Citizenship Through Taxes

Taxes were due last week and I, like so many people, was stuck giving good ol' Uncle Sam my hard-earned cash--in this case, $63 to the Arizona government. I only hope that they use some of it to give more funding to the universities.

One group of people that are usually blamed for not paying taxes and getting out of buying into the system are illegal Mexican immigrants. However, according to several articles around the nation, that trend seems to be changing as illegal immigrants head into different tax prep chains to have their taxes prepared. The IRS, it seems, doesn't check on a person's immigration status when processing their income tax forms.

Illegal immigrants are using their taxes to build a foundation in the American system, so that when they do apply for citizenship, they have a background to pull on to bolster their case.

The IRS issues Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers, or ITINs, to migrants to use on their tax forms instead of Social Security numbers.

In 2006, the IRS issued 1.5 million ITINs--30 percent more than the 1.2 million issued in 2005.

The high number of people with ITINs seems like a good indication that there are illegal immigrants out there who are serious about being a part of the American system rather than just working here to send money back home and using the government's free programs.

However, thanks to wild generalizations from different political groups and media sources, illegal immigrants are painted as people looking just to mooch off of the American people. They are portrayed as the enemy when some are trying to become allies.

I wish that the tax story had been publicized more because it shows that not all illegal immigrants are moochers and some are making the effort to be a part of the system. I think that if the American people were more educated about little issues like this, there would be more true discussion about illegal immigration, rather than just national leaders screaming at each other across the border, legislators screaming at each other across the aisle, and the American people screaming at each other across the dinner table.

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More information about immigrants filing their taxes can be read in the Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/08/AR2007040800117.html

Also, check out http://www.irs.gov, http://www.hrblock.com, and http://www.libertytax.com

Objectivity: Going the Way of the Greek Gods

One of the main rules of journalism is reporters need to be objective. From the moment a journalism student sets foot into their first journalism class, it is a lesson repeated over and over and over and over again. Journalism programs have even created semester-long classes about media law and freedom of the press, which are really just extended lessons on why journalists need to be objective and to make clear the implications of not being objective.

I have never had to grapple with my objectivity before. I can honestly say that, as a journalist, I have always made an effort to be objective and to provide both sides in every story I write. Sometimes I have to settle for less than I want, such as when a candidate would not return my phone calls for an interview, so instead I just made sure I included quotes and information from people from his party in my article.

In the interest of transparency, I have a confession: this past few months, covering the border, I have started to grapple with my objectivity. I don't even know that I am having a particular pull in one direction, but more, the border is a subject so vast and so multi-faceted with so many possible scenarios and so may opinions about how to "fix" it, that with every new bit of information I hear and every person I meet and every new "solution" or opinion I hear, my opinion changes. But I always have an opinion.

I am finding that I have to work harder now to be provide an objective voice in my stories. There have honestly been times when I have thought to myself, "I know that I need to put in some quotes from this person/group, but what they're saying is so ridiculous and charged and goes against what I think, I don't know that I want to put it in there." I always do interview the person/group and I always give them the same amount of coverage in my article as everyone else, but I still have that hesitation.

At the beginning of the semester, we had a guest speaker who spoke about the "myth of objectivity" and pretty much said that no one was truly objective. I had mixed feelings on his declaration: yes, I do have my own beliefs and opinions, which I have had for years, but no, I disagree with the idea that because of those beliefs, I cannot be truly objective. As a journalist, you have to step back from the story to look at the story as a whole; I thought that just by stepping back, you automatically become objective, that you can make the concerted effort to be objective.

This semester, I have learned that objectivity is not as easy as that.

I think my best example of my change came last week, as we were covering the St. Andrews Clinic, a clinic on the U.S. side of the border that provides free healthcare to people from the Mexican side of the border.

I covered the speech therapy classes. I tried to be a fly on the wall, with my two cameras and notepad. With most of the children, I was successful; they barely looked at me much less tried actually tried to interact with me. However, there was one little boy who kept mugging for the cameras and trying to sign to me and kept showing me what he was doing.

I found out that one of the best tools for helping kids learn to speak was a PC, and that this little boy didn't have one. I want to buy him one.

And it freaks me out.

I am a journalist, and should not feel like that about one of my subjects. I understand that what I am feeling are human emotions and that even journalists have feelings, and that this is normal.

But I am still freaked out.

I thought that I was objective and as a journalist I could rise above this. I think that, as a journalist, I have to rise above it and I am working really hard. I have come to grips with the fact that I cannot buy this kid a computer, and I am working on just viewing him as another subject. And I am coming to grips with the fact that I am not an objective journalist, especially when it comes to the border. It's a foreign feeling and it's hard.

I hope, though, that in the long run the push to make my stories completely free of any indication of my personal biases will make me a better journalist. I hope.

The Lure of Border Retail

One of the biggest draws for people from both sides of the border crossing into the other country is shopping and the chance to buy things that they can't get in their own country or things that are difficult to get in their own country. Generally, what people from the U.S. buy when they visit Mexico is very different from what people from Mexico buy when they visit the United States.

When Americans cross into Mexico, they are generally looking to buy the work of Mexican artisans. They look for pieces that reflect the crafts that Mexicans near the border are known for, like their leather or silver or weaving. They look for things that are decidedly Mexican, like the Mexican plates at left.

Two people who I work with, when they found out I go down to Mexico rather frequently, asked me to pick up a few things for them. One person asked me to pick up some 14-karat-gold hoop earrings because they are cheaper in Mexico than they are in the United States. Another co-worker asked me to get him some woven leather sandals called "huaraches" that you can't find in the U.S.

On the other hand, Mexican tourists are less likely to buy from local American artisans as they are to hit the major department stores and malls looking for brands that they can't find at home. Or, like gold can be a lot cheaper in Mexico than in it is the U.S., clothes on clearance can be a lot cheaper than clothing in Mexico, with the added bonus of getting name-brand, trendy clothing.

At the department store I work at, a lot of people from Mexico come up with shopping lists of clothing and shoes that they buy for themselves and friends and family back home. However, instead of buying gold hoops and huaraches, they are buying jeans and t-shirts. It is also people from Mexico that are more likely to ask me if we carry Lacoste or Levi's or some other well-known international brand.

Even the set ups of shopping in both places is different. In the United States, we have large, enclosed shopping malls anchored by large department stores and lined with individual stores, that are usually outlets for major brands or are smaller boutiques, like Tucson Mall (at left). Prices are non-negotiable since they are usually set by a corporation with transactions carefully tracked.

In border towns in Mexico, however, most transactions take place on the street, where a vendor has laid out their wares for people to see. Sometimes there are "centro commercials," or shopping centers, but even then, they are usually long corridors and alleys of open-front hole-in-the-wall places, not much different than the people sitting on the ground. Bargaining is a common sight when shopping Mexico, since so many of the vendors are independent, set their own prices, and don't track their transactions.

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Photos courtesy of http://www.radissontucson.com/summaryspanish.cfm, http://www.gamineral.org/tucson_bks.html, and http://www.joyridedaytours.com/cruz_the_valley.htm

Mexican Music on the Radio

Another sign of the influence of Mexican culture in America is through radio stations. Cable carriers generally carry the same television channels across the country, so everyone gets Univision and Telemundo, among others; however, there is a little more freedom with radio stations, which can change from one mile to the next.

Twelve Spanish-language radio stations broadcast in Southern Arizona, and that number is growing, according to ontheradio.net. The high number of Spanish-language stations in the region is indicative of the fact that it is close to the border, and people who travel across the border are tuning into stations that they can understand--much like Americans trying to find a station that plays their favorite music or talk radio shows when they travel across the country.

Spanish-language radio stations have even started taking over the radio signals of local radio. A few years ago, the Phoenix radio station The Edge, which had the signals 100.3 and 106.3, was bought out by a Spanish-language media company. The English-language Edge moved to a new signal on 103.9, but its two old signals became Spanish-language stations.

With the rise in Spanish radio has come a rise in the popularity of Spanish musicians, and they are not just attracting Spanish-speaking crowds. Huge numbers of people attend shows by performers such as Shakira, who sings in both English and Spanish, and Juanes, who only sings in Spanish. The language barriers have not hindered them, however, as people who don't even speak Spanish show up to the shows.

According to an article in AdWeek, despite the large number of Spanish-language radio stations in Southern Arizona, the signals do not transfer across the border into Mexico because the mountains and hills along the border interrupt the signal. In border cities like El Paso and San Diego, radio stations are able to broadcast from those cities and reach an audience in the areas on the opposite side of the border because they are surrounded by flat lands. As a result, the radio stations can make more money, with more stations reaching a larger audience and more advertisers trying to reach that audience.

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Information for this post was taken from http://www.ontheradio.net/metro/Tucson_AZ.aspx and http://www.adweek.com/aw/magazine/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003547252

Wait, Why Are You Here Again?

So I was watching television when one of the commercials urging people to visit Sonora, Mexico came on. As the images of white sand beaches, of shopping centers set in centuries-old plazas, of huge platters of authentic Mexican food, and of fun-loving Caucasian couples dancing beneath the stars to the music of a mariachi band played before my eyes, I couldn't help wondering why exactly people in Mexico choose to visit Arizona.

We are not California: we do not have top-tier shopping or huge amusement parks or Hollywood or a beach on the ocean, for that matter. We are not Texas, which is rich in a Mexican-American blended culture and actually has its own amusement parks and quite a bit of shopping opportunities. Even New Mexico boasts a culture heavily-influenced by Mexican culture, their balloon festival, the testing site of the atomic bomb, and the strong possibility of having extra-terrestrial contact (or at least learning about it at Roswell).

So I went searching for reasons to come to Arizona. I started out at the Arizona tourism websites, but everything seemed so contrived and forced that I started looking somewhere else: YouTube.

I figured that if I wanted a good example of what people actually do when they visit Arizona from Mexico, the best place to look would be a place where they could post videos of their trip.

Well, I didn't find any video posted by people from Mexico, specifically, but I did find a few videos of a woman from Coast Rica who visited a family living in Arizona. However, since they posted three videos, all from different visits in different years, I figured that I would get a good sense of what people do when they come to Arizona. Here are the videos:

From 1997



From 1999



From 2002



In all of the visits, she visits the Grand Canyon. She also visits couple of the other national parks in Arizona and goes to the state universities. And she sees cactus.

I am not sure how accurate this portrayal of Arizona tourism is--I mean, she didn't even golf--so I will keep my eyes open for other reasons to cross the border into Arizona.

In the meantime, though, come to Arizona, where you can see the Grand Canyon. And cactus.

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All of the video is courtesy of the user craigkepner on YouTube. The URLs for the videos are http://youtube.com/watch?v=KmTBwWzM6KY (1997), http://youtube.com/watch?v=1OHi9WDOSLg (1999), and http://youtube.com/watch?v=sF6uuCdWMKg (2002). Check out craigkepner's profile at http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=craigkepner

Do You Know the Way to...Nogales, Mexico?

I made my first trip down to the border this semester on Saturday. Actually, it wasn't just my first trip this semester; it was my first trip down to the border since I was about ten years old. My family preferred the Pacific Coast and places where we had family for travel, so we never went down to Mexico, or much further south than Tucson, for that matter.

I figured that since I would be covering the border this semester, it would be good for me to at least see what it looks like and how I would get into Mexico, if I was so inclined. So I grabbed my camera, my passport, and my friend, Meredith, and went down to Nogales for a quick afternoon trip.

The first thing I noticed was that shortly we got onto I-19, all of the distance signs were in kilometers, not miles. It wasn't a particularly eventful trip down there; the road wasn't overrun with Border Patrol agents or anything. In fact, I was rather disappointed.

We finally began the winding descent into Nogales, and as we went around one curve the city opened up to me and I saw the houses on the surrounding hills. We made our way down to the main city street, so we could park and walk around. There didn't seem to be any traffic laws as people just walked into the street at random and as I saw several cars blatantly run red lights. Blue and white school buses drove people from their parking lots down to the border.

We parked and headed down to the inspection station. The area around the border was teeming with Border Patrol agents, some in SUVs, some on foot, and some on bikes.

We didn't plan on actually going into Mexico, since our time was limited and we couldn't actually see the end of the line of the people trying to get back into the United States, but the "low battery" light started flashing on my camera, and I figured that there must be some place to buy a lithium battery in Nogales, Mexico, since it does get a lot of tourist traffic.

So we crossed.




The first thing that struck me was that while there were easily 30 Border Patrol agents, at least, in the area, watching who entered the U.S., there was on Mexican border agent, sitting on a metal folding chair behind a collapsible banquet table, "watching" the people who came through.

We had barely stepped out of the inspection station and into the border when a jovial man in a yellow shirt came up to us, asking us in perfect English, "What do you need? I have everything you want: Valium, Oxys, Percocet. What are you looking for?" Obviously, the people of Nogales know that college students are coming and they know what they want. I looked up and down the street and noticed that most of the buildings I saw were pharmacies. I replied that we were just looking for a place to buy a lithium battery for a digital camera. He directed us to another, larger pharmacy across the street, making us promise to come back to him if we decided that we needed anything.

In our short trek to the pharmacy, we were stopped by three other men, all asking us what we needed and listing their prescription wares. Yes, the people of Nogales have our ticket. We begged them off and made our way into the pharmacy; they didn't have lithium batteries and the employee there said that there wasn't an electronics store nearby, so we headed back out into the street.

We wandered around Nogales for another thirty minutes, being stopped by another four men offering us prescriptions. After shaking them all off, and with my battery completely dead, we decided to head back to the United States.

We got into the line, which moved surprisingly quickly. As we waited in line, people offered to sell us gum and suckers. The Border Patrol agent glanced at my passport and waved me through.

We got in the car and left. The drive back to Tucson was considerably more exciting as we saw a couple of Border Patrol SUVs and had to go through a Border Patrol checkpoint, which again, we were waved through with the agents barely looking at us.

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All photos taken by the author.

For information about crossing over to Mexico, check out "¿Passport Preguntas?" on Border Beat, http://borderbeat.net/story/show/28, or visit the Border Patrol website at http://www.cbp.gov/.

Tucson: Because It's Closer to You Than Any Other American City

Ever since my family moved into our house in Phoenix six years ago, my dad has been wanting to paint on the flat roof messages to people in airplanes who fly over our house. What exactly he wants to write on the roof sometimes fluxuates depending on what's going on in the world; it can range anywhere from "United We Stand" (right after 9/11) to "Down with the B.C.S." (generally every year from when the B.C.S. bowl announcements come out until the games are played). However, the one phrase that he keeps coming back to is "Spend Your Money Here."

While not the most eloquent welcome message to potential Arizona tourists, my dad's blunt message gets the point across for which so many visitor centers aim. The Metropolitan Tucson Convention & Visitors Bureau has taken the general idea and molded it into an invitation to come and see all that Tucson has to offer.

According to the Bureau's website, over 22 million travelers cross the border to visit Tucson and of the $1 billion spent in Arizona annually, they estimate that Mexican visitors create $360 million in economic impact in the Tucson Metro area. (Photo at right: some Mexican tourists.)


The Bureau has wised up to the spending power of Mexican tourists--and wised up to the statistic that just over 30% of Mexican visitors spend their money in Tucson--and have made efforts to attract more visitors from Meciso and to make their visit to Tucson easy and pain-free.


On their website, they offer a special section for Mexican tourists. Generally speaking, the only difference between this pge and the other page is that the one geared toward Mexican visitors is written in Spanish (though some of the accommadation information is still in English), including the descriptions of various Tucson attractions. The section also includes specific information about how to get to Tucson from Mexico and the distance from Tucson to large Mexican cities and other U.S. border towns.

However, perhaps the biggest indication that the Visitor Bureau is trying to get people to Tucson is that they opened up a visitor center branch in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico.

Mexican tourists have a lot of spending power in Tucson, enough to really affect our economy. So next time you're sitting, watching the new "Grey's Anatomy" and a commercial for visiting Sonora, Mexico starts, before you start to groan about how immigrants are sending enough of our money over the border, so U.S. citizens shouldn't be expected to go down there and spend even more, realize that chances are some Sonora citizen is having her telenovela interrupted so she can hear even more about getting over the border and into Tucson.

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For more statistics on Mexican people visitng Tucson, check out http://www.visittucson.org/static/index.cfm?contentID=765&Reset=0#mexico

The first picture is courtesy of http://www.solucionesamericas.com/

The second picture, of the Mexican tourists in Tucson (really!), is at http://www.cuc.udg.mx/eventos2003/Mayo/visita-anual-tuxon-17may/index.html

The third picture is a print screen of the Tucson tourism website for people from Mexico: http://www.visittucson.org/static/index.cfm?contentID=5&Reset=0