Fellows Discuss Immigration

While recent turmoil in the capital markets has kept most politicians focused on the state of the economy, the Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism hosted 14 of its fellows Friday for a day-long symposium addressing what is expected be another critical issue for the next administration: immigration.

This year’s fellows—who will spend the academic year studying at Harvard as part of the nation’s oldest mid-career fellowship for journalists—attended three different panel discussions of academic and journalistic luminaries, including Patrick J. McDonnell of the Los Angeles Times, who addressed immigration law, and Nina Bernstein of The New York Times, who focused on immigration’s future.

“It’s an issue that is still very important, especially in light of the economy,” said Tommy Tomlinson, a Nieman Fellow who is a columnist for The Charlotte Observer. “For immigrants that are still here, if unemployment rises, they will be seen as stealing American jobs.”

Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, a New York University professor who founded the Harvard Immigration Project at Harvard Law School, organized Friday’s event and cited a need for discourse between journalists and academics on the issues of immigration.

“It was time to bring journalists and academics together to discuss, really, the use of immigration language in the media, and how that affects understanding of immigration in the public eye,” he said.

The fellows and panel members discussed topics ranging from the justifications for the most current immigration raids to the legitimacy of immigration as either a civil or criminal issue.

The day was divided into three parts: Immigration and the Economy, Immigration and the Law, and Immigration and the Assimilation of the Second Generation.

“It doesn’t seem like there will be a comprehensive piece of legislation [on immigration] in the near future,” said Cristina Rodriguez of the NYU School of Law. “There is too much to be dealt with in Congress right now. We might see piecemeal reform, though, before comprehensive reform. Unfortunately, if we had had a more credible president in office in the last few years, we might have seen something comprehensive go through. Immigration reform, in this sense, is a casualty of the Iraq War.”

Many fellows noted that they reached new levels of understanding regarding their use of language in relation to immigration and how the public receives such language, as well as a greater understanding of the issues of immigration and how they relate to society.

“Talking about language, about the issues as a whole, it makes us more aware of our biases, and how we can remove them from our writing,” said Thabo J. Leshilo, a Nieman fellow who is the editor in chief of Sowetan, a South African newspaper.

Though most of the fellows did not feel that the symposium, in and of itself, would change much in terms of the political or cultural thinking concerning immigration, they did note that there could be trickle-down effects.

“I don’t think a symposium like this can change the status of immigration,” said Julie Reynolds, a fellow who is a criminal justice reporter for the Monterey County Herald. “But it can change the way we talk about the status of immigration, and in turn will shape public conversation. This could eventually influence politics.”