SU Campus Holds Immigration Debate

By Emma Stuck
Staff Writer

Photo by Heather Kresge

Enrique Morones, president of Border Angels, speaks about humane treatment of immigrants during Tuesday's debate.

Views clashed over a heated debate about solutions to the immigration problem at Shippensburg University on Tuesday, Sept. 23. An immigration debate between Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), and Enrique Morones, president and founder of Border Angels, took place in Memorial Auditorium at 7 p.m.
 
Stein has 198,000 fellow members and supporters in FAIR, which is dedicated to immigration policy, and is one of the most cited experts on immigration policy in the United States. He is an attorney licensed in Washington, D.C., and has testified before Congress more than 50 times.
 
Morones established the humanitarian organization Border Angels in 1986, which places food, water, and other supplies in border areas to help immigrants survive. Morones is recognized by the Hispanic Business Magazine as one of the 100 most influential Latinos in the United States. He frequently travels the U.S. to speak about having a humane immigration reform.
 
Before the debate began, Melodye Wehrung, executive director of social equity for SU introduced Stein, Morones, the debate moderator Sharnine Herbert, associate professor of human communication studies, and the student and faculty panel. The panel included Sandra Alvarez, assistant professor of sociology and anthropology; Stephanie Jirard, associate professor of criminal justice; Melissa Mathewson, managing editor of The Slate; Marcela Pineda-Volk, associate professor of modern languages, and Robert Stoneback, editor of The Slate’s Focus section.
 
According to Morones, 65 percent of people in the U.S. want immigration reform, and voting in November is very important in order to bring change to the U.S., especially to immigration reform. “It’s true that all men were created equal,” Morones said.
 
Stein said that he believes that we need strong and secure borders and undocumented immigrants need to prosper in their own countries. He also believes that there will never be immigration reform for undocumented immigrants because the U.S. has always had laws and restraints on immigration.
 
Alvarez brought up the topic of immigrant deaths while trying to cross the border, stating that according to the United Nations, 1,200 people have died attempting to enter the U.S. Morones said that there are two or three people who die every day trying to come into the U.S.
 
The debate heated up when Stein said that they should be talking about serious policy issues, instead of relying on name-calling and emotionalism, a retort to Morones talking about stories of immigration discrimination and hate crimes. Stein said the U.S. needs to encourage people in other countries to get their government officials to improve their own economy, instead of having to come into another country.
 
According to Morones, groups like Stein’s FAIR believe that the white race is superior and are funding minutemen groups. He also responded to Stein’s belief that immigrants have increased crime rates by saying that immigrants are 10 times more likely not to commit crimes and that the majority of immigrants are here just to work, not cause trouble.
 
After Morones talked about the minutemen movement and receiving death threats from groups such as Stein’s, Stein said heatedly that he never heard such a “blithering array of nonsense” in his life, and that Morones’ stories were a “diatribe of hysterics,” with not one fact being accurate.
 
Later on in the debate, Stein again claimed that Morones statements were false and that his statistics about hate crimes being high were fraudulent. Pineda-Volk said that it was true that hate crimes against Latinos have increased, and Stein flat out told her that she was wrong. Alvarez said that according to a 2007 report by the FBI, hate crimes have actually gone up.
 
After the debate, audience members had the chance to ask a few questions One audience member said that he had not heard anything from either Stein or Morones on a proposal to solve the immigration problem, and found their “bashing back and forth about as juvenile as two girls in the school yard,” which led to an uproar of laughter and agreement in the audience.
 
After audience members were done asking questions, Stein and Morones gave their closing statements. Stein said that the U.S. can make immigration great once again as long as the U.S. decides who comes in and how many. He said the U.S. needs to solve the problem because solutions have been in front of Congress for 15 to 20 years.
 
Morones said that everyone needs to look at the facts on immigration reform and that the population needs to turn off their TVs and research what is really going on.
He also said that it is good to see diversity on the SU campus and that our country needs to keep working hard to ensure a better environment for everyone.