One Immigrant, Hold the Fries

A month ago, we were jolted by the videotaped images of two immigrants being clubbed by Riverside sheriff’s deputies. As media liaison for one of Los Angeles’ busiest immigrants rights groups, the incident landed me in the eye of a journalistic hurricane. In early April, “the guys on the truck” were the subjects in demand by the media. But on any given day, journalists ask my help in finding other immigrant “profiles”--individuals who will lend a human face to the complex and emotion-charged immigration issue.

The reporters always know exactly what they want, or think they do, and I have to move fast to fill those orders. I’ve become the counter girl at the immigrant deli.

This is not to make light of serious issues involving real people and their lives. It’s just that some of the conversations I have had with reporters are out of a bizarre casting call, and I’m the character with pencil poised over note pad, asking “Can I take your order?”

Brokaw’s people, Rather’s people and other people’s people call up, outlining the specs they seek:

“I need a young Mexican woman, say between 18 and 30, who’s here without papers.”

“I want to talk to a single mother in the San Gabriel Valley who is a legal resident in the process of becoming a citizen and whose kids are on a school lunch program.”

“Maybe you can help me find a family where the parents work two jobs and share an apartment with another family in South-Central. Oh, and the child has a learning problem.”

My response is invariably the same. “Hmm. When do you need them?”

“Well, how about tomorrow?”

Do you want fries with that? I say to the phone as I hang up.

For most “customers,” what they ordered is what they want. No substituting rye for wheat. When they say Mexican, they mean Mexican, not Salvadoran, not Guatemalan.

I have called people I barely know and asked them to take time off work to be fodder for a story that will last 90 seconds on the evening news, if it airs at all. I’ve called people who have never set eyes on me and asked if they would mind discussing their immigration status in front of a camera with someone I’ve never met. I have brought camera crews into peoples’ homes at dinner time and held their pets in my lap for the sake of telling the human side of the story.

When the chase and beating took the national stage, the immigrant profile deli got very crowded. Everybody wanted the special: “The guys in the truck.” The much sought-after subjects could never have imagined being at the center of such an uproar. Two days after the internationally televised beating of their companions, 16 of the men were in the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles. Most were from little towns so poor that when the corn crop fails or the shoe factory closes, the economy goes belly-up for everybody.

Four agreed to talk to the news media. They spent the morning talking to the Los Angeles Times and the ECO Spanish-language network, which airs from here to Tierra del Fuego. Then came a sweltering news conference, packed with no fewer than 100 reporters, camera operators, sound technicians and lawyers. After that, the four were interviewed throughout the afternoon and evening, in staggered interviews with whatever media I could juggle. By the end of the evening, the young men themselves were staggering.

The requests for interviews were still coming in two weeks later, but the subjects were off looking for work. I’m sorry, I’d like to fill your order, but we’re fresh out. The “guys in that truck” had been given permission to stay and work pending the outcome of the police investigation into the circumstances of the beating.

To their credit, many journalists are eager to present a human portrait of immigrants when many in this country prefer not to see the faces of those busing their tables, picking their crops, stitching their clothing or caring for their children. Sometimes though, the orders are impossible to fill. Those are usually the times when reporters are fixed on a person who fits their established framework of a story instead of getting at a different, perhaps larger truth. In times like that, I wish they would forgo the blue plate special and instead ask “What’s good today?”

The reporters will keep calling in search of people to illustrate each new immigrant story: Guatemalan political asylum petitioners who would be hurt by the antiterrorism bill; Filipino families trying to bring elderly parents over to live with them in the United States; Mexican grandmas who have just become citizens. They’ll want them tomorrow, and will hint that the interview subjects should speak English.

Did you say you wanted fries with that?