01/24/05

LC050124

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

It's no secret that illegal immigrants are a major force in our
economy. Is it time to let them use our banks?

Raul Hinojosa>> Given the fact that we have a strong dependence
on immigration, would we rather have people living in the
shadows or would we rather have people joining the economic
mainstream?

Val>> And then, is it artwork or just sheer fun? When this
retired artist launches his kites, it's easy to forget that he's
ninety-four.

All that and more straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Should illegal immigrants be allowed to open up checking
accounts and savings accounts in the United States? That's the
question fueling the latest debate over undocumented workers.
Banks are eager to draw new customers and now a new form of
identification is making it easier. In fact, Kevin Smith went
to East Los Angeles and found out that marketing to Latinos is a
new banking priority.

Kevin Smith>> At this East Los Angeles branch of Wells Fargo
Bank, an estimated ninety-nine percent of the customers are
Latino. Many of them used to be part of an all-cash economy,
paying bills with money orders, wiring money back to their
native countries through high-priced neighborhood shops. Now
customers like Mina Cortez have joined the world of mainstream
banking.

Mina Cortez>> I used to simply pay cash for everything. I
would save my money and I would know how much I needed to pay
off my bills.

Kevin Smith>> Cortez is one of half a million new customers at
Wells Fargo since it began accepting the matricula consular card
back in 2001. Other banks soon followed. Matricula cards are
issued by the Mexican government for use by their citizens in
the United States. Banks now also accept similar cards from
Guatemala and Argentina.

John Murillo>> We're again committed to servicing and offering
our products and service to everyone in our communities and
being able to do that is through accepting the matricula card
which we're very proud of doing.

Kevin Smith>> More than a million people in California now
carry the cards and long lines form daily at the Mexican
Consulate just west of downtown.

Raul Hinojosa>> So there's basically two major Salvadorian
organizations. . .

Kevin Smith>> UCLA professor, Raul Hinojosa, studies the impact
of Latino immigrants on the United States economy.

Raul Hinojosa>> I think it's an excellent thing that the banks
are finally taking these customers seriously. I mean, it took
remittances to get the fifty billion dollars to Latin America
before we got their attention.

Kevin Smith>> But opponents like Ira Mehlman say that
acceptance of the matricula card encourages illegal immigration.

Ira Mehlman>> When somebody shows up and the only piece of
identification they have is a foreign consular ID card, the
presumption ought to be that that person is in the country
illegally. And when you start making it easier for people to
live here, including the opening of bank accounts and
transferring money back to their home countries, it does make it
easier. It encourages people to stay.

Raul Hinojosa>> Well, actually, they're going to stay here with
or without the banking system. The question is, now that
they're going to stay here, would you rather have them very poor
and remaining poor or having some access to the banking system
which would improve their lives as well as the rest of the
community?

Kevin Smith>> The banks say it's not their role to determine
the immigration status of customers and tout the benefits of
their policy.

John Murillo>> As more individuals become part of the
mainstream, then there is more economic growth in the local
communities and also a safety measure that is offered to those
individuals who, in many cases, we found carry their life
savings with them on a daily basis. Now they have a means where
they can deposit those life savings, protect their investment
and continue to grow and reach their financial goals.

Kevin Smith>> So tell us about this. I guess this is a new
addition to your branch?

Mario Escobar>> Yes, it is. The branch was promoted recently
and this year was added to the branch. As you can see, we have
Cesar Chavez here who was a role model for the Latino community.

Kevin Smith>> Wells Fargo has established five Latino-themed
branches here with murals paying tribute to Latino culture and
community artwork on the walls. Of course, most of the signs
are in Spanish.

Mario Escobar>> This is something that everybody appreciates.
They feel more comfortable and everything is better organized
for them.

Kevin Smith>> For commercial banks, there's no doubt that
catering to the expanding Latino community makes sound business
sense. Ever since Wells Fargo began accepting the matricula
card for identification back in 2001, the bank says this East
Los Angeles branch has seen its customer base grow by an average
of thirteen percent a year.

[Film Clip]

Kevin Smith>> Most customers use only basic services, opening
checking accounts and transferring money back to their home
countries. But as immigrants become more settled in Southern
California, Wells Fargo sees many more possibilities.

John Murillo>> Well, there's opportunity in terms of lending
whether it be loans to purchase a home or to expand their
business.

Kevin Smith>> Banks are especially eager to get a piece of the
lucrative money transfer business. Many immigrants wire money
back home every few weeks.

Raul Hinojosa>> But the vast majority of people are completely
outside the banking system and they're actually sending money
through couriers or sending money through the phone fax or mom
and pop shop type operations. They're the ones who are paying
significantly more money.

Kevin Smith>> The fees for each money transfer often run twenty
to thirty dollars. Banks hope to capture a larger share of this
business by charging lower fees. In Wells Fargo's case, eight
dollars for each transfer of up to three thousand dollars.
While Professor Hinojosa applauds the efforts of banks, he
believes even they are charging too much for money transfers, so
he recently set up his own public company called "No Borders"
which issues magnetic cards to let customers transfer funds at
lower cost or even for free if they open accounts at affiliated
credit unions in their home countries.

Raul Hinojosa>> The basic business plan is to use new
technology that's now available after the internet revolution to
radically reduce costs for remittances.

Kevin Smith>> After a demonstration, Umberto Lopez from El
Salvador said he'd consider the No Border affinity card for his
money transfers.

Umberto Lopez>> It's obvious that it's not only me, but a lot
of other people could use it. And if we could save some money,
well, I think that's what everybody would want.

Kevin Smith>> While foreign ID cards may have created a
business bonanza, opponents raise a second objection besides
their concerns about illegal immigration. They claim the cards
can get into the wrong hands and pose a risk to national
security.

Ira Mehlman>> These documents have been found in the hands of
non-Mexicans. The border patrol has come across people who were
in the possession of matricula cards who came from Middle
Eastern countries. There is no way for the United States
government or a bank to be able to verify the true identities of
the people who hold these documents. We rely on a foreign
government to verify the identity of these people.

Kevin Smith>> Banks point out that the Mexican government
requires birth certificates and other official papers from its
citizens before issuing matricula cards and they say the cards
are difficult to forge.

John Murillo>> The matricula card has many features that are
comparable to the United States state-issued driver's license
and identification cards, and our staff has been trained to be
able to identify those security features.

Raul Hinojosa>> As a whole, we would be better off by people
coming forth and having some form of government-issued ID,
either a foreign or a local government, than having nothing at
all.

Kevin Smith>> There have been recent efforts in Congress to
prohibit banks and government agencies from accepting foreign ID
cards other than passports, but so far, those efforts have
failed. That's good news for Wells Fargo and other banks who
are eager to build on their early success in the hot Latino
market. I'm Kevin Smith for Life and Times.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and
Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts
and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most
interesting features. Just go to kcet.org and click on "Life
and Times".

Val>> He has walked more miles in his lifetime than many of us
will drive in a year and yet his personal journey has taken him
even farther, from a soldier in Vietnam where he killed hundreds
of people to life as an ordained monk. His story is even more
relevant these days as more and more soldiers are being sent to
fight in Iraq.

His name is Claude AnShin Thomas. He grew up in a working class
family in a small Pennsylvania town. I talked with him about
how he went from typical teenager to killer to Zen Buddhist
monk. And you were only seventeen when you signed up for
Vietnam?

Claude AnShin Thomas>> Actually, seventeen when I joined the
military, eighteen when I volunteered to go to Vietnam.

Val>> What did you have in mind when you were signing up?

Claude AnShin Thomas>> (Laughter) I don't really know. I think
I was out of my mind. I grew up very naïve and hadn't a clue
about the realities of war or anything beyond the small
cloistered little farming community that I grew up in. I did
not even know, at the age of seventeen when I went in the
military, that there was a war going on in Vietnam.

Val>> So you just thought you were going to just serve in the
military and not ever actually have to go abroad or fight in the
trenches?

Claude AnShin Thomas>> I had no idea.

Val>> Now in your book, you don't make any bones about it. You
say you killed several hundred people in Vietnam.

Claude AnShin Thomas>> Yes. In the first couple of months of
my service. The killing did not stop there. I enlisted at the
age of seventeen. I was being trained to kill an enemy at the
age of seventeen. I was not of the legal age of consent. If I
would have had a physical relation with a nineteen year old
woman, that woman could have been arrested for statutory rape.
Still, I was being trained to go to war to kill people.

When I came home from Vietnam, I carried a gun twenty four hours
a day, seven days a week. I had to have a gun or I didn't feel
safe. I carried a gun until 1984. It wasn't until then that I
began to think that, well, maybe there's something not okay with
this.

Val>> But you also went through, what, drug addiction, alcohol,
homelessness, post traumatic stress. What were some of the
symptoms? To make people understand post traumatic stress, you
mentioned a couple of symptoms. For example, rain or just
reaching for something in the grocery store.

Claude AnShin Thomas>> Well, these were events that would put
me into a post traumatic reaction. I walk into a grocery store
-- and this still happens to me -- I walk into a grocery store
and I would reach out to take a can of vegetables off the
counter and suddenly I'd be just overwhelmed with fear and
anxiety. My war conditioning would tell me, don't do that
because that could be booby trapped. Now in that moment, what I
would do in the beginning is that I would find some way to deny
that voice and attempt to muscle my way through that.

So to deny that voice, deny the feelings I had, the thoughts
that I had, the reactions that I was having, I would drink, take
other drugs, social anesthetics as I was conditioned by my
father before me who was a soldier in the Second War. So I
would not acknowledge or address the manifestations of war in
any positive kind of way. What I've learned to do now is, when
I have these reactions, I understand that they're not
irrational. You see, a lot of conditioning will tell me these
reactions are irrational. They're not irrational. It comes out
of my experience. It's how I'm conditioned. Because in
Vietnam, nothing was safe, nothing.

Val>> Like I'm hearing this helicopter now and I'm thinking
I'll bet you're experiencing it much differently than I am. I'm
thinking, oh, gee, this is an irritating sound while we're
taping. You might be thinking --

Clause AnShin Thomas>> I'm thinking when are they going to open
fire? Those are the first thoughts that go into my head. When
are they going to open fire? Are they med-evaking someone? It
has that war connection. Now what I've had to learn how to do
is hold that reality, which is a conditioned reality, along with
the fact that this may not be the case.

Val>> After years of substance abuse and aimlessness, a turning
point came in 1990. Claude was encouraged to attend a Buddhist
retreat conducted by a monk who worked with veterans.

Claude AnShin Thomas>> When I arrived there sitting in the
front row when he opened his mouth and began to talk, I just
started to cry. For the first time in my life, I felt
understood. I felt somebody else understood what I understood.
It was the most incredible experience.

Val>> Thirty years after he returned from Vietnam, Claude was
ordained a Soto Zen Buddhist monk. He relinquished money and
began pilgrimages. His first was walking from Auschwitz, Poland
where he was ordained to Vietnam.

Claude AnShin Thomas>> Twenty-seven countries, eight months,
five thousand miles.

Val>> Unbelievable.

Claude AnShin Thomas>> Yeah. And the more I walked, the more I
knew that I always wanted to be a monk.

Val>> So what do you think of when you think of the young men
going into war now? What do they have ahead of them?

Claude AnShin Thomas>> When I think about what's happening now,
I cry. I feel a great sense of compassion and sometimes
desperation and frustration for what's happening now. I
couldn't believe it was going to happen again. When I think
about the young men now, I say to myself what can I do to
support them when they come home?

Val>> Claude realizes that most vets won't become monks, but he
hopes they can learn from his experience.

Claude AnShin Thomas>> What I learned is that it's impossible
to be trained to take a human life. It's impossible to
experience war trauma and violence and not be effected. To take
a human life, I have to dehumanize. That when I dehumanize
another, I lose contact with my own humanity. So just in my
upbringing, which I call the war before the war, I was taught to
dehumanize. Ethnically, I dehumanized people.

I never referred to Polish people as Polish. I had an ethnic
slur. I never referred to Catholic people or Jewish people as
Catholic or Jewish. I had a religious slur. I never referred
to people of color as human beings. I always had a racial slur.
I didn't even think about it. It wasn't something I did
maliciously or consciously. It just happened like that. I was
already being taught to dehumanize and, as a result, losing
contact my own humanity. What my government did to me was
criminal. However, what I do with the consequences of that is
my responsibility.

Val>> Claude AnShin Thomas tells his story in a book, "At
Hell's Gate: A Journey from War to Peace".

Claude AnShin Thomas>> I also want to say that I'm not
proselytizing. I'm not attempting to sell Buddhism in any way,
shape or form. It's simply the tradition which supports me.
But I think that, without a disciplined spiritual practice in a
person's life, whatever that might be, then this process of
having a conscious awareness of how one has been affected and
having the awareness and support to live in a different
relationship to those conditions will be difficult. Not
impossible, but difficult.

Val>> Well, Claude AnShin Thomas, thank you for leading the
way. I'm sure there are many, many soldiers who will get a lot
of encouragement from this.

Claude AnShin Thomas>> Thank you. I hope so, soldiers and
family members.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
by mail at this address:

Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or
contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val>> What would you like to be doing at age ninety-four?
Well, we met a man who, at age ninety-four, stays young by
heading to the beach and flying kites. His name is Tyrus Wong
and, once you meet him, you'll see why he gives his kites and
everyone around him a big lift.

At age ninety-four, Tyrus Wong is living a second childhood. On
sunny Saturday afternoons, this retired artist heads down to the
Santa Monica beach ready to put his creations to the test.

[Film Clip]

Val>> There are soaring owls, running pandas, and wobbling
centipedes. Of all the things that you could have done, of all
the hobbies that you could have done, why kites?

Tyrus Wong>> Oh, I don't know. I guess because the Chinese are
the ones that invented the kites. Maybe that's in my blood. I
don't know. Maybe that's okay (laughter).

Val>> Launching kites can be tricky. Today the wind is a
little temperamental. Tyrus's daughter, Kim, is on hand to
pitch in. These aren't your ordinary store-bought kites. These
are designed, built and hand-painted by Tyrus Wong, one of the
most accomplished Chinese-American artists of his generation.

[Film Clip]

Val>> He taught himself the art of kite-making through his
favorite technique: trial and error.

Tyrus Wong>> This is a crane. I don't know a darn thing about
them (laughter), but anyway, trial and error. This is one is
fiberglass and it's a very hard thing to work with because you
can't bend them. The crane is represented in Japan, the
Japanese Airlines and the crane is a symbol, right? So the
crane is also a bird that's considered good luck and so forth,
you know. It's a symbol.

Val>> In fact, in Japan there's an official kite-flying season,
but here in Santa Monica, Tyrus has an unofficial fan club.

[Film Clip]

Val>> A small group of admirers who watch Tyrus as he releases
airborne surprise after another. Today he's launching multiple
kites on one string. Before long, a flock of fifteen owls is
fluttering overhead.

[Film Clip]

Val>> Just like the freeways in Los Angeles, sometimes the
skies get a little crowded and that can lead to kite collision.
Have you ever had any terrible disasters with your kites?

Tyrus Wong>> Oh, yeah.

Kim>> Yeah.

Val>> Like what?

Tyrus Wong>> Well, sometimes they cut my line.

Kim>> Another kite will cut the line.

Tyrus Wong>> Yeah, I lost five of them one time.

Val>> Tyrus's biggest challenge today will be this one, a
centipede kite about a hundred feet long. It will take nearly a
half hour to lay it out. Well, this is one of the more
difficult?

Tyrus Wong>> Yes and no. You know, all depending on the wind.
Sometimes the wind, you know, makes it very difficult.

Val>> During the week, you'll find Tyrus Wong in his secluded
hilltop home in Sunland. Behind his house is a crowded studio.
The ceiling is draped with kites that Tyrus designed and painted
by hand. Like everything he does, they have the artist's touch.
Some of his kites are hanging in museums. The work is
meticulous and time-consuming, but that doesn't bother him. In
fact, it suits him.

As an artist, Tyrus Wong made his reputation in his twenties.
He was doing routine animation work for the Disney Studios when
he saw a chance to draw some backgrounds for a new movie,
"Bambi". He used the soft stylized brush strokes from Chinese
paintings. Walt Disney liked the effect and, over the next
forty years, Tyrus Wong would design the backgrounds for dozens
of classic movies at Disney and Warner Bros. Along the way, he
painted murals, decorated ceramics and produced lithographs, an
impressive body of work for a boy who came to America at age
ten, practiced brush strokes on newspapers and quit high school
to go to art school on a scholarship. After retiring from a
long and successful career, Tyrus was looking for another
challenge.

Tyrus Wong>> The first time I built a swallow, I took it way up
on the hill there, seen nobody around and tried it out. It
didn't fly. I tried three or four times. I finally get it
airborne, but painted it with oil paint, off-balance or
something. I tried over and over again. I used to get twenty-
five of them up on one line.

Val>> How did you get interested in kite-making?

Tyrus Wong>> Oh, because I retired and I had to find something
to do. You know, I used to do a lot of painting, but not
anymore, so I just build kites. It's kind of fun and creative
and, you know, very challenging.

Val>> Did you have to learn a lot about aerodynamics?

Tyrus Wong>> No, I don't know what the word means (laughter).
Trial and error.

Val>> Trial and error?

Tyrus Wong>> Yep, trial and error.

Val>> The time has come to launch the centipede.

Tyrus Wong>> I hope you fly. Keep your fingers crossed
(laughter).

>> Oh, yeah, we will.

Val>> After some careful adjustments, Tyrus takes hold of the
handle and waits for the wind to feel right. Then with a firm
grip and a good yank, it's up.

[Film Clip]

Val>> But Tyrus wants it to go higher.

Tyrus Wong>> The wind. Not enough wind.

[Film Clip]

Val>> The centipede will have to settle for just a brief flight
today, but the fan club is still impressed. They enjoyed seeing
an artist at work. You've been an artist all your life, all
different kinds of art. How does this compare to being an
artist?

Tyrus Wong>> Well, to me, a kite is another art form, you know.
You're still using brushes, still imagination.

Val>> So you just feel it's an extension of your artwork?

Tyrus Wong>> Yeah, yeah, yeah. You still paint, you know. You
still use your hands. It's just like sculpture almost, you
know.

Val>> And when you think about it, there isn't all that much
difference between putting his mark on canvas or putting it on
the sky.

[Film Clip]

Val>> Tyrus Wong takes his kites out to the beach the last
Saturday of the month. You're welcome to join him. And that's
our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times,
thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times --

The rediscovery of a significant work by a famous muralist
raises the question: why was it painted over in the first place?

>> A black man with a child, a white woman with a child, it's
the height of the depression. These are messages that the
authorities did not want conveyed to the masses. It was too
provocative.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.