A total of 57% favored a location other than the site in Tempe. The poll conducted by KAET and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Telecommunication has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.8%."

MICHAEL GRANT: "Here now to talk about the results is Dr. Bruce Merrill, director of KAET poll and the Walter Cronkite media research program at ASU. You know, Bruce, actually, with all of the adverse publicity, over the past -- seems like we've been at this two years, I guess, and intensive for about two months, actually a 50-50 split to a certain extent is not bad."

BRUCE MERRILL: "It really isn't. This is one of those cases, Michael, where you can really read it either way, that 50% is too high or it's ok. I think I agree with you. I think with all of the negative publicity, safety is something that has an emotional impact on people, and I think with all of the negative publicity about safety that one could really argue that 50% of feeling safe, probably isn't too bad. The main reason we asked this question was not to really deal with so much with where the stadium is and whether or not people feel safe about it, but we were really kind of interested in what has been the impact of the media wars related to this question, because both sides, the long people and the people that want this in the west side, have been very negative and critical about Tempe. The Tempe people have been very negative and critical about phoenix and the west side."

MICHAEL GRANT: "Right."

BRUCE MERRILL: "So I think more than anything else, this is a question that relates to who's winning those wars and what it seems to be is it's about 50-50." MICHAEL GRANT: "Right. You could almost see it as a confirmation of what has gone on before. Let's face it, it was about a 50-50 vote. There was substantial division over where the stadium should go in February and to a certain extent, these results are showing that."

BRUCE MERRILL: "Exactly. Remember, we did a poll about a year ago or so and we asked people where the stadium should be, and about the same number of people felt it should be in Tempe as not in Tempe. That hasn't even changed a whole bunch, even though the decision has been made. Now, the one interesting finding, I guess, is the only demographic that related to either of these questions was age. And the older a person was when we talked to them, the more likely they were to feel unsafe if they were to attend an event in the stadium, and the more likely they were to want the stadium on the west side."

MICHAEL GRANT: "To what do you attribute that?"

BRUCE MERRILL: "Well, I think it's really self-interest in a way. I think that people on the -- want it on the west side because more older people live on the west side. If you ask a question, do you want it closer to where you are, so you don't have to drive as far, I think it just makes more sense that older people are -- because more of them are in the West Valley, are going to answer it that way. In terms of safety it makes sense also. The older a person gets, they are a little bit more concerned about safety issues. When we were young and frivolous, we did a lot of things that we wouldn't do as we've gotten older. So I really think that it's just kind of common-sense finding.

MICHAEL GRANT: One other interesting result in this, where should the site be built, was the -- what was it? 5%, don't build it at all?"

BRUCE MERRILL: "Sure."

MICHAEL GRANT: "A lot of this debate is still playing out in terms of the long-standing debate about this isn't an appropriate use of public monies or whatever the person's view of the issue was."

BRUCE MERRILL: "There's no question. I think you raise a really important question, because we're likely to see more of these kinds of votes, and that's that this did divide the community. The vote barely passed by a little over 50%. The cardinals spent several million dollars presenting their position. The opposition spent, really, I think less than $100,000. So they were outspent just many, many times, and yet it was still 50-50. So there's no question that this is an issue that is still controversial, still divides the community and there hasn't been a lot of change in the last year."

MICHAEL GRANT: "One survey technique question that occurs to me on something like this, we polled registered voters in Maricopa County."

BRUCE MERRILL: "Yeah."

MICHAEL GRANT: "Will that change if you just poll the general population?"

BRUCE MERRILL: "In this case it would. In my opinion, if we had interviewed all adult heads of households, in other words, included more people that weren't registered, people that are not registered tend to be lower socioeconomic or a little more blue collar and a little bit more in Arizona, Hispanic. The interesting thing is those groups tend to be the core NFL football fans. Actually, the most support for NFL football comes from working class, blue collar people. If we had included all adults, people would have felt it was a little more safe and probably not quite as likely to want it in the West side."

MICHAEL GRANT: "We appreciate the volunteers certainly on a hot weekend."

BRUCE MERRILL: "They did a great job coming in this weekend, believe me. Some of them melted at the door."

MICHAEL GRANT: "That makes two of us. Bruce Merrill, thanks very much for the info."

MICHAEL GRANT: "Before we get to the issues, here are some statistics on immigration. The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that 630,000 Arizonans are foreign born, or just more than one in ten. More than a quarter million came to the u.s. over the past ten years. One-third of immigrants are legal citizens. 60% live in poverty. 40% have no healthcare insurance."

MICHAEL GRANT: "On tonight's Community Roundtable, a "hot button" topic in Arizona -- immigration. Joining me to talk about it are Carlos Duarte, a community organizer with Valley Interfaith Project. Mr. Duarte is a candidate for a Ph.D in social anthropology at ASU. Karen Kurtz is human services director for the city of Mesa. Ms. Kurtz has supervised that city's efforts to study and address the issue of day laborers. And F. C. Slaght, III, is president of Westwood Village & Estates Neighborhood Association in Central Phoenix. Mr. Slaght is also a facilitator for the Maie Barlett Heard Community Partnership of Neighborhoods, Businesses and Heard Elementary."

MICHAEL GRANT: "F.C. how well have neighborhoods absorbed that quarter million immigrants? That's a big number over the past ten years."

F.C. SLAGHT: "That is a large number. The neighborhoods for the most part have absorbed it quite well. I think there's a great deal of opportunity in which we can assist each other out and help each other out in solving our problems. I view that our greatest challenge is the communication effort and education at this particular point in time. The neighborhood association who has been in existence does have usually a background of being able to work through issues and problems within a community. So, I feel that that should be used as a resource for the immigration issue."

MICHAEL GRANT: "How well does the assimilation process work, Carlos?"

CARLOS DUARTE: "Well, to tell you the truth, it's a very complex process. What we see when immigrants come to new communities, there's white flight, the Caucasians start leaving. But some of them can't because of economic issues. What happens then, it's a long process in which the immigrants start commune - stop communicating with the previous residents in the area, but it's really rough, a rough process, because of the language. That's part of it. And also because of some misunderstanding, cultural misunderstandings between the two or three or four groups because you have Caucasians and then Mexican-Americans that have lived here forever, and then you have different groups from different parts of Mexico, and then you also have people from different communities in Central America."

MICHAEL GRANT: "What are some of the examples of cultural misunderstandings?"

CARLOS DUARTE: "For example, it's very usual to have big reunions every weekend. You have family come to the house. You have music, dance and you have a couple of drinks and you do that on your front porch. That's totally unacceptable for Caucasians. They don't like to see a big group of brown people together in front of a house making loud noise."

MICHAEL GRANT: "Loud music..."

CARLOS DUARTE: "Drinking and a lot of cars parking in front of their porches. So that's part of it."

F.C. SLAGHT: "And if I may, part of that is, as a neighborhood leader, I can address this quite directly. Part of that is because of what's left behind, subsequent to the party. I can tell you that on three different occasions, we've had to go out as neighborhood residents, go out and pick up the left over beer cans, beer bottles, the cigarettes, matches and that sort of thing. So it becomes a safety issue as far as we're concerned, and a health issue for the children in our communities. But I agree with you, though, Carlos. There is cultural differences. I don't think that it's - that the Anglo-American is not wanting to see a brown-skinned culture enjoying their family. I just think that there are some things that are more acceptable and, of course, we have city ordinances that disallow parking in your front yard, music after 10:00 p.m. That sort of thing."

MICHAEL GRANT: "Karen, fair measure of this quarter million end up in the east valley over the past 10 years?"

KAREN KURTZ: "I think so. I think you'll see areas in Mesa first of all, with the new census data, 20% of our population is now Hispanic, the first early figures that we've heard. You can see some communities where the day labor issue is most prevalent. The elementary school in that area has gone from 18% Hispanic to 82% Hispanic over a 14-year period. Those are some of the more visible indicators that we do have an immigrant population that's settling there."

MICHAEL GRANT: "Is Arizona schizophrenic on this issue? Your reference to the day labor situation, I want to get to that in a couple of minutes, but sort of illustrative of the fact that it does seem to me that people fully understand there are economic benefits to the labor that comes here, read here "cheap" labor. That's not to say there aren't social costs as well, but there are tasks that benefit us. At the same time, I don't think generally we care for the proposition that our borders are poorest, that our immigration laws may not mean a lot. It seems to me there is an awful lot of tension and attitudes there."

KAREN KURTZ: "That was one of the key issues that we saw on the day labor taskforce. We had a 20-member citizen task force looking at the issue for 9-1/2 months. The one point they couldn't agree on was helping people that maybe had an illegal status here in the country. So people could really feel compassionate about the fact that workers are here, they are just trying to make a living, they live in conditions of poverty, and yet, we wanted to really hold high as one of our values that we follow our laws and that we're diligent about that. So, really, people were torn by how do we do that? How do we help people that are here but still uphold our value of being law-abiding citizens?"

MICHAEL GRANT: "Carlos, are we schizo on it?"

CARLOS DUARTE: "Yeah, I do think so. The problem is the process of creating those laws in the beginning, because there's been a natural flow of immigration from Mexico to the United States for more than 100 years, more than -- much more than that. When there wasn't so tough enforcement in the border, what people did was come to the United States, work here for a while and then they would go back to Mexico. But now they are so afraid of crossing the border because of people dying trying to cross the border at the hardest places, that they are forced to stay here. I was talking to a resident here that hasn't been able to go back to Mexico for 10 years. You know, his mom has died. You know, he hasn't seen some of his children, because he's just afraid to go back and then return to the United States."

MICHAEL GRANT: "But Carlos, the nation has an inherent right, does it not, to, obviously, enact an immigration policy in an attempt to keep its borders secure?"

CARLOS DUARTE: "Uh-huh. By all means. But what is it? Is it worth it to go against the current or rather, try to go with the current and take advantage of these processes? We're thinking now as a single labor market or both the northern part of Mexico and the southwest part of the United States. If you face reality and you see that is coming, you know, back and forth, and not just with immigration, you see that also with commerce and with industry, so if you take advantage of reality, then you can do - you can do laws that are more compatible to that reality, instead of trying to push something that is inevitable."

MICHAEL GRANT: "We have a wide-open border with Canada. Do you think we ought to try that idea down south?"

F.C. SLAGHT: "I think that there's an opportunity for us to address that, and I think that perhaps we do need to sit down and think about opening the border and working with each other as opposed to against. And -- so that way we can solve all of our different issues. I think the border is just - I think the border is just one of the issues. I mean, you've got crossing the border. You have safety issues. You have healthcare. You have the tax issues. You have -- it's not just as easy as opening the border. There are health -- as we spoke earlier, there's health issues that go along with that, too. And adequacy of those resources and who's going to pay for those."

MICHAEL GRANT: "Speaking of the health issues, is the special session required currently or at least arguably required currently, $20 million? That's basically for healthcare for the undocumented immigrants, right?"

CARLOS DUARTE: "Well, not necessarily, because we've seen that a lot of people go into emergency, not all of them are immigrants. Not all of them are illegal. So poor people go to emergency room without any healthcare insurance or whatnot. So not all of the money is going to the immigrants. Plus, there's the other issue that immigrants are paying taxes, a lot of money is going into that, but it is not returning to the healthcare system. We were just talking about that."

KAREN KURTZ: "Yeah, I think part of the issue is that the things you can easily measure and that are visible and the things that you can't. So where we can attach taxes to things or we can talk about the healthcare cost of immigrants, we say "Oh, well, this population is costing us a lot of money." Most people aren't in tune with how much the price of our goods and services are lower because we have cheap labor. That's an idea, a philosophy, but nobody can point to the actual dollar amount."

MICHAEL GRANT: "Right."

KAREN KURTZ: "So it's a little more nebulous for people to get their hands on. We think about it philosophically, but if we can't count it, we're not going to get passionate about it."

MICHAEL GRANT: "The Arizona legislature -- the goal was to crack down on undocumented immigrants who could use an Arizona's driver's license to obtain jobs or government entitlements. The result, thousands of undocumented immigrants drive without a license and may be posing a greater danger to the public as a result. Carlos, this is a big issue for immigrants?"

CARLOS DUARTE: "It is. It's based on several misunderstandings. People get jobs without driver's licenses. People drive without driver's licenses. People get services without driver's licenses. So, it's just creating a safety problem for all people living in Arizona, because what happens is, people still drive without it, but they don't have insurance. So if they hit you, what they do, most of the time, is just run away. They leave the car there. So who's paying for that?"

MICHAEL GRANT: "Are undocumented immigrants going to get a driver's license and secure insurance?"

CARLOS DUARTE: "For car insurance, you mean?"

MICHAEL GRANT: "Right."

CARLOS DUARTE: "Yes, if they get a driver's license, most likely they will get car insurance. That's beneficial for them. They've had the experience of being involved in accidents and either paying, you know, just having to lose their cars or having to pay for their repairs at some moment. So it definitely is also beneficial for them."

KAREN KURTZ: "Part of the issue, I think, is the systems that we set up for people. Can they comply? Part of it is educating people about what the laws are, but then, if we set up artificial barriers for people so that they can't comply with the law, then we end up with maybe some unintended consequences, like having higher number of uninsured motorists on the road. So what happens to everybody else's uninsured motorist insurance coverage?"

MICHAEL GRANT: "One of the concerns that I hear expressed frequently on this issue is well, yeah, but the driver's license is a ticket to other things. Armed with a driver's license, you can register to vote, you can gain access to other things. Is that an argument?"

KAREN KURTZ: "I don't know enough about the details of that to know if it is. But if it is, then let's look at those other systems that we are concerned about people getting access to -"

MICHAEL GRANT: "And not use that as the ticket?"

KAREN KURTZ: "Right, and not putting artificial barriers on it. We still pay the price. It comes out somewhere."

CARLOS DUARTE: "I would have to say categorically that having a driver's license does not open the door for you to perform citizen or to have citizen services. You are usually required to have a social security number, to have any of those privileges, and having a driver's license is not a tool to getting to that."

MICHAEL GRANT: "Ok. let me -- F.C. let me start with you on this one. There is a couple of major public policy initiatives right now at least under consideration nationally. The first is amnesty for illegal aliens, undocumented immigrants in the country currently. Should we consider that?"

F.C. SLAGHT: "I think we should consider it. There are -- they're already here, I mean. And I think we need to take a look at the fact that there are problems that are being enhanced, per se, because we keep going around and around. And as Karen said, the artificial barriers and trying to resolve the issue, where if we can come to an agreement and this is where we disagree, and this is where we're at now, but what's -- yeah, I don't foresee what's wrong with allowing the amnesty to take place now."

MICHAEL GRANT: "This one really raises a lot of people's hackles from the standpoint -- it's not unlike granting amnesty to people who dodge the draft and broke the law, they didn't agree with that law, but broke the law and then granting them amnesty later. A lot of people say, "Hold it, that just doesn't sound right to me." If they're here illegally, you shouldn't give them amnesty. Do you think a lot of people respond to it that way?"

KAREN KURTZ: "Absolutely. We saw that over and over again in our testimony with the day labor taskforces, that legal issue gets to be such a barrier, it kind of blinds us to everything else in terms of some of the other impacts. I think the reality is that if you start, again, setting up special rules and say, ok, we'll do amnesty for the people that aren't here yet, but for the people that are here, no, you don't get amnesty, you have to go back to your country of origin and get behind everybody else which was part of the testimony we heard from I.N.S., for example, when they came to our group. You set up disincentives for the program to accomplish what you want it to accomplish."

MICHAEL GRANT: "Is the guest worker, proposal, number two, is that more palatable and also it ties a little bit with your point a few minutes ago about there being sort of a larger international labor pool in northern Mexico and southwest United States."

CARLOS DUARTE: "First thing that I would want to say is actually, the guest worker, that's the primary proposal. People are not talking about amnesty. That's something that's not going to happen."

MICHAEL GRANT: "That is true."

CARLOS DUARTE: "That is not going to happen. People are talking about legalization or regularization of people that have been here. We feel that bringing people as part of a guest worker program is only going to enhance the problems of people already living here and to tell the truth, it's not fair and it's not going to be useful. It's not fair because all of the money that has been used to raise this labor force that's coming from Mexico or any other country that you have the guest worker, it's being taken advantage of for the United States. You have these -- single male comes to the United States, works for a couple of years without his family, and this is a big impact to the Mexican family, you need your family to be a human being, basically. So you're separating them from their family. You're not allowing their family to come here, so you create a person that is isolated and, of course, all that follows from that isolation. But at the same time, you are creating competition from the people -- we, the people, that are already living here and that have been living here for ten years. Now, just the concept of being an illegal, it's a really interesting concept, because when you're driving past the limit, you're also breaking the law. So that makes you also an illegal. You're breaking the law."

MICHAEL GRANT: "But I'm lawfully in the country while I'm breaking speed laws."

CARLOS DUARTE: "I know, but it's also breaking the law. When you think of undocumented people, you think of them as criminals, because they are "illegal," you know? It's that connection people make. They are not respecting our laws. Therefore they are criminals, so we should not help them in any way."

MICHAEL GRANT: "F.C. what do you think about a guest worker program?"

F.C. SLAGHT: "In going back to the amnesty issue, if I may for a minute -"

MICHAEL GRANT: "Sure."

F.C. SLAGHT: "I think it's totally ridiculous to send people that are immigrants and illegals right now back to their country of origin and make them reapply to come. I think the problem -- and not necessarily the problem -- but I think one of the issues that's on the table is that there are different -- there are tax base -- they are a tax base that's not being pumped into, when you have an illegal situation. And going back to amnesty, if you looked at that seriously, because they -- the day labor, going to the day labor, a lot of those folks are paid cash under the table. So therefore the social security system is not being plugged into, and -- but yet, if there's healthcare, as we talked about earlier, if there's health issues, well, you do have the right in this country -"

MICHAEL GRANT: "F.C. Slaght, thank you for joining us. Karen Kurtz, our thanks to you. Carlos Duarte, our thanks to you."

MICHAEL GRANT: "Our discussion doesn't have to end here. You are invited to visit KAET's web site. You can find that at www.kaet.asu.edu. Simply click on "HORIZON" in the lower left corner of the screen. You'll find our guests' e-mail addresses, a transcript of tonight's program and Internet links for more information on the subject of immigration. Thanks very much for being here on this Tuesday evening. I'm Michael Grant. Have a pleasant one. Good night."