Educational Media Reviews Online

In 1996 Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act (IIRIRA, PL 104-208 110 Stat. 3009-546), which contained, depending on interpretation, some truly draconian provisions relating to aliens previously convicted of a crime. Briefly stated, one interpretation of the law was that aliens who had been convicted of a crime well in the past were now subject to deportation and had no right to redress in the courts. The law raised serious legal issues relating to habeas corpus and due process. (A recent Supreme Court decision, I.N.S. v. St. Cyr, 121 S. Ct. 2271, 150 L. Ed. 347), has made clear the right of appeal to the federal District Courts.) The law also made asylum petitions more difficult. The video consists primarily of interviews with immigrants and aliens who have come under the provisions of the law, both those with long passed criminal convictions and those currently applying for asylum. There are comments from immigration lawyers as well as from representatives of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and an organization that favors limits on immigration. Technical aspects of the video, both color and sound are very good. The video has won a large number of awards, according to the distributor’s Web site.

It is not, however, a ‘balanced’ treatment of the issue. It is very clear from both the title of the video and the treatment of the subject that the video’s creators feel that IIRIRA creates a terrible injustice. Many of the interviews with the immigrant and alien subjects are truly heartbreaking and show the terrible consequences of the law at the personal level of ‘real’ people. The reviewer did have some problems with the video and how it might fit into an educational framework. The strong bias of the film in favor of immigrants and aliens detracts from the film's value as a learning tool, though not necessarily from its value as a documentary. The themes of the video also become repetitious. After the first few interviews, there is a sameness about the stories. Even for someone sympathetic to the video’s viewpoint further editing and tightening would have been very beneficial; watching the video from start to finish is a grueling experience. The last part of the video veers off into a discussion of the economics of the jails and prisons which house immigrant and alien detainees; that section (which contains some truly brutal scenes of a prison lock down) seems to have only a tangential relationship to the serious legal and human issues raised previously and further adds to the perception of a lack of focus. Also complicating an appropriate evaluation of the video are the events of September 11, 2001. The general perception of some of the issues raised has been altered by those events and, for better or for worse, there may be less empathy with immigration concerns.

Despite these reservations, the video, used selectively and with discussion, may very well have a place in collections that deal with immigration issues. While the overall video is polemical, the interviews with some of the subjects are very powerful and could be used to illustrate the human consequences of law as opposed to simply discussing law as an academic subject. From this perspective, the video would be valuable not only in collections specializing in law but also for those that deal with social issues, civil rights, and equality.

Recommended, with the reservations noted above.