Immigration March brings out thousands

Analysis:

Even though the focus of the march is on House bill 4437, no details of the legislation were provided by channel 8. The Channel 8 reporter only referred to the legislation as “a bill to deal with illegal immigration and border security.” But the legislation is more complicated than those 2 issues and those issues are not addressed in the coverage.

Viewers do here from one of the marchers and one of the organizers on channel 8. The issues that are addressed are that families would be separated if the legislation went through and that people who have a relationship with undocumented migrants would also be at risk of arrest. The channel 8 story has Rep. Pete Hoekstra speaking first, since he supported the House bill, and his comments are focused on border security. What is interesting is that channel 8 doesn’t ask why so many people are willing to risk coming into the country without papers in the first place, nor the fact that many people took the day off from work to participate in the march. Another thing to think about is the fact that most people that were there are Spanish speaking, so the local news was limited in who they could speak to for perspective. How much more coverage could be provided if there were bi-lingual reporters or at least translators for the reporters?

Story:

WOOD 8 Newsreader – A lot of activity in the streets of Grand Rapids this afternoon. Thousands of people protesting proposed changes to immigration laws. 24 hour News 8 political reporter Rick Albin joining us live from Calder Plaza now, Rick.

Reporter – Well with the warm sun and the bright blue sky as a background, thousands of people started marching from Calder, er, rather from Garfield Park here to Calder Plaza. They were objecting to changes that many believe will take place in immigration laws, but despite what they believe, in Washington it’s much less clear. What Washington may ultimately do is far less certain than the objections that the big group expressed here today.

Reporter – With signs and flags and chants they hit the streets. The message is clear, no to house bill 4437. That’s a bill the lower chamber passed to deal with illegal immigration and border security.

Peter Hoekstra – What the house passed was we passed border security, put a tremendous number of additional resources on our southern and northern borders to ah provide us with a higher degree of assurance that we are only letting people into the country who were going to come here legally.

Reporter – But the house bill is more stringent than at least one in the senate and does not include a temporary or guest worker provision, something Hoekstra would like to see. The house bill would make being here illegally a criminal offence, and that concerns the organizer of today’s event.

Gloria Berdezco (Protest organizer) – Everybody who has relationships with undocumented people, they are going to be criminalized together with the undocumented people. That will mean separated families in the whole countries.

Reporter – 4437 would also provide penalties for employers who hire undocumented workers. But the question of what to do with an estimated ten to fifteen million people already here illegally creates a lot of passion.

Protester – A lot of people would have to back to their countries, and yeah, we’re not criminals so, we don’t want that because in the first place we came here because it’s a free country.

Reporter – Literally in the time that story was on the air, we have learned that the Senate judiciary committee has approved some type of immigration language. Now that’s just the judiciary committee, it’ll still have to go to the full Senate and very likely will have to go to a conference committee with that house bill that we mentioned. But that action did take place in the past five minutes or so, and 24 hour News eight will continue to stay on top of this story to bring you those details and tell you exactly what the outcome will be. Live on the Calder Plaza, Rick Albin, 24 hours News 8.

Total time: 2 minutes 31 seconds