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4/6/07
This program is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department.
Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --
Immigrants are lining up by the hundreds to become United States citizens. What's the rush?
Arturo Vargas>> Many of them because they understand that the fee is increasing. Many of them because they know that, without becoming a citizen, they don't have a voice in the public policy process.
Val Zavala>> And then, you have to be invited to join this group of artists. What makes Los Angeles's Gemini G.E.L. workshop so special?
It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.
Announcer>> 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 Zavala>> America prides itself on being a free country. Free press, free speech, and yet becoming a citizen paying for all the paperwork is anything but free and now the cost is sky-rocketing. As Toni Guinyard tells us, that means hundreds of would-be citizens are scrambling to get in line before they're priced out.
>> "How many senators are there in Congress?"
Class>> "One hundred."
>> "And who is the governor of California?"
Class>> "Arnold Schwarzenegger."
Toni Guinyard>> Citizenship classes sponsored by Los Angeles Southwest College are suddenly booming in popularity. Enrollment in the free course is jumping to levels instructors haven't seen in years.
Marian Ruane>> We went from a hundred eighty in the fall to five hundred twelve as of this morning.
Toni Guinyard>> And it's not unexpected. It all comes down to money, the cost of filing for United States citizenship.
Mark Yoshida>> Currently, the fee with the biometrics or fingerprinting fee is four hundred dollars and the immigration service has proposed to increase that to six hundred seventy-five dollars.
Toni Guinyard>> As staff attorney for the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, Mark Yoshida's desk is becoming more and more crowded with citizenship applications.
Mark Yoshida>> A lot of our community has heard about this and they're very concerned that they will not be able to afford it.
Toni Guinyard>> That's the case in a number of the immigrant communities. Since the moment the fee hike was proposed, many green card holders who've delayed applying for years are filing now.
Bella Rodriguez>> I have now my five years with my permanent resident.
Toni Guinyard>> So it's time.
Bella Rodriguez>> Yes, it's time.
Eustolea Navarro>> It's very important for me, the right to vote.
Marian Ruane>> People are just swarming in. They just want information. Some of them just need -- give me the application. Show me what to do and I'll be back with my money.
Toni Guinyard>> Marian Ruane is coordinator of English Literacy and Civics at Los Angeles Southwest College, a program adding classes to meet the need. They saw the first spike in enrollment after 9/11.
Marian Ruane>> They wanted to know that they belonged here and that they could stay here.
Toni Guinyard>> And now?
Marian Ruane>> And now it is the fee increase, but again, from way back in the marches last spring, you know, there was even "We want to be citizens. We want to get involved."
Toni Guinyard>> Coming on the coattails of the demonstrations in March and the proposed fee hike now, the renewed interest in United States citizenship comes as no surprise to Jane Arellano, District Director of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service in Los Angeles.
Jane Arellano>> They know the value of citizenship.
Toni Guinyard>> And they're learning that applying for United States citizenship isn't cheap.
Jane Arellano>> The cost of actually doing our business has increased, but we've never captured the fees that would support our operating costs.
>> "Now serving ticket number C-65 at counter number twenty-one."
Toni Guinyard>> The Director of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service has testified that three million dollars a day is lost under the current fee system. The proposed fee structure will help cover the cost of updating the system, strengthening security and improving customer service.
>> "Good morning, how may I help you?"
Toni Guinyard>> But the public has a chance to comment on the plan before it goes into effect.
Jane Arellano>> There's a sixty-day comment period with a sixty-day implementation period, so the fees would not actually go up until at least June of 2007. I do believe that those who were waiting and have been saving up for the lower fee are now really sensing an urgency of applying now while they feel that the fee fits into their budget.
Toni Guinyard>> In a seven-county Los Angeles district alone, the number of naturalization applications has jumped from seven thousand three hundred seventy-three in January of 2006 to eighteen thousand fifty-nine in January of 2007, an increase attributed to permanent residents racing to file before the fee is increased.
Mark Yoshida>> We can't go down without a fight, of course, but we have to let Immigration Service know that this affects a lot of people and it will have a serious impact on their own operations. If they raise the fee, they're not going to get as many applications. They're not going to be able to raise the funds that they're hoping for.
Toni Guinyard>> At the national office of NALEO, the impact of the proposed fee is measured in the number of phone calls received.
Arturo Vargas>> What the USCIS, the United States Citizenship and Information Service, pretends to do by increasing the fees from four hundred to six hundred ninety-five is to build an economic wall around citizenship. We don't need more barriers to people who are participating. We need to be encouraging people to participate.
Toni Guinyard>> Both Vargas at NALEO and Yoshida at the Asian Pacific American Legal Center believe the Citizenship and Immigration Service funding structure is flawed.
Mark Yoshida>> We urge the Immigration Service to reconsider that and, if they are not willing to, then we're asking Congress to step in to maybe help to make up the difference.
Arturo Vargas>> We're working with Congress to see if they can pass legislation that will allow Congress to appropriate funds to the USCIS so that we can avert this increase and actually fund the kinds of improvements that we want to see the USCIS implement.
Toni Guinyard>> Until then, they'll keep answering the phones, dispensing advice, going over applications and assisting with paperwork. And they'll also let green card holders know that other changes are on the way. Five hundred people are served every day at the United States Citizenship and Immigration office in downtown Los Angeles.
>> "What do you want me to do now? I need to come back again?"
Toni Guinyard>> A lot of people are in this room for a lot of different reasons, but if they are applying for naturalization, eventually they'll have to take a citizenship test and it's in the process of being redesigned. For years, there had been complaints that the test and the way it was administered was simply unfair.
Jane Arellano>> There's been so many complaints that we weren't a standardized testing agency.
Arturo Vargas>> We like the idea that there will be some more standardization to the test, but we also believe the test needs to be meaningful. I mean, how important is it to name the thirteen colonies versus how important is it to know what the values of this country are all about?
Mark Yoshida>> Some of the complaints also arose out of people who thought that the examination was just too easy and some people thought it was too hard. So they're trying to balance all these factors.
>> "Who said "Give me liberty or give me death?"
Class>> "Patrick Henry".
Toni Guinyard>> Back at the citizenship class, the focus is on an overall curriculum of history and civics. There are no plans to teach specifically to the redesigned test. Some students believe what they're already learning here is information many United States-born residents don't know.
Rafael Hernandez>> You know, I've been asking my co-workers the questions that I'm learning here and most of them don't know (laughter).
Toni Guinyard>> They don't know?
Rafael Hernandez>> They don't know the answers.
>> "We hold these truths to be self-evident. . ."
Toni Guinyard>> For whatever reason they've delayed applying for citizenship, these permanent residents have decided it's time to do it now.
Jane Arellano>> The right to vote is a very large benefit of United States citizenship.
Arturo Vargas>> One of the things that we know about people who become naturalized citizens is that they outperform those of us who were born here. People who become naturalized citizens are more likely to register to vote and more likely to vote.
>> "Who can tell me the names of the three benches?"
Arturo Vargas>> They don't have a voice in elections and many folks have been looking at what's been happening over the past few years on the debate, on the role of immigrants in American society. They realize that, if they're not a citizen, they don't have a voice.
>> ". . . are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Toni Guinyard>> But they're working on finding their voice while asking at what cost is United States citizenship and can I afford it? I'm Toni Guinyard for Life and Times.
Val Zavala>> Both NALEO and the APALC offer citizenship workshops. You can go to their websites for more information. And we'd like to know what you think about whether citizenship costs too much in this country. Just go to kcet.org and click on the Life and Times Blog.
Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times".
Val Zavala>> Well, you've heard of a no-points loan, but how about a no-interest loan? That's right. You can borrow up to twenty thousand dollars for zero interest. Where? At the Jewish Free Loan Association. They've been making these loans for the last hundred years to those in need.
It's run by Mark Meltzer and Evelyn Schecter. The loans go for everything from medical bills, college tuition, business startups, to helping victims of domestic violence and even couples who want to adopt a child. Mark Meltzer is Executive Director and CEO.
Mark Meltzer>> All of our loans are made with zero percent interest.
Val Zavala>> And no fees or any of the other stuff?
Mark Meltzer>> No fees, no interest. People have to come to us with a legitimate reason for the loan. It has to be an emergency. It has to be given to people who are unable to obtain the loan from another source, either from a family or from a bank. It really is a very special kind of a service that we offer to the community.
Val Zavala>> And the amount that they can borrow is up to twenty thousand, is that right?
Mark Meltzer>> Yes.
Val Zavala>> That's the most?
Mark Meltzer>> Yes, that's the most. Very few of our borrowers really get that amount of money. We encourage people to take less because we don't want them to have a great burden to pay back to us. All of our loans require co-signers to guarantee the loan. That's how we have had such success in collection. You probably don't know this, but we have great success in our collection. We write off less than half of one percent of our activity.
Val Zavala>> That's amazing.
Mark Meltzer>> It truly is.
Val Zavala>> Because compared to a bank?
Mark Meltzer>> Banks write off ten to twelve percent, I believe. That is --
Val Zavala>> -- in bad loans.
Mark Meltzer>> In bad loans. But we establish a relationship with our borrowers. All of our borrowers meet with one of our loan analysts, speak with them, and tell us their entire story and we establish a relationship with them and that's what I attribute to our great success in recovery of our money.
Val Zavala>> The fund started back in 1904. That's when ten businessmen got together and created a lending pool of five hundred dollars. The maximum loan amount at the time was twenty-five dollars.
In 1923, its president, Cesar Samuels, pledged fifty thousand dollars toward the fund. Since then, it's grown to more than five million dollars in loans with the average amount being two thousand dollars. Evelyn Schecter is the fund's Chief Operating Officer who says forty percent of their loans are to non-Jews.
Evelyn Schecter>> The Jewish Free Loan has always been a non-sectarian business and we have helped people of all faiths. For example, we helped the Native-Americans when the government allowed them to come off of the reservations and many of them came out to the West Coast.
They came to the Jewish Free Loan and we were able to help them establish themselves here. After the Watts riot in 1965, a lot of the population had lost their businesses and needed money to get started again, needed help just generally.
When the earthquakes happened, including the 1994 earthquake, people would line up outside the door and we were able to, that first couple of days, give them cash really. So with a thousand dollars in cash, they were able to walk out of here with money so that they could buy the absolute necessities of life.
Val Zavala>> If you're loaning money at zero percent, some people would say why don't you just make a grant? You know, it's charity.
Mark Meltzer>> Well, you know, we like to think that we are giving a person a helping hand in the form of a loan rather than a handout and I think that people maintain their pride with a loan. They know that they're coming in for a loan, and they're going to pay it back. It is a responsibility that they take on and they do pay it back.
We don't believe in giving people money in terms of a grant. That's more of a welfare type of thing and our clients are people who are not on welfare. They want to pay back the loan. They're having a glitch in their lives of a financial need and they come in to us to solve that challenge.
Val Zavala>> So in a way, it instills more financial responsibility in the long run.
Mark Meltzer>> Absolutely.
Evelyn Schecter>> And the people are amazing, and what many of them do is make contributions to help other people do the same thing.
Val Zavala>> After they've been helped.
Evelyn Schecter>> After they've been helped. Because what happens, with an interest-free loan, what happens is the money is repaid and then we have that money to lend to somebody else and it keeps the money recycling, if you will, in perpetuity which is very exciting.
Val Zavala>> So give us an idea of an individual who has started a business as a result of the free loan.
Mark Meltzer>> Well, we have assisted people in the framing business to start picture framing. We have assisted people in food service of all kinds. We have assisted a seamstress who has become a dress designer.
Val Zavala>> Really?
Mark Meltzer>> Yes, we have. We have assisted many kinds of businesses.
Val Zavala>> Now what if they don't know anything about business? Because it takes a lot of training.
Mark Meltzer>> Oh, that's a good question. Our applicants have to show us and display an awareness and a knowledge of running a business, especially our new American population. We try to understand what they are going to do and we want them to understand how to run a business. It's a delicate piece of back and forth information that we have to establish before we can make the loan.
Val Zavala>> Now this is such a good idea. It seems like a lot of communities in Los Angeles that are facing poverty and other challenges could do the same thing. Couldn't they just get together, pool their money and start something like this?
Mark Meltzer>> You know, Val, that's a very interesting question. I would like to see some of the communities in Los Angeles do just that and, in some cases, I have talked with leaders in some of the communities to do that. It's a difficult fund-raising issue. It's also a Jewish-based kind of thing.
We are taught in the Torah that we shall not extol interest from the needy and that's one of our basic tenets and we believe in that strongly. It doesn't transpose to other communities as easily and because it is, within the Jewish community, a strong fact of life, the Jewish community funds it and started funding it years ago and people are aware of it in the Jewish community and donate to it.
Val Zavala>> So it's more ingrained in your culture?
Mark Meltzer>> It is, it is. It's an educational process.
Val Zavala>> Mark Meltzer, with the Jewish Free Loan Association, thank you.
Mark Meltzer>> Thank you so much for coming to see us.
Val Zavala>> And I hope you have another hundred years of lending.
Mark Meltzer>> I hope so. Thank you very much.
Announcer>> 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.
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You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.
Val Zavala>> If you're an artist with a really big idea, one of the first places you'll call is a place called Gemini G.E.L. For the past forty years, they've been taking those big ideas and making them real. Vicki Curry takes us inside this remarkable print shop.
Vicki Curry>> Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, James Rosenquist, Claes Oldenburg, David Hockney. It's a roll call of America's best-known artists. They've all made work at Los Angeles's Gemini G.E.L., a place that lets an artist's imagination run free.
Stanley Grinstein>> We adjust to them and say, "What do you want to do and we'll experiment with you? We'll have fun with you. Let's try some things." It seems to have worked out over the years.
Vicki Curry>> The result? Four decades of inventive, groundbreaking art works.
Sidney Felsen>> It's really meant to be a complete atmosphere of creativity without any pressure. You have to give them total freedom, anything they want to do, as long as it takes, as much as they want to use.
Vicki Curry>> Gemini G.E.L., an acronym for Graphic Editions Limited, is one of America's premier print and sculpture workshops. Artists come here to take advantage of Gemini's technical expertise and innovation in printmaking. The artist comes with a concept for a new work and chooses any number of materials and complicated chemical processes to make it happen, and that's where Gemini comes in.
Sidney Felsen>> It's a collaborative workshop, meaning we have great printers here. They're very experienced. They're very well-trained.
Vicki Curry>> Trained in the various processes of printmaking and sculpture. Prints are made when the artist creates an image on a surface of some kind and then transfers the image to paper, usually by running it through a press. Gemini's creations include prints in lithography, etching, screen-printing and woodcut, and sculpture made from a variety of materials.
Sidney Felsen>> We understand what these processes do. So an artist comes here knowing what they want to accomplish and we're here to help them. It's a handholding situation where artist and printmaker get together, so they sort of very passionately and very aggressively work towards a finished work of art that the artist wants.
Vicki Curry>> It all started in 1966 with college friends, Sidney Felsen and Stanley Grinstein. Felson was an accountant who studied art. Grinstein had a forklift business and collected art, so they decided to turn their love of art into a business.
Sidney Felsen>> Workshops that we were aware of were primarily in Europe and there were very few in the United States. So Stanley and I felt that it would be very good for Los Angeles to have an artist workshop here and we also felt that it would be fun for us to be around the artists.
Vicki Curry>> They teamed up with master printer, Kenneth Tyler, and their first project was with Josef Albers. His lithographs required precise color mixing and proper alignment for each color printed on the sheet. Gemini proved that it had the technical expertise to do the job. Then it started pushing the boundaries of that expertise when Robert Rauschenberg asked to make a lithograph using a life-size x-ray of himself.
Stanley Grinstein>> So we figured out how to take the x-ray and then getting on the large -- it was one of the larger lithographs that had been done in our time.
Sidney Felsen>> Bob Rauschenberg was the one that really molded Gemini once we started with him. We got very brave and we wrote a letter to Jasper Johns and, to our great and very wonderful surprise, he decided to come out. Ed Ruscha started working with us, Sam Francis and Ken Price, so it all sort of melded together within two to three years. Shortly after that, Roy Lichtenstein joined us. So within a very short period of time, we had seven or eight of these most accomplished artists of our time working here.
[Film Clip]
Vicki Curry>> With each new artist came new technical challenges, but Gemini never hesitated to take them on.
Stanley Grinstein>> We always tried to do that experimentation and it really made some sense in Los Angeles.
Sidney Felsen>> There are many prototype shops around here that service the movie industry, the aerospace industry, the shipbuilding industry.
James Reid>> It's a kind of a can-do attitude that's always been really exciting for me to be at Gemini because, whatever it is that the artist is seeking, we do everything we can to make that happen.
Vicki Curry>> Shop manager and printer, James Reid, has been at Gemini for nearly thirty years.
James Reid>> It's always challenging. Physically, it's challenging. Mentally, it's challenging because you're faced with new problems every day. It's a matter of us learning to do something. You become an expert at it in a matter of six or eight weeks and you'll never use that information directly again, but you use that information compounded with new problems. It's a problem-solving job. It's different every day, totally different.
[Film Clip]
Vicki Curry>> Over sixty artists have worked at Gemini, by invitation only. With its stellar reputation, Gemini can afford to invite only the best.
Sidney Felsen>> We're always looking for an artist that has, you know, like the expression "a body of work". They've been working for several years and the quality is good, steady or getting better all the time.
Vicki Curry>> The artist comes to Gemini for a week or two. They set up shop in a studio set aside just for them and begin working with the printers.
James Reid>> That's the very best. I mean, it doesn't get any better than that. The artists that we work with are our heroes. When we were in school, we studied all of these artists. Then to be on a first-name basis working in the studio, it just doesn't get any better.
Vicki Curry>> The day I visited Gemini, printer Xavier Fumat was working with pieces recently made by Richard Serra.
Xavier Fumat>> It makes you feel really good. It makes you feel that you've accomplished something when you're helping somebody who's a really good artist, you know, help them with their work.
Vicki Curry>> Well, you're very much a part of these works of art.
Xavier Fumat>> Yes. In the building part of, you know, the plates and stuff like that, yeah. We are. But I don't think that we look at it like we're very much part of it. I think, you know, this is Richard's work and I'm an extension of Richard when I help him do this stuff.
[Film Clip]
Vicki Curry>> Gemini G.E.L.'s commitment to experimentation and quality has worked for them for more than forty years and they have no plans to change.
Sidney Felsen>> Right now, it has somewhat of a cathedral atmosphere or meditative. If it starts getting bigger, it starts to begin to feel like a mill and we don't want that. You have to make selections of artists that will fit into making a formula like that work. I think we made good decisions as far as which artists to work with.
Sidney Grinstein>> We made another good decision early and we decided to go in-depth with each artist. That was a very good decision at the time we were hoping it was and it turned out to be. We were really innocents. I mean, it was fun to do and that's the best reason to do anything in your life and it was exciting to be around creative people. It's way past anything I could have imagined or planned on.
Val Zavala>> To find out more about the print shop, you can go to their website at geminigel.com. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.
Announcer>> 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.
This program was made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department.
Sponsored in part by:
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