James Gregg on Covering the Border

Last week I promised to post a follow-up to immigrant policy in which I would outline specifics to what I thought was a plausible solution. I will get to that soon, but between then and now I ran into a story that I couldn't help but post for this week.

Last Wednesday I sat down with photojournalist James Gregg. Over lunch, I learned much about his career, a story that is deeply rooted in the immigrant world. His overall take on border issues and immigrant policy wasn't anything specific, but it touched on several broad ideas that I think are important for everyone to keep in mind.

First, understand that Gregg could be considered as an "expert" on the immigrant world, as he has a degree from the University of Kansas in Spanish and Latin American studies. More importantly, his career has led him to cover many stories on the border. My favorite example of his border related work can be seen here. It is a slideshow titled "Sealing our Border" and provides a visually stunning account of a trip that he took with the the Arizona Daily Star.

In our conversation I pressed Gregg for his personal views on our country's immigration problem. Even offering for it to be off the record, I still found it difficult to get a specific answer out of him. At first I thought that he was dodging the question and that very well may have been the case. Upon further reflection, however, I realized that the answer he did give me was not just hot-air meant to divert my attention away from his unspecific answer.

What he provided me with was not a liberal or conservative point-of-view, rather it was an expression of an ideology that identifies the inadequacies of both positions.

"It's never as simple as either side would make it seem, that is one thing that I have learned from being down there firsthand," Gregg said.

"The answer is not to build a wall, even if that did have the possibility of being effective. Opening up our borders entirely is just as misplaced a solution, if not more so," Gregg said.

Sure this seems obvious, the answer lies somewhere between the two, somewhere that has proven extremely difficult to pinpoint and agree upon.

"What is most important to recognize is that we need to drop all of our preconceived notions of what is the proper solution and what isn't," Gregg added. "When you get down there you realize that many of us probably have no clue what we are talking about and that what we are saying doesn't come from personal experience, but is usually what we heard from someone else."

And so it is the simple, seemingly obvious words of Gregg that I want everyone to remember when they try to identify with immigration issues. Try to do the impossible and examine them with a totally clean slate. Forget what you think you know and concede the fact that there is little most of us can really speak to of our actual border experience that has shaped our opinion on the issue.

If someone like Gregg who has a world of experience beyond ours can do so, why can't we?