Correction appended.
The political debate over immigration oscillates between barely audible and bellicose. But immigrants are here to stay. They play an essential part in the economy at many levels. They spend -- and send home -- billions of dollars. They settle largely in the suburbs because that's where the jobs are.
Whether in Morris County, N.J., or in Santa Clara County, Calif., immigration represents a local story. It involves changing faces and changing accents. And journalists must cover it in a more sophisticated fashion than they have in the past. We must move beyond the stereotypical stories -- beyond the tales of poor and uneducated Mexicans, for instance, and toward stories about the huge number of middle-class immigrants. We can focus on those who own businesses. We might examine the impact they are having on institutions like the Roman Catholic Church. We can even study their impact on us.
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Photos gathered by Jeremy Gilbert/Poynter
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Impact on Americans. The immigrant presence affects all of us. In fact, some laws aimed at "them" have boomeranged back on "us." When you get a new job, you now have to prove you are an American citizen. You didn't have to do that until the 1986
Immigration Reform and Control Act became law.
Since July 1, 2006, U.S. citizens applying for Medicaid or renewing their coverage have been required to prove their citizenship. That means a new burden on low-income folks -- the program has about 38 million current beneficiaries and about 10 million applicants, according to an estimate by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
This change, in the long term, is likely to impede or delay coverage for a significant number of eligible U.S. citizens and impose new burdens on states because they administer Medicaid, according to the Center.
Wealthy Indians. Indians are some of the most fascinating immigrants who come to the U.S., because they ofen arrive as members of the middle class. They usually are college-educated. Many work as computer programmers and medical doctors. They speak English thanks to hundreds of years of British rule and influence.
Most Indians come for the high-tech jobs in Silicon Valley, northern Virginia and central New Jersey. Ketan N. Gandhi, president and publisher, of the Home News Tribune in East Brunswick, N.J., started the glossy and upscale DesiNJ.com for these wealthy readers.
Gandhi knows his audience. He's an immigrant who received his undergraduate degree in accounting from Bombay University in India, a diploma of business management from K.C. College in Mumbai and an MBA from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, according to the Gannett press release about his July 2005 appointment as publisher.
Middle-class Latinos. Let's look at Latinos in the U.S. in a different way. Most Latinos are white. Many Latinos are also middle-class.
Liz Llorente, a reporter for the The (Bergen Co., N.J.) Record, who has won awards for her coverage of immigrants, is herself a Cuban immigrant. She has written several stories about the lives of middle-class Latinos in New Jersey.
In 2002, Llorente wrote an article for the American Society of Newspaper Editors, urging editors to move away from stereotyping Latinos:
We are Latinas and Latinos who never considered dropping out, who have never been on welfare, who have never known a gang member, whose primary language is English, who grew up watching 'Romper Room' and 'The Brady Bunch,' and who were never racially profiled because our skin is white, our English is accentless (though some of us say 'dawg' sometimes).
We are no small group -- there are millions of us.
We are assimilated, middle-class and love our Starbucks latte as much as our café con leche. Our kids are in lacrosse, chess clubs and violin lessons. Some of us have had identity crises, others have not. Some of us make the effort to keep a connection to our roots -- we work with immigrants, or socialize with them, or help them. Others -- many others -- have shut the door.
They have little to do with Latinos other than their relatives.
Our lives have added new chapters to the story of Hispanics (and immigration, for that matter) in the United States. And yet, the media are still stuck on the old chapters, the ones that dominated a generation ago, and that were never very accurate, anyway.
Immigrants as new business owners.The Washington Post has done stories looking at immigrants who are opening new businesses. The paper's Krissah Williams wrote a story called "Tenacity Drives Immigrant's Dream" in which she explored the growing world of small businesses started by Hispanic immigrants in the U.S. Williams spent nine months chronicling Guatemalan immigrant José Tenas' battles with English-speaking bureaucrats and baffling regulations as he struggles to open a restaurant. The National Association of Hispanic Journalists, which honored her work this fall, said that this personal -- yet universal -- story is told with a grace that keeps the reader hooked.
Catholic Church. Have you noticed how many local Catholic churches are celebrating Mass in Spanish these days?
The Knight Center for Specialized Journalism at the University of Maryland held a seminar for editorial writers last month titled "Immigrant Issues for a New America." Some speakers mentioned that the Church is a large player in the immigration discussion.
On a more local level, The News & Advance newspaper in Lynchburg, a small town in central Virginia, ran a story Dec. 10 on the observance of the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe held at Holy Cross, a local Catholic church.
This is noteworthy because Lynchburg is a city of about 60,000 people where the Spanish-speaking population is too small for the U.S. Census to even report it.
But The News & Advance ran a great story that included even the history of why this is such an important day for Mexicans -- Our Lady of Guadalupe is the patron saint of Mexico.
Holy Cross holds a weekly Mass in Spanish in this small city in the bowels of Virginia -- another indication of how fast the country is changing.
Soccer teams. Have you noticed who's playing on your winning soccer teams? Paul Cuadros, a former Time magazine reporter, went to live in Siler City, N.C., in 2000 to chronicle the story of Mexicans coming to North Carolina.
Cuadros used a state-champion high school team to tell the story of Americans and Mexicans adjusting to each other in this small city in central North Carolina.
Cuadros' soccer story serves as just one of the many ways that immigrant families working in such industries as poultry and meat-packing continue changing the face of small-town America.
Here is what we must remember: Whenever and wherever the immigration debate takes place in this country, it remains our job as journalists to paint in vivid, true and accurate colors the portrait of the next America.
CORRECTION: The original version of this article provided an incorrect location for
The Home News Tribune. It is located in East Brunswick, N.J.
@Milton Drepaul There is nothing inhumane about sending a citizen...
