 Welcome to Viewpoint 360 Immigration. We are happy that you have chosen to attend this event with us tonight and we hope that by the end of the evening you will have learned some historical and cultural background information about immigration and that each of you will be a little bit more critical of the mass media images and stories that we are bombarded with every day. We hope that you will take a step back and examine the stories you see from all sides and analyze the message you are being given. Having said that, before we get into introductions and our presentation, we would like to play in its entirety the video that was playing while you were entering Forum Hall. So let's take another look at the many sides of immigration news stories throughout the years. One for American immigration reform says taxpayers spend $12 billion a year on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally, another $17 billion for the American-born children of illegal aliens known as anchor babies. Thunderbolt from the U.S. Supreme Court today on immigration. As of 10 30 Eastern time this morning the court said Arizona police can officially demand proof from the people they pull over. One crisis on the border right now. White House today asked Congress for $3.7 billion to deal with the flood of unaccompanied children. More than 100 tunnels have been found on our border to smuggle in weapons, to guns, to invading, they're murdering, they're raping. They're among a wave of children who have crossed into the U.S. without their parents. This woman from Honduras collapsing into the arms of an agent when he says yes, you are in the U.S. Tens of thousands have entered illegally this year and more are coming every day. So tonight we will discuss the many angles of immigration including how current developments in immigration nationally reflect global and historical trends, how representations of immigration in the media reflect or alter our perceptions of reality and what the best ways are to find reliable and current information on this topic. But first let me introduce our panelists for the evening. Dr. Tanya Gonzalez is an associate professor in the English department where she teaches American literature, cultural studies, film and Latina studies. She is co-author with Elisa Rodriguez-E Gibson of the book Funny Looking, Humor, Latina Camp and Ugly Betty, forthcoming from Lexington Press in 2015. This semester she is teaching a class titled Dream Acts, Immigration in American Ethnic Literature. Dr. Jeffrey Smith is an associate professor in geography department. His research focuses on cultural change and how people become emotionally attached to a place. He has conducted extensive research in Mexico, Guatemala and Cuba where he has looked at changes within rural communities where large numbers of people have migrated to the United States. He teaches a wide variety of courses at K-State, but one of his most popular classes is Geography of Mexico and Central America. Dr. Norma A. Valenzuela is a visiting instructor in the department of American Ethnic Studies. In addition to Chicana and Latina studies, cultural literature and film, her other areas of specialization are Spanish language instruction, transnational feminist film studies, gender and race ethnicity studies. I am Alia Fritch and I am an assistant professor and librarian at K-State libraries. In addition to working with library instruction and assessment, I am the coordinator for the Dow Center for Multicultural and Community Studies, which is housed in Hale Library. In my role with the center, I work with diversity education and providing resources to our historically underrepresented patron groups on campus. The mission of the center is to serve as an interdisciplinary center for students, faculty, staff and community members who are interested in exploring the reality of human diversity, the changing landscape of American demographics and the impact of globalization. We are also using an endowment established by the Dow Chemical Company to support library acquisitions, professional development and multicultural programming on campus and in the community for which K-State libraries is a sponsor or co-sponsor. We are in fact a sponsor for the event tonight. And now, speaking of tonight's event, let's get started. Once our panel presenters are finished, we will open it up for discussion with the mics on the floor in between the rows. And with that, Dr. Smith. Thank you, Malia. Thank you all for coming tonight. It's really a pleasure to be here and to be a part of this panel. I also wanted to shout out to all the DAS 100 students. Thanks for coming. You've probably been asked or required to come, but we're really glad to see you. And I guess I'm batting lead off. Go Royals and I hope that they win tonight. What we're going to start with is a bunch of numbers. And these numbers are not meant to intimidate you and to overwhelm you, but just to get us start thinking about immigration. Immigration in the United States and especially immigration today. And so what we're going to do after those numbers is then try to explain what some of those numbers mean. The numbers we have provided are accurate, is accurate numbers. There's a whole bunch of disinformation and misinformation out there. And the infotainment news channels do a great job of that. And so we really want to try to give you some good information and then explain it. So here's the numbers that we're starting with. 40 million, 381,000. The number of foreign born people in the living in the United States. Foreign born, the key idea here is the census identifies people as foreign born. That's the best approximation for immigrants. 195, the number of countries in the world. And immigrants to the United States come from every country in the world. And you can see at the bottom, we've also provided the sources for this information. 50, the number of states in the United States. You guys know that. That's easy. But the most important thing is this is where immigrants are going to, every single state in the United States. That has not always been the case. And we'll talk about that. 13%, the percent of the US population that is foreign born. That's a key number. When we look at the geographic perspective, hence why I'm standing here, 13% will come into play and you'll see that number again. 6.9%. The percentage of the Kansas population that is foreign born, 198,000 people. The largest source regions are people from Latin America and Asia, $6.7 billion. The total purchasing power of the Hispanic Latino population in the state of Kansas for the year 2012, the most latest data available. For the Asian origin population, that's $3.1 billion. $9,277, the number of foreign born students enrolled in Kansas universities, all the Kansas universities and colleges, and they contribute $204 million to the Kansas economy. Intuition fees and living expenses. Not something to sneeze at. $69,930. The number of refugees admitted to the United States in 2013. To be considered a refugee, you need to be racially, religiously, or nationally or politically persecuted. Just because you're poor, just because you are economically disadvantaged does not categorize you or does not qualify you for refugee status. $11.3 million. The total number of unauthorized immigrants, illegal immigrants if we want to call them that, living in the United States. And the key thing to remember is that this number has not changed significantly since 2005. There was a steady increase to 2005 and then it has plateaued off. And in some years, including 2013, it has actually decreased slightly. 50.7% is the percentage of unauthorized immigrants who came by land. You can't see the laser. 25.3% came by sea and 24% came by air. Why don't we ever hear about that in the news? We'll talk about that later. Over 1,391, the total number of border patrol agents that are stationed along the U.S. borders, 87% are along the U.S.-Mexican border. Which border is longer, U.S. and Mexico versus U.S. and United States? The Canadian border is a whole lot longer. And that doesn't even include the coastlines. 662,000 is the number of people apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security in 2013. 64% came from Mexico. Mexico is one of our neighboring countries. We'll talk about that later and the significance of that. But 29,387 people from Canada were apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security. The U.S. press doesn't talk about that. That's easily forgotten. 438,000 is the number of people deported from the United States by the Department of Homeland Security. 72% from Mexico, 11% from Guatemala, 8% from Honduras, 4.8% from El Salvador. Oh, and there's the Canadians, 4.4%. 775,000 is the number of unauthorized immigrant youth living in the United States. And 550,000 of them have applied for and have been approved for exemption underneath the DACA program. And Dr. Gonzales will talk about that, Dr. Valenzuela will talk about that particularly. 66,000 is the number of unaccompanied youth and minors that have been detained by the U.S. Border Patrol between 2013 and 2014. 375,000 is the number of cases pending in the U.S. immigration courts. The key idea is that a 661% increase since 2011, $442 million is the amount of money it takes to support unauthorized immigrants in the state of Kansas. That number is derived by looking at the amount it costs to educate unauthorized immigrants, emergency medical care, and incarceration. $442 million. $1.8 billion is the amount of money that the state of Kansas would lose if it removed all unauthorized immigrants immediately. That's 11,879 jobs, $807 million in grossed state product. So let's go back, $442 million is the amount of money that supposedly it takes, it costs to support unauthorized immigrants, $1.8 billion is the amount of revenue generated. $58.9 million is the total amount of taxes paid by unauthorized immigrants, and that includes sales tax, state taxes, and property taxes, you can see the numbers there, and they do pay taxes. And then the last two slides for me as we begin this is 14.5 times. The minimum wage in the United States is 14 times, 14.5 times higher than the minimum wage in Mexico. Mexico's minimum wage if we look strictly at the amount per hour is about $0.50 an hour. In the United States we know that's $7.25 an hour. So my last slide is putting that in perspective. If Canada were offering a minimum wage that is 14.5 times higher than the U.S. minimum wage, their minimum wage would be $105.12 per hour. How many of you are going to Canada with me? Welcome, bienvenidos. The U.S. immigration landscape was very different when many of our families arrived. I ask you to consider that your family might not have been allowed to enter during current laws. Historically speaking, claiming that a family came legally is sometimes inaccurate. Undocumented immigration has been a reality for much of U.S. history. Whether your family immigrated legally or illegally depends on the laws in effect at that time. When many families arrived in what is now the U.S., there were no numerical limitations on immigration. As quota limitations were established and certain immigrants were restricted for entering the U.S. illegal immigration began. The classification of who was legal and who was illegal changed during key immigration events in U.S. history. More importantly, U.S. immigration laws have frequently ignored the larger historical forces that drive immigration. So what were these key immigration events? Let's begin with the Mexican-American War of 1848 that was settled with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in which Mexico lost half of its territory while the U.S. gained Texas, New Mexico, California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and half of Colorado. Mexicans living in the newly acquired U.S. territory had a year to decide whether they wanted to keep their Mexican citizenship or to become U.S. citizens. Around 80,000 Mexicans opted to become U.S. citizens. Further, the beginning of exclusionary laws and centralized control of immigration began with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This prohibited Chinese immigration for 10 years, renewed it in 1892, and made it permanent in 1902. And finally repealed it in 1943 just in time for World War II. The beginning of the 20th century, between 1910 and 1917, the Mexican Revolution pushed the first Mexican political refugees into the U.S. In 1924, Congress implemented the National Origins Act and as the first permanent immigration quota law in the U.S., this discriminatory law restricted the immigration of southern and eastern Europeans and practically excluded Asians and other non-whites from entry into the U.S. That same year, the Orental Exclusion Act of 1924 prohibited most immigration from Asia, including foreign-born wives and children of U.S. citizens of Chinese ancestry. The Act placed no limit on immigration within the hemisphere, which caused the immigration from Mexico to increase as employers looked south to find cheap labor. The 1940s, World War II labor shortages allowed the U.S. to use immigration to replenish its labor force. Due to the shortage of agricultural and railroad workers caused by the war, Congress created the Bracero Program. The guest worker program established in the early 40s had the unanticipated effect of increasing both sanctioned and unsanctioned migration to the U.S. from Mexico. The unauthorized labor also became a systemic feature of the U.S. economy as reflected in the fact that over the 24 years of the Bracero Program, the estimated number of unauthorized persons apprehended nearly 5 million was roughly equivalent to the total number of official contracts issued. In 1954, the Bracero Program was temporarily halted, and the federal government launched Operation Wetback, forcing the return of about 1 million Mexican immigrants and some U.S. citizens of Mexican descent to Mexico. This was the second repatriation of Mexicans. Most importantly, the Bracero Program had lasting effects on both the U.S. and Mexico. It established what became the common migration pattern. Mexican citizens entering the U.S. for work, going home to Mexico for some time and returning again to the U.S. for more work. In 1965, Congress enacts the Immigration and Nationality Act, eliminating the national origins quotas and setting maximum annual levels of immigration, and placing per-country limit for immigrants from the Eastern Hemisphere. No per-country limits were placed on immigrants from the Western Hemisphere, establishing a racial superiority preference. By 1980, the U.S. enacted the Refugee Act in reaction to the people fleeing Vietnam. And grants asylum to politically oppressed refugees. The law-defined refugees as those who flee a country because of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, or political opinion. In practice, U.S. foreign policy dictates which refugees are admitted at this period of time. Those fleeing governments the U.S. opposes are admitted, such as the Vietnamese, while those fleeing governments the U.S. supports are not, such as Salvadorans. This act also established the modern asylum system. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, making it the first comprehensive reform effort of the 20th century. It legalized about 2.7 million immigrants who had resided in the U.S. in an unlawful continuous status since January 1st, 1982, and made it illegal for employers to hire, recruit, or refer immigrants without proper identification. In 1994, we see the beginning of states passing controversial initiatives to control their perceived immigration problems, since they believed the federal government wasn't doing enough. California's Proposition 187 was a valid initiative to establish a state-run citizenship screening system and prohibit undocumented immigrants from using health care, public education, and other social services in the state. In 2007, a Senate bill to overhaul immigration policy was hotly debated and defeated. The bill would have a large-scale impact by providing a legal path to citizenship for many undocumented immigrants residing in the U.S. It included the controversial Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Miners or DREAM Act, which would grant immigration status for undocumented immigration minors who either attend college or serve in the military. In 2008, William Willforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act required that trafficking victims be given an opportunity to appear at an immigration hearing, consult with an advocate, and have access to counsel. It required that they be turned over to the care of the Department of Health and Human Services. These are the guiding principles when dealing with the current unaccompanied alien children or UACs, as they're referred. In 2010, Arizona passed its most controversial law to address its immigration issues. With the passing of SB 1070, two dozen copycat bills were introduced in state legislatures across the country. Five passed in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, and Utah. The ACLU and a coalition of civil rights organizations filed lawsuits in all six states. Laws inspired by Arizona's SB 1070 invite rampant racial profiling against Latinos, American Americans, and others presumed to be foreign based on how they look or sound. They also authorized police to demand papers proving citizenship or immigration status from anyone they stop and suspect of being in the country unlawfully. Today, after observing the widespread harms caused by these laws, legislatures in Mississippi, Virginia, Kansas, and many other states distanced themselves from this discriminatory model. Two years ago, on June 15, 2012, in response to Dreamer's needs, President Barack Obama signed into policy the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, aimed at certain undocumented young people who came to the U.S. as children. DACA is a discretionary, limited immigration benefit by the Department of Homeland Security. Individuals can apply for employment authorization. However, there is no direct path from Deferred Action to lawful permanent residents or citizenship. DACA status can be revoked at any time. Currently, 2014 has seen an increase of unaccompanied children and minors from Mexico and Central America. Known as the border crisis, many of these unaccompanied minors have been placed in detention centers and the United Nations has asked the U.S. to classify these children as refugees. In closing, the contradiction between immigration law and economic and social realities illustrates the need for comprehensive immigration reform. Unfortunately, popular belief is often shaped more by public fears and anxieties than by sound public policy. And now, Professor Smith will also discuss the geography of immigration. I hope you guys appreciate what Dr. Valenzuela just provided for you, because that was an incredible summary of the history of immigration in the United States. If you get a chance, if you are interested in immigration in the United States, if you get a chance to ask her for a copy of that and she's generous enough to give you a copy, ask her. That really, when I first heard that the first time, it was just amazing. So, thank you. What I would like to do is talk about immigration and try to explain it from a geographic perspective and try to help us understand why immigration in the United States is so contentious and why this is such a hot issue. What I like to start with is a look at kind of what Dr. Valenzuela just did, is the history of immigration and some of the different waves of immigrants that have come to the United States. And when we look at the early years, 1820s to all the way up until about 1880s, that first wave, that first phase, was dominated by Northern and Western Europeans. We call this, when I was in K-12, the WASP population, the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant population. And this is the population that really laid the foundation for what we thought was an American society. And then starting in 1880 to about 1915, we had the second wave, where the Northern and the Western Europeans continued to come, but they were overwhelmed or they were engulfed by the Southern and Eastern Europeans. And this population was largely Catholic in origin. And it really was that simple. The hostility between a lot of the immigrants that came in that second wave was really based on religion. And then at the same time you had a Jewish population that also came from some of the Slavic countries that were being persecuted and came to the United States for relief. Then there was a break in the 1920s all the way to about 1965, so in this dip here. And then starting in 1965 to the present, the leading immigrant source regions have been Latin America and Asia to the United States. So back up when we look at some of the cartoons that were really illustrated in that first video, it was still, it's been the same resentment and the same concerns over immigration way back since 1780. It was the Catholic population, it was the Chinese immigrant population, it was the Jewish population in the 1920s, and today it's the, well it's the Latino population, the Latin American population that gets a lot of the press time. And when we bring it up to the present, it is true that the Latin Americans and the Asian origin population is the leading immigrant source region. So that leads to the question is why is immigration so contentious? Why is it such an issue? And when we look at the total number of foreign born population, immigrant population in the United States, we're at 40 million today and that is the largest number of, and the highest percentage, sorry, the largest number of foreign born population in the United States. We've never had this higher number. Does that explain the issue? Well, we have to go back in time and listen to what Dr. Belenzuela talked about, and we heard about all of the problems that were going on in the late 1800s and early 1900s. And we think, well, wait a minute, the numbers were higher, are higher today, but there was a big issue back then. So if it's not the total numbers, what is it? Well, maybe percentage of the population helps explain it. And when we look at the percentage of the population, 14.4% in 1870, 14.8% in 1890, and once again, we're pushing up to a certain number. And that certain number, that certain percentage, is it about, about, I want to emphasize that, 15%. And sure enough, we're coming close. As I gave you in that first number, in the first set of numbers at the very beginning, we are right now at about 13%. And that 15% threshold is actually got a key term to it. And this is the, there we go, the tipping point, okay? And the tipping point is the point at which an immigrant population makes the transition from being a cute, cuddly, well, maybe not cuddly, a cute little population with their own foods and their own clothing and their own cultural customs to, holy shit, they're taken over. Can I say that? I don't know if I, okay, maybe I shouldn't have said that. But the idea is that something changes, something snaps in people's head. And now, instead of having this small population where we can kind of interact and maybe taste some of the food and interact with this culture, now, oh my gosh, they're taking over. And it's not a perfect number. 15% is not perfect, but it is an approximation for where in a population, that new immigrant population or that, yeah, that population changes our mentality. And when we look at the percentage of the population that is foreign born in 1970, it was only about 5% of the population. It was a small population. We didn't worry about that. Today, 2010, is what this map shows. Today, at 2013, 2014, it's about 13% of the total population. And that's why we're scared. We don't understand, what we don't understand, we become afraid of. And then we become resentful. And which population are we most targeted or most targeting? It's the largest immigrant population. In this case, the Mexican population. And some of the other ones that are smaller percentages get hidden. Now, I want to strip gears or change gears just a little bit, just a little bit, and look at the unauthorized or the illegal immigrant population. And the thing that the press does not talk about is that about 15, 50, 50% of the immigrant unauthorized, the illegal immigrant population that is in the United States actually came with legal documentation. What they're called is overstays. These are people who came on tourist visas, work visas, student visas, and then they forgot to leave, checked back in, and they violated their, they violated their status. These are hockey players from all over the world. That's 50% of the unauthorized population. We never hear about that. The other half is the people who entered the United States without formal detection. And when we break it down by total percentage, yes, Mexico does have the leading or the largest percentage of unauthorized immigrants in the United States, 59%, as of 2012. Other Latin American countries and then other countries are filling out that total percentage. And this then speaks to some geography also because all the way up until about 1990, five states received the highest percentage, the most number of unauthorized immigrants. California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Illinois received by far the most number. These were also the same states that had typically received immigrants throughout U.S. history. And so the next batch of immigrants, whether they were legal or illegal, illegal unauthorized, really was not a big deal because they'd always seen immigrants. The rest of the United States in 1990 was only receiving 22% of unauthorized immigrants. By 2010, that had changed. And the other 45 states in the United States were receiving a much larger percentage of unauthorized immigrants. So what I did is I mapped this out to visually illustrate this. In 1990, you had the five states, California, Texas, Illinois, New York, and Florida receiving the majority. And you had some states that were receiving practically no unauthorized immigrants. By 2013, the map was much browner. And unauthorized immigrants were heading to most every single state within the United States. And this is what upset people because for the first time we had unauthorized immigrants in our backyard. No more, not in my backyard. And this is not uncommon. It happens all over the place with all sorts of issues, not just immigration. If you know about Durango, Colorado, I see a sweatshirt down here. Or Telluride or Veil or something like that. When you get your house, when you get your condo, you want the door closed behind you. I don't want anybody else coming in and ruining this. It's the same process. It's the same idea. And it's not just the United States. Here is Germany. And a lot of Western Europe has also seen lots and lots of immigrants move into their country. And right now, 14% of Germany's population is first generation immigrants. What's that magic threshold? Roughly 15%. And there's Germany right there. The last thing, idea that I want to talk about from a geographic perspective is all of the unaccompanied minors and in some cases mothers coming with their children to the United States from Central America. 66,000 is the number that I threw out at the very beginning. And this also has got a geographic component to it. Because Guatemala dominated by a weak, corrupt government that is not taking care of its own population. To make matters worse, between 1960 and 1996, they thought they fought a civil war, lots and lots of political refugees, especially among the indigenous population, the Mayan Indian population, that were outright executed. And in order to get away from that, many of the Guatemalans have come to the United States. In El Salvador and Honduras, they were on the front lines of the Cold War, fighting between the United States and the Soviet Union. And the Soviets backed one government and the United States backed the other government. But at the same time, they funded other organizations, other groups of people to try to overthrow the opposing government. This led to lots and lots of political refugees. And when you were identified as a refugee, what's one place you could go to the United States? And so what I want to close with is that it's many of the same problems that started back in the 1960s and during the Cold War are still being felt today within the United States. And at this point, Dr. Gonzalez is going to give us a greater clarity on some of this. Well, hopefully. Oops. There we go. Just skipping through my slide. Sorry. Okay. Thank you, Professor Smith. So one of the things that we have to ask after listening to this historical and geographic retelling of the immigration story is if we have all of this information about the laws that are passed and about this sort of geographic circulation and migrations that happen with people, what makes immigration such a hot topic? What makes it so volatile when we have just everyday conversations? Why isn't it just people talking about traveling to other places to either get away from government hostilities or to find more economic stability? Why is it so contested and heated? Well, Professor Smith mentioned a little bit about that in terms of anxieties and fears that are connected to thinking about immigration as threat. When we think about the history of immigration law and how immigration law gets constructed, what we notice there, too, is that at different points in history, there are different peoples who are targeted through the legal system in terms of what this country, the United States, who they think is okay to be a citizen and who isn't, right? So sort of gatekeeping in terms of how that works. One of the things that cultural theorists and cultural studies scholars like to talk about when they address the issue of immigration, but also other issues related to fear and anxiety and gatekeeping, is how we think about particular topics and particularly contested topics in terms of discourse. Discourse is that cluster of ideas, images, and practices that construct knowledge. Michelle Foucault's most famous, I guess, for talking about or defining how discourse works for us in relationship to ideas of sexuality and of otherness in certain kinds of ways. But Stuart Hall gave us a really useful, or is one of the cultural theorists, who've given us a useful way to talk about discursive formations, which is how these knowledge get constructed through, and how it helps us think about big issues like ethnicity and gender and citizenship. How is it that we kind of construct through these ideas, images, and practices a knowledge about these particular issues? Is that the right button? So how does immigration work in terms of discourse and that cluster of ideas, practices that create this knowledge? Well, when we look at things that we have been looking at today actually, things like news headlines, statistics, comics, histories, geographies, photographs, political campaigns, slogans, laws, all kinds of things, when we think about those things, they accumulate for us a way of talking about particular topics and a way of approaching particular topics. And if those aren't offered to us with a kind of critical lens and with a kind of responsible reporting, then we run into issues that connect, for instance, arbitrarily, ideas to these big kind of topics that we're talking about. And today we're talking about immigration. So I was looking through and found a word cloud from the Republican presidential debates in 2011. And one of the things you notice, and this was a debate particularly around immigration, but one of the things you notice is that there are certain words that get connected and that get spoken more frequently along the lines of immigration. So we have this sort of huge word illegal that constantly comes up when we think about immigration, even though as we heard from the previous presentation, the idea of illegality has no natural or direct connection to immigration. Immigration is about people moving from one nation to the other that has no natural connection to the illegality of the people who are moving from one place to the other. People do it for many reasons and they do it in many ways. But this idea that illegality becomes connected and becomes what we automatically think of or the phrase illegal, illegal alien, which is a legal term to talk about undocumented individuals becomes a kind of repeated over and over again phrase that's connected to immigration at large. And that's one of the reasons why things become so heated in the debates. It's because of the language we use that's automatically connected. And this language, it's circulated in multiple ways. We think about it in terms of the images that are used to report these stories about immigration and to give us data and statistics about immigration. We get this language from, like I said, all of these kinds of sources. In addition to just narratives that are produced at large. What happens is that in discourse, these ideas start to become naturalized. They start to feel really like the word immigration comes up. The word illegal is naturally associated with it. Well, it takes a lot of work to make that happen. One of the things that Leo Chavez has talked about is the Latino threat discourse. Over time, the connection between immigrant, illegal, and Latino has become a kind of naturalized connection. And one of the things that Leo Chavez talks about in his work is the way that this particular discourse has some themes connected to it. And these themes are everything from constructing illegal immigrants or illegal aliens as criminals and immigration particularly in terms of criminality. Thinking about Latinos as trying to reconquer the United States. Professor Valenzuela talked to us about that 1848 moment where the border changes. And then it produces an anxiety for people that perhaps Latinos are coming back to take over their land. And that circulates from the 19th century to the present day. This idea that Latinos are unwilling to assimilate to particular cultures, and I would argue that this goes beyond the Latino threat, that lots of immigrant communities get painted in this way, that they don't want to assimilate to the U.S. and cultures of the U.S., which is assuming a lot of things. I'm going to leave that there. Leo Chavez talks about how there's a theme within the discourse of the Latino threat that thinks about Latino sexuality and hyperfertility. And sort of thinking about if they're not coming in droves, they're reproducing in droves. And so thinking about the Latino population as somehow potentially overwhelming to the majority. And then thinking about the border and threats to national security. What happens in discourse, and what happens when these ideas circulate and circulate and circulate at infinitum, is that instead of the real-life stories that we need to focus on in terms of immigration and what's happening, we start to think about and have constructed for us these virtual characters in this immigration story. And these virtual characters then become the go-to in terms of a kind of common-sense idea of the immigrant and of immigration at large. And so in the case of immigration, the current stars of this idea are the Latinos. The way that these kind of virtual characters persist is often through the spectacle. And the Oxford English Dictionary defines spectacle as a person or thing exhibited to or set before the public gaze as an object, either A, of curiosity or contempt, or B, of marvel or admiration. And I want to talk a little bit about what it means through your cultural studies lens in terms of how spectacle operates, because it's a little bit different from the standard dictionary definition. Cultural theorists, people like Guy DeBoard, for instance, who's most famous for talking about this, he talks about how spectacle, which is sort of thinking about the exhibited person or thing or idea that's before you, it relies on that virtualization of the subject so that it doesn't rely on real-life stories, it relies on the kind of discursive construction of these kind of virtual characters for us to understand. Well, the spectacle operates in much the same way, right? It's kind of thinking about occluding the real story and relying on this kind of virtualization that happens. And so if you look at my example up here, right, we've got the top Halloween costumes of 2014, and this is kind of connecting this idea of the fear that's connected to immigration, but there's lots of spectacles happening in the media right now, and so we can kind of think of, right, this scary kind of ghost-like figure, right, that Lalo Alcaraz, who's the cartoonist for La Cucaracha, which is a syndicated cartoon, he's talked about it as the black or Latina tech worker, right, it's a scary ghost figure. American Street Cop, right, is a scary kind of dangerous subject. He's got Ebola in the middle here as the sort of red scary thing. The Central American Refugee Child disguises member of ISIS, right, again, ISIS is this thing that we're sort of scared of in the media, and then he puts at the very end the Central American Refugee Child. And so this is kind of, you know, this sort of tongue-in-cheeked, like, look at what we are anxious about and what is circulating in the media right now, and sort of playing off of this kind of Halloween costume thing so that we can kind of think about what are these real stories versus the spectacles that we get in the media. And Guide to Board would argue that all of our reality is actually mediated anymore, and so we operate in contemporary culture through spectacle. We rarely get these kinds of focus on real-life stories. We're kind of always sort of getting, being inundated with these kinds of spectacles and these headlines that sort of affect us. And you guys are familiar with this, right? I mean, a lot of the satirical news shows, right, talk about how this happens and those, they do stories that kind of help us to unpack this. So immigration works as a spectacle because it thrives on the virtual and includes the real. And then, and you really have to think about it as you have to process the information presented to you, right? So with an awareness to discursive and spectacular nature of information flow. And without a kind of guarantee that anyone's going to give you any sort of responsible reporting or even factual information as you walk around collecting information, you have to sort of be aware of how these things work. And so one of the things that we're hoping for tonight is that when you look at a picture that is given to you by a news story, that you don't just rely on those set sort of discourses that sort of set spectacles that we've been given and that we rely on in terms of a kind of common sense knowledge, but that you look critically at the information that you're given and that you're able to sort of discern what's, you know, beyond the headline. And so that was our hope in terms of this presentation today. And Malia is going to come and talk to you about how to gather some of that information. Now we have the dilemma of trying to figure out what we're going to do with the information that we all have and the spectacle that we are seeing. And honestly, the amount of information and news stories that we see and read every day can be overwhelming. So how do you know if it's accurate? How do you know if the news source is biased is affecting the reporting on the issue or event? And how can you get the most balanced view of a story? Honestly, the first step is to understand what you're looking at and knowing that pretty much everyone has bias. I'm not saying that bias is always bad. It's just you have to understand that it doesn't in fact affect how we see and present information. Going to the source of information is one way to determine bias and taking time to learn who is providing the funding for the information source is also helpful. So when trying to identify bias in a news source, ask yourself these questions. Who owns and or produces the resource? Who advertises in the resource? Is there an apparent political lean and how will that influence the selection and reporting of the sources and stories? Another trick to do is to look to see if an organization is mentioned in relation to the article at all. So think tanks, associations and other organizations usually exist for a reason. Learn more about the organization to identify potential biases. The next step is for you to educate yourselves. Don't believe that every story in your Facebook newsfeed is true. Not every article tweeted or story on the news is wholly accurate. And that means that you need to determine the credibility of the news that you're viewing. How do you do that? It's a daunting task. I'm going to talk about briefly just three techniques to get you started on this and then I'm going to give you a resource that's going to help you out. So your first technique is to look at the sources. Is the article that you're reading citing any sources? A good way to determine if the article you're reading is credible is if they are in fact citing two or more sources. A good journalist should be doing research and including the credible sources and that means not just from their own organization. And then do some fact-checking on the very sources that they have. Your second technique is objectivity. There are many news sources that are partisan based on special interest groups or just plain biased. Because of this influx of information, it's hard to find objectivity in the news. But giving all of the views from all of the sides is very important. So when determining if the news article is objective, look to see and make sure the author is showing you both sides of the story. Third is the environmental scan. The best way to determine if you have a credible or non-credible news is to use a technique called environmental scanning. You can do this by searching other articles that are on the same topic and checking to see if other journalists are sharing the same information. The more sources you check your information with, the better understanding you'll have of all the sides of the issue and which information source is actually credible. Granted, this is a lot to do and probably a lot for you to remember after you walk out of here tonight. Fortunately for you, librarians are super helpful people who want to give you as much information and number of resources as we possibly can. So I created a research guide for you, and I'm going to pull it up here so you can take a look at it. I will flip through it. And you can actually get to this research guide that I'm going to show you right now from the library's homepage. So I'm almost going to assume that you all have been here before. And from the library's homepage, we're just going to click on use a class in research guide. And when you get to this page that's going to pull up, there are many, many, many guides. And you'll just scroll down until you see the one that says viewpoint 360 immigration. And it looks like this. So what I've done here is given you, there's various tabs for you to work through here. And there's resources and techniques for you to determine, for example, if you are using credible news sources. There's different tricks in here, different links for you to go to, different ways to determine bias on here. Also evaluating internet sources, which many times is a whole different ball game all alone. And then also what we, I've included on here is two different tabs that are providing one political info. How do you find it? Sometimes the internet works. Sometimes it doesn't. You're just going to trust me on that. So, there we go. So, how do you find political info? How do you find political information that's credible? Okay, that's what this tab is going through. And also, when you're looking for things around here locally, what if you want to find local information about Manhattan? What if you want to find local information about Kansas State? Here's another route for you. But my favorite tab, of course, on here, is if you need more help, okay, this is where you can come to. We have extra links here. And then, of course, you can just contact me directly. That's me. There's my email address. You can email me any single time that you want. I will be there. So this is up here for you, public viewing. You can come to it at any time. So, taking the time to educate yourselves about the information that you were given every day in the media is important. We need to not let ourselves just be given information without questioning it. We need to use our own critical thinking skills and be informed citizens in our own society. So tonight's event was just scraping the surface of this very complicated topic. And for those of you students in here who are interested into diving in a little further, I might recommend that you would enjoy taking a class, maybe, from one of our panelists and learning more about it that way. So thank you for attending tonight. What we would like to do now is to invite you to join in and ask questions. Probably the best way is if you would like to ask a question to line up behind a mic, and we will just take turns going back and forth answering them. Yeah, you guys did a good job. I just have a quick question. I'm for immigration, that's fine, because everybody's immigrant, but where do we get money to educate these kids when K-State faculty is actually underpaid? So where do we get these teachers from? It's for everybody. I mean, you have to come up with a lot of money. You agree, right? Nothing? Well, thank you. That's a great question. I'm not sure how I would tackle that. You have all the percentages. Yeah. I mean, they're coming from everywhere. So if we're going to teach them about America and unify us as Americans, we have to educate them, house them, and protect them. I can probably respond a little bit. That's a very true thing. We are actually currently taking care of the immigrants that are in this country right now, not the ones that have passed through refugee status. Yeah, it's just about at all. But those percentages are not... The ones at the border right now, you're talking about the human rights crisis, right? Just every border, coast, Mexican, Canada. Okay. Well, we currently, in the United States, we do educate immigrants that come in. We are doing that right now. I guess I'm not understanding the question. Just where do we come up with money to help these immigrants that are coming here to get a better life? We don't have the money already for resources around U.S., just in cities. That's a really good question. Actually, it's an excellent thing to ask right around election time because one of the things that we have to do as citizens is to elect people who will put more money and resources into education. Well, thank you. I just want to make sure that that's out there for you all. I just wanted to actually kind of maybe respond to that question because one of the ways to think about money that is provided to citizens is to think about where our tax dollars go and a giant proportion of taxes in the state of Kansas alone goes to prisons. I know that Brownback gave, I don't know, how many millions of dollars to increase prison pop of the prisons in Kansas State and cut our education budget, the militarization of the border, right? So if you think about the amount of tax money that we give as citizens of the United States that don't go to social resources, we're suffering from that, right? So in terms of the resources that could go to accommodate not just better quality stuff for us, but to any person who wants to come here and actually as Professor Smith indicated, it's actually paying the taxes themselves, right? And contributing to the well-being of our infrastructure to begin with. I think that might answer some of your questions and that's a whole set of statistics that didn't get up here in terms of where our resources are already going. And then the second thing I wanted to just put out there is that this whole conversation about immigration, you guys touched on it a little bit, always goes hand in hand with settler colonialism, right? That we remember when we say we, right? Who are we talking about? Because prior to the independent Republic of the United States there were already peoples here who were indigenous peoples and we're settlers on this land. Every single one of us, unless we're Native American, right? And then the other thing is that in 1791 of the first laws that was passed by the Supreme Court was that in order to become a citizen you had to be a white person. That law did not change until 1952. So when we're looking at the 50% threshold that makes us nervous or anxious, we have to think about the fact that the Irish and the Jews, when they first came here, they were not considered white. They were absorbed into what constituted the U.S. citizen, right? And they had to make a choice to do that. And I also think economics needs to be thought about. There's a push-pull in everything that Dr. von Soyl had talked about and who got legalized and when. And it had everything to do with how to secure a reserve of cheap labor in this country. So I just wanted to put those things out there and thank the panel for your comment. Thank you very much. Hello. Thank you for sharing your information. I think it was very, very interesting and helpful. And I think there is a dilemma here with immigration. Although back to education, if I'm right, people that come in and illegal immigrants or people that are not considered citizens, they have to pay an out-of-state tuition. So in fact, they are being charged more. And with K-State faculty being underpaid, I think in my personal opinion, if we're aiming legal immigrants and saying that illegal immigrants are the ones that are causing this, I feel like there's more of a political view here and we should see exactly what our government is doing with the money. As of right now, I don't think they are giving enough funding for education. So we also have to take that into perspective, not only looking at it from the immigration side. So thank you for your information. I think it was very helpful. And also just adding on to that because the gentleman wanted numbers. In Dr. Smith's slide, he said it's $442 million to support unauthorized immigrants, but Kansas would lose $1.8 billion if it removed its immigrants. So these people, as he said, aren't just showing up and taking things. They're also contributing. And what Kansas State pays its teachers, it's kind of up to Kansas State. Go and blame that on us. Exactly. I think... Thank you. Can I add a little bit on that one? And I would encourage everyone to go visit the Immigration Policy Center. They have got wonderful information that, as Malaya said, is very unbiased. It's very balanced. And you can find information for every single state. And I focused on Kansas. Obviously, we're here in Kansas. But I think that if you wanted to find information, comparable data for any state, you can find that at the Immigration Policy Center. The source of information for the cost of supporting unauthorized immigrants comes from an organization called FairUS.org. If you want a very biased opinion against immigration, I encourage you to go look at that. And in fact, even if you don't want to support them, go look at it, because I think it's important to know what the other side or what a very biased opinion is talking about. And then you can counteract it with facts. So thank you very much for that comment. Dead on. So if numbers show that immigrants, authorized and unauthorized, are boosting our economy and boosting the job force, then what is the main motivations behind anti-immigrant legislation and media in the United States? Well, that's where the spectacle that Dr. Govall has talked about and discussed, where every single day, over and over it's the same thing. Oh, you know, they're coming here to take our jobs. They're coming here to deplete our resources, our social welfare, Medicaid, Medicare, et cetera, et cetera. So we never really address the fact that also employers with the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, it allowed for employers, even though it was illegal to still hire cheap labor. And yes, that I believe also is central to this point. It's not just blaming the undocumented, unauthorized, children, families, and labor force, but it's also looking at the fact that, yes, if Kansas State University doesn't pay its professors, then that's something that should be taken up with administrators as well. And that goes for all U.S. states and universities. And I think you get to the point of, I loved your question because it says, well, if we're looking at the facts, we're looking at the reality of the situation, and we see that immigrants of whatever status are contributing to our economy, why do we have such an issue with it? And I think that is the conundrum, right? I mean, it's like we don't operate necessarily on that kind of rational sort of study or presentation of the facts. We often go off of a kind of emotional and commonsensical kind of acceptance of the story that's given to us, right? Whether that's through the media or through political campaigns or through other kinds of fear-mongering, I mean, it just circulates and circulates and circulates without kind of stopping that kind of storytelling and really looking at what we have in front of us. And I think it's a really, it's a powerful thing. I mean, we really need to and it's something that I think we have to face all the time. It's not just something that the right does. It's not something that the left only does. It's constantly given to us all the time. And so I think it's really important to stop and really think about what it is that we're seeing in front of us. I was sitting here deliberating whether I should say this or not as a white male, but I need to just say that there is plenty of evidence to also suggest that this is just outright racism. And there's an example right here from the state of Kansas, and that's not to pick on Kansans because I now am a Kansan and so I'm saying this as a resident of Kansas, but in the city of Emporia there used to be a meat packing plant and the meat packing plant hired many Latino workers as well as Asian workers, but a lot of Latino workers and there was outright animosity between the white population in Emporia and the Latino population in Emporia. And then Tyson relocated some of its workers who were working in a plant up in Nebraska down to Emporia and those workers came from a place called Somalia. The Somalians were African origin and they were Muslim and when they arrived in Emporia it wreaked total havoc on Emporia and there were editorials in the newspaper, there were broadcasts by the local Emporia population that really expressed resentment against this new immigrant population that came in from Somalia and they were bringing diseases, they were terrible drivers, they hung out in groups and didn't speak English and it was just a very ugly situation within Emporia towards the Somali population and this is where I'm getting at the direction I'm going is right here and that is that the white population actually embraced the Latino population and said well, at least the Latino population comes from a next door country and they are Christians why do we have to have these Somalis here? And if you're from Emporia I mean nothing, no mal intent against you but it's a wonderful case study of this example of racism at the root level oh yeah thanks for sharing so the question I have is you say I don't have a problem with immigration I love people from other cultures so when I hear a lot of trouble I hear about the illegal immigrants and you say that they pay taxes and stuff so I guess the biggest question I have in the country undocumented you can't pay income tax so I think that's the question I have is if you're not paying income tax it just seems unfair you're contributing to the society but I would love to contribute to society or the economy without paying income tax or stuff so is that happening? Well, undocumented is a special number it's called an ITIN number but I'm sure there's lots of U.S. citizens that do not pay income taxes and that we see arrested or even popular stars Wesley Snipes I believe that also do not pay income taxes that way or file income taxes so I'm as mad about that as I am about other people so you can I don't know that's just hard because if you file it wouldn't the government find out and then they would be all upset and pissed because you're not registered don't you get upset when people walk up and give you free cash? that's like the worst so you're saying do they pay their income tax through the system do they do it without disclosing their identity or how are they able to do that? I think what we're talking about here the immigration status is very complicated and there are different levels of it so you might be in the process of getting documentation and still pay taxes and that's part of becoming a citizen it's part of the process of it so when we're talking about those contributions those people might be using those special numbers but they might also be in process in terms of their documented status and there are also other ways to pay taxes we pay sales taxes and we pay all kinds of other taxes in different moments in different interactions that we have economically in this country and so there's lots of different ways to measure those kinds of contributions and that's what I'm saying too if you're saying it's okay they're paying sales tax I would love to just pay sales tax but I'm fine with people coming I'm not saying they're just paying sales tax I'm saying that they're I agree and don't forget the image we're talking about here is an unauthorized immigrant by one of the borders without detection there is plenty and I gave the percentage about 50% who came with legal status and then somehow violated that legal status you know they're paying taxes and they're also able to file income tax returns even afterwards when they get reauthorized when they get re-certified reauthorized then they're going to have to be doing the same exact thing that any US citizen is going to do which is contributing to the taxes and to contributing to the services they receive okay thank you very much I also just wanted to say to your question in that one of the main ways that we account for the unauthorized immigrants is because of mismatched W2 income tax forms and other forms of income tax and so that is how when income form is mismatched that can lead to unauthorized immigration in terms of how they call them in the census so they are paying these taxes, that's why I don't like the term undocumented because a lot of these people they come over with more documentation almost put together in this room so just the main point to that is that that mismatched W2 form, that income tax form that's how they're paying tax that's how you saw how much money they're contributing to $1.8 billion of Kansas tax in 2013 alone yes and the other thing that we didn't discuss or mention was the social security that everybody who works with the social security number whether assigned to that person or through some other means they're still paying social security into that fund they're still paying money into that fund which is of course paying for your parent's retirement right now through social security so that's also something that we didn't discuss or we didn't even provide numbers for okay thank you all for coming tonight I appreciate the discussion and thank you