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 News from Around the Americas | January 2007 
Border Troubles Draw Reporters to Arizona from Across the Globe
 Brady McCombs - Arizona Daily Star
Italian journalist Mario Calabresi didn't need long to decide where he wanted to visit when the U.S. Department of State offered him a free trip to the United States.
With debate ongoing in his own country about how to deal with illegal immigrants from northern Africa, Calabresi — managing editor of Italy's second-largest newspaper, La Repubblica — wanted to see how the discourse was affecting elections in the United States. So he asked to go to the busiest section of the U.S.-Mexican border — Arizona.
While in Southern Arizona for five days in late October, he visited the border, attended political debates and met with outgoing Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz.; Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz.; and Republican Randy Graf, who lost to Giffords in his bid to succeed Kolbe.
Calabresi, who has since moved from Rome to New York to work as one of his newspaper's U.S. correspondents, also visited Ohio and Texas during his two-week visit.
"For me it was really interesting, because we have the same problems in Italy," Ca-labresi said. "You have the desert, we have the sea, and our illegal immigrants arrive from North Africa by boat. We have similar discussions in Italy, and I heard the same kind of political debate as in my country."
He penned an article in La Republica about a debate between Giffords and Graf that highlighted the similarities in the two countries' immigration debates.
It was far from the first time Southern Arizona's section of the border has appeared in international newscasts, newspapers and magazines. Every year the area draws hundreds of foreign journalists interested in seeing the infamous U.S.-Mexican border.
The U.S. Border Patrol's Tucson Sector gives a basic border tour, including a ride-along, to about 50 foreign journalist crews a year, said Border Patrol spokesman Rob Daniels.
About 25 to 30 print and television journalists visit Tucson and the border each year through the International Visitor Leadership Program operated by the U.S. Department of State, said Eloise Brown, program director and president of the Tucson Council for International Visitors. Calabresi came with this program.
Whether lured by Cochise County's Wild West atmosphere, the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector's ranking as the busiest spot for illegal crossings along the nearly 2,000-mile border or the hundreds of border deaths since 1998, journalists have been coming for years, Daniels said.
"The issue of illegal immigration — we think of it as something that affects the United States and the United States alone, and it's actually something that affects many countries around the world," he said.
In 2006, among others, journalists from Italy, Indonesia, Poland and Romania visited Tucson as part of the State Department's International Leadership Program, Brown said.
People who have a role in their country's decision-making are invited to come for an all-expenses-paid trip to the U.S., she said. Not all are journalists. They usually spend about three weeks, including two to three days when they come through Tucson.
"The border is a big part of the reason they are coming," said Brown, who has been involved in the program since 2002. "Particularly, there has been a great deal of coverage of the border issues in the European papers and the Middle Eastern papers."
In early November, three journalists from the Los Angeles Bureau of the largest television network in Japan, NHK, or the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, came to Tucson to illustrate the pivotal role immigration was playing in U.S. elections this year.
Yuichiro Hanazawa, reporter and Los Angeles Bureau chief, cameraman Richard Green and associate producer Greg Aurit spent a week in Southern Arizona following the contentious Giffords-Graf and Jon Kyl-Jim Pederson congressional races and the propositions opposing illegal immigration for a report that aired on election night. They also visited the border at Nogales and Sasabe
Their report, about six minutes long, aired Nov. 7 in Japan with footage of the border at Nogales, Pederson's rally with ex-President Bill Clinton in Tucson and volunteers going door-to-door for the anti-immigration propositions, Aurit said.
"I will report that there is such a movement in the United States and that there are so many candidates and how anti-immigrant they are," said Hanazawa in November. A reporter for 13 years, he arrived at the Los Angeles bureau in July.
Hanazawa said he came away from his trip to the border surprised that so many people cross legally to shop and at how difficult it is, Mexicans told him, to obtain legal visas. He said he would return to Arizona's international border for future stories.
"This is a new movement in the United States," he said. "And we Japanese understand that the United States is a country of immigrants."
The Canadian freelance reporting team of photojournalist Terry Asma and writer Katrina Simmons came to Arizona in early December to prepare a multimedia presentation about the migrant journey for their Web site, 2020studios.com.
They spent six weeks visiting spots along the typical illegal entrant's journey from the Guatemalan-Mexican border to the U.S.-Mexican border in Arizona, they said.
The duo from Hamilton, Ontario, planned to focus on how narrow migration laws affect immigrants, Simmons said. Readers in their area don't hear enough about issues along the U.S.-Mexican border that could also affect the border that is one hour south of the city.
Visiting journalists say writing about their experiences for readers in their native countries enhances worldwide understanding of issues surrounding the U.S.-Mexican border, Brown said.
"They would be fools if they didn't write a story," she said. "They have a broader view, a greater understanding and more insight."
Calabresi was surprised by the "incredible" number of illegal immigrants living in the United States, an estimated 12 million, and the high number of border deaths in the desert, 441 across the southern border in fiscal year 2006. He also learned more about the economic contributions of illegal immigrants.
He went back to Italy believing it is better to develop policies to manage the flow of immigrants than to try to prevent it, he said.
Calabresi said he hopes the article he wrote will help Italians realize immigration is a worldwide problem.
"There are huge discussions in Italy about immigration, and a lot of people think this is only an Italian problem," he said.
Contact Brady McCombs at 573-4213 or bmccombs@azstarnet.com. |
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