Documentary Puts Focus on 'Other Side of Immigration'

Roy Germano
Photo courtesy of www.theothersideofimmigration.com

Fordham students marked the last day of New York’s Immigration Heritage Week on April 15 with a screening and discussion with an award-winning filmmaker and a performance by a Queens-based Spanish-language hip-hop group.

The Other Side of Immigration (Roy Germano Films, 2009), an award-winning documentary about Mexico's most crippling economic hardships, was shown on the Rose Hill campus.

Through more than 700 interviews with the families left behind by U.S.-bound migrant workers, the film highlights the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on poor farmers, the country's vicious cycle of poverty spurred by a corrupt government and the social pressures on Mexicans to seek a better way of life.

The 55-minute film was shot, edited and produced by Roy Germano, Ph.D., a visiting professor of politics at The New School, while he was a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Austin.

Germano said he was inspired to shoot the film while was working on a dissertation on the political impact of money Mexicans in the US send to home communities.

“I was looking at why people send money home and found a relationship between decreased spending by the Mexican government on things like subsidies and increased money that’s remitted back,” he said. “When people lose a safety net, they find another one.”

Remittances, money transferred from documented and undocumented immigrants living in the United States to their home country, accounted for 2.5 percent of Mexico’s Gross Domestic Product or U.S. $26 billion in 2009. When asked if migration is a means for development in Mexico, Germano said the results are mixed.

“On one hand, you can see some people drop out of the labor force when they are receiving money from abroad. Also, lots of times communities are losing their best, hardest-working people,” he said. “But you also get an economic resource that helps people get a foot on a ladder rung. They’ll send their kids to school or be able to get healthcare. If people don’t have to worry where their next meal is coming from, then hopefully they can develop the community.”

But development is not always the first priority for remittance dollars, as Germano found that 60 percent of families who receive monies from abroad first use those funds to buy food.

“But I did find a trend of people who will pool money earned in the U.S. and send back large amounts for community development projects,” Germano said. “The Mexican government has even developed the ‘Three-for-One’ program for migrants, where for every dollar that’s sent back through one of these ‘community bundles,’ the government matches it with two extra dollars for things like building a road or a sewer system.”

Germano found remittances to Mexico function like an economic stimulus.
“It’s like shooting money into the economy to get people spending,” he said.

By the end of the film’s production process, Germano said he thought there were easy answers in dealing with the issue of immigration.

“But the more cynical I get—and not in a bad way—but maybe more realistic, is that this is going to be an issue that’s solved over the generations partly due to lack of political will,” he said. “It seems that in the U.S., there is a resistance to actually creating a good policy and it’s born from the fact that policy makers are divided over what to do.”

The Republican party is often considered to be the party of business and national security, Germano said.

“So you have a Republican that’s thinking how to vote on immigration. On the one hand, they’ll say we should let in more immigrants and legalize more of them so that businesses can get the workers that they need. But that same Republican might have constituents that are concerned about change of American culture and the landscape of America and there are people who are resistant to that,” he said. “And there’s a similar story with Democrats. They have loyalty to working class but at the same time to lower class voters, so they’ll be torn between these two constituencies.”

This is why immigration reform under President Ronald Reagan in 1986 cracked down on the border more than ever in history, yet at the same time, legalized three million people, Germano said.

“And it’s why we up with an employer sanction regime, where we say to employers, you’ll get fined $10,000 if you hire an undocumented worker, but at the same time, it’s not up to you whether the workers documents are real or not. Essentially we pass immigration policies that conflict with each other and have no teeth,” Germano said.

Queens-based group Hispanos Causando Paniko (HCP), pioneers of Spanish-language Hip Hop in New York City, closed the event with a performance. Their songs, such as Medidas Drasticas, or Drastic Measures, speak to the struggles of Hispanic immigrants in New York.

For more information about the documentary, visit www.theothersideofimmigration.com. For more information on HCP, visit http://www.hispanoscausandopaniko.com/

The event was sponsored by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Center for International Policy Studies' research unit on Migration, Gender and Development with support from the Fordham Deans’ Council.

—Gina Vergel

Hispanos Causando Paniko
Photo courtesy of www.hispanoscausandopaniko.com

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—Bob Howe

National Poetry Month - Fordham Poem of the Day

Grandmother’s Lipstick (By Rachel Kaminsky)

She boils an egg (watching).

Light illuminates the stove her black bob (patent leather)

sets a blaze the gold chai ‘round her neck (a camel).

Brighton Beach: breeze bikini bazaar.

Beauties bronze their skin under a blistering bulb.

From the 18th-storey
of a Warbasse building

children are pinky-toenail-size it is good to be a child

the clink of kitten heels against the tile a hard boiled egg served to you
(in silver)

between pillars of salt and pepper.

Once, my father wanted to play detective.

He wrote a message with his mother’s lipstick on her vanity mirror
(I have kidnapped your dog).

She banged his head against the wall

split open (a pea pod) his brow

blood ran

onto the lapel of his trench coat.

That was the Lower East Side years after

black smoke of a corpse hurried across the sky

unwashed skin of a stranger sleeping beside her

the starved dead stacked like fish
in a wheelbarrow.

Then the British Red Cross their box of lipstick,
piece of humanity in a plastic tube.

In Coney Island my grandmother balances an egg on a platter
walking across a kitchen
with a view of the Wonder Wheel.

(Rachel Kaminsky is a Master's student in the Department of English with a creative writing concentration.)

CEO Magazine Gives Business Graduate Programs High Marks

Three times, CEO Magazine has ranked MBA and EMBA programs around the world, and just as it did last year, the editors there put Fordham’s programs in the highest echelon.

In its annual ranking of MBA programs, the magazine, which is published in London by the Callender Media Group, ranked the Graduate School of Business Administration in its tier one category for both its MBA and EMBA.

The big change from last year was that Fordham’s Executive MBA program was included in Tier I in the global category, something that Francis Petit, Ed.D. Associate Dean for Executive MBA Programs said reflected especially well on the school.

The MBA program, which had been unranked previously, was included in the North American regional category, putting it in the company of universities such as Columbia, Duke, Harvard and Stanford.

“This is, of course, positive news for our program and it continues the momentum we are building,” he said. “What is nice to see is that last year Fordhams’ EMBA program was ranked tier one within the North America region, and now we have made it to tier one within the global rankings.”

Both Petit and David Gautschi, Ph.D., Dean of the Graduate School of Business Administration, were interviewed in a Q&A article for the magazine, “Take a Swing at This: The World’s Jazziest Institution, The Fordham MBA.”

In it, Dean Gautschi emphasized four themes the college has embraced as part of its commitment to its Jesuit heritage:

—Advancing understanding of business in the global economy.

—Advancing the understanding of business in a money center such as New York City.

—Advancing understanding of business in a media center; an element with a technological spin.

—An explicit drive to increase the societal understanding of business.

“These elements align together and all are anchored on the fourth and follow certain practice guidelines that in so doing reveal our Jesuit stripes,” Dean Gautschi said.

He also touted the creation of the Fordham Consortium, a gathering of 45 people from different walks of life, who come together to form discernment and to discuss ‘what is the purpose of business’, regardless of one’s global position.

“This organization is neatly reflected in the vision and construction of the MBA program where we are keen to bring different ideas and people together, not to drive unilateral thought but, to cover a range of different contexts. We need to understand these differences and celebrate them,” he said.

Fordham’s EMBA program is designed for business professionals and managers on the fast track toward challenging managerial and global assignments. The program focuses on building each student’s personal portfolio in management development with tools that can be implemented immediately in the workplace.

—Patrick Verel

National Poetry Month - Fordham Poem of the Day

(Christopher GoGwilt is a professor of English.)

National Poetry Month - Fordham Poem of the Day

Circumnavigating the Lake (By Cecily Parks)

Whiz-bang,
in a car again
downing sodas
& keeling to mime
the shoreline spree:
giddied waves
of roadside soft-
serve simulacra,
grease cresting
over fast
food shacks,
a flimsy dock’s
bob-&-weave
above the blue-
green blue. The
blownback rushes
counterfeit our
faithless hair &
our doubletaking
at the drive-in
marquee as we
lap our odyssey
& sister
the lacustrine.

(Cecily Parks is an adjunct professor of creative writing in the Department of English)

National Poetry Month - Fordham Poem of the Day

Scene: a Loom (By Sarah Gambito)

Scene: a Loom


If I emulate you, where would my rafters be?
She pulls out her voice scale by scale.
She thinks I do not hear her emotion.
This is a shock.

To make it more specific— my people.

Children are the imminent sojourn.
A maybe of love.
Brilliant persuasion from the stands.

I buy you a plate of expensive pears.
I cut the pear in ½.

January 8th We eat a ½.
January 8th Someone dear to me has died. Someone dear to me has died.
January 28th Ito ay isang pagdasal para sa kapatid ko meaning

He was unkind and she loved him.
He left her on the impended highway and she loved him.
He went away to the far country and she loved him.

I do not know the Lord.
But he spoke in a lovely way.
Created. Silvery citadel.

(Sarah Gambito is an assistant professor of English and director of Fordham's Creative Writing Program.)

Concerts and Lectures Fete Distinctive Churches

Fordham hosted a pair of spring concerts on April 9 and 10 that focused on the art and architecture of the Church of St. Paul the Apostle and the Fordham University Church.


The Fordham University Women’s Choir conducted by Stephen Fox and the Fordham University Choir conducted by Robert Minotti performed Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, Mark Jennings’ O Crux and Gabriel Fauré’s Cantique de Jean Racine and Requiem. The Bronx Arts Ensemble provided the music.

Gregory Waldrop, S.J., assistant professor of art history, discussed the mural The Crucifixion on April 9 at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle. The mural, which was painted by William Laurel Harris from 1906 to 1908, hangs above the door of the church.


The story depicted in the artwork is very familiar and has a “classic cast,” as Father Waldrop called it, featuring Jesus surrounded by golden ether, the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene and St. John.


The crucifix in the mural is in axis with the cross over the altar at the front of the church.

“The conjunction of images of Christ’s saving body defines a space, and gathers up in that space all those present in the church—the flock, who gather to praise God on the cross, who gather to hear the word proclaimed from the pulpit, who gather to receive Eucharist at the altar,” Father Waldrop said.



Father Waldrop discussed details that only can be seen by looking closely at the mural from the balcony. He described the gold shimmer that coats the pink sky and purple city in the artwork. He said that the city scene and sunset are based on the actual Jerusalem, at least in mood and lighting, and show a definite moment in time.

The city painted in the mural above the entrance of church is contrasted with New York, the “very real, very alive, very specific city where hope is made concrete in our living out the love that God has shown us,” he said.



Monsignor Joseph G. Quinn, vice president for University mission and ministry, spoke on April 10 about the Stations of the Cross at the Fordham University Church.

Photos by Michael Dames.

-Jenny Hirsch

Queens Court and McMahon Hall Triumph in RecycleMania

In the end, it was a queen’s world.

Queens Court, the three-building complex comprised of St. John's, St. Robert's and Bishop's Halls on Fordham’s Rose Hill campus, beat ten other residence halls at Rose Hill and Lincoln Center in the University’s first RecycleMania contest.

The ten-week long national competition wrapped up last week, and when the final numbers were tabulated, Queens Court had recycled both the most paper and cardboard at 35.93 pounds per person, and the most glass, metal and plastic, at 42.22 pounds per person.

McMahon Hall, the lone residence hall at Lincoln Center campus, took home first prize for an achievement of the opposite sort: Residents there generated the least amount of trash generated over all, at 84.15 pounds per person.

This is the first year Fordham participated in the contest, in the informal “Benchmark” division. Rounding out the rest of the results were:

Paper/cardboard:
1. Queens Court: 35.93 pounds per person, or 4,850 pounds total
2. Campbell Hall: 27.51 pounds per person, or 7,570 pounds total
2. Walsh Hall: 26.32 pounds per person, or 10,950 pounds total

Glass/metal/plastic
1. Queens Court: 42.22 pounds per person, or 5,699 pounds total
2. Salice-Conley Hall: 39.13 pounds per person, or 8,765 pounds total
3. Campbell Hall: 38.91 pounds per person, or 8,133 pounds total

Trash
1. McMahon Hall: 84.15 pounds per person, or 74,137 pounds total
2. Loschert Hall: 115.28 pounds per person, or 29,512 pounds total
3. Alumni South: 122.93 pounds per person, or 37,125 pounds total

While the rest of the residence halls were not far behind the leaders, there were some exceptions. Martyr’s Court, for instance, recycled 17.23 pounds of paper and cardboard per person and 22.90 pounds of glass, metal and plastic per person. Those weren’t the lowest numbers for either category—those honors belong to McMahon Hall and Tierney Hall, respectively—but they do help explain another number: 482.11, the number of pounds of trash generated per person there.

Robert Freda, director of the Custodial Services department, said two issues were at play at Martyr’s Court that they would work with the Department of Residential Life to address. Although magnetic signs distributed by RecycleMania were posted around the building, he said student awareness could be improved.

They also need to re-examine the locations of the collection bins in Martyr’s Court. Because some of the closets where trash is collected are not big enough to also accommodate recycling bins, Freda noted that some of the bins had to be placed in lounges instead. That absence of consistency, and not residents’ apathy, was probably the cause of the spike in trash.

“The containers are there for recycling, but we want to make it as easy as we can for students to know where they are,” he said.

All told, the average diversion rate over the past ten weeks for the residence halls was about 22 percent, according to Great Forest, a consulting firm that crunched the numbers for Fordham. So the competition provided a good look at the ratio of trash to recyclables generated overall from the residence halls.

—Patrick Verel

National Poetry Month - Fordham Poem of the Day

Hello, Sweetheart (by Elisabeth Frost)

Hello, Sweetheart

Mother’s voice on the phone. She uses her favorite endearment.

I ask how she is. “Oh, fine,” she says. “I’m not disturbing you?” And she talks about the constant rain. I half-listen, writing the day’s errands on an envelope, my shoulder clamping the receiver, till I notice an inflection to her speech.

“Excuse me,” I say, interrupting her. “But who are you looking for?”

Seconds pass. Her voice is thin. “Why, I’m looking for you! I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”

“But,” I insist, “who am I?”

She starts screaming. “Margaret! You’re Margaret!”

From All of Us (White Pine Press, 2011)

(Elisabeth Frost is an associate professor of English and Women's Studies and Editor, Poets Out Loud Prize book series.)