The definition of an unnecessary immigrant, among many in the U.S. and the world, is anybody who arrives after their own family did.
With the passage of Proposition 187 in California and debate in Washington, D.C., over whether to trim the kind and number of immigrants America allows in, the bandage covering the immigration question in this country has been peeled back yet again, revealing a wound that continues to fester.
At the core of the debate are ancient and dark notions of tribalism, whether it takes place among thugs or academics, with sticks or statistics, in beer halls or lecture halls.
Sometimes it even occurs on television, which occasionally sets aside its treatment of immigrants as masters of the comic malaprop to examine the issue with some sobriety.
Two fine programs this weekend do just that. “The Infiltrator” is a made-for-TV movie set among gangs of German neo-Nazis determined to revive fascism. A special edition of William F. Buckley’s “Firing Line” is a formal debate set among gangs of U.S.-based intellectuals determined to come off as erudite and, by the way, right.
With its stark depiction of modern-day skinhead violence against immigrants to Germany, and with the Holocaust woven into the very fabric of the movie, “The Infiltrator” (premiering at 7 p.m. Saturday, HBO) demonstrates the extremes of nativism.
One more HBO movie proving how far the networks trail cable in filmmaking, it follows an Israeli-American journalist as he goes undercover to gain the confidence of not just skinheads but the more dangerous and infinitely more subtle groups whose goal is to win over the middle class.
With his fleshy face and hooded eyes, Oliver Platt (the lawyer in “Indecent Proposal”) is masterful as Yaron Svoray, the real-life writer whose story was the basis for this taut movie. Platt conveys the ex-private eye bluster that helped Svoray earn his enemies’ trust, yet with a lip twitch or merely an extra hard stare he suggests the journalist’s struggle to stay in character.
Svoray went to Germany in late 1992 on a quickie magazine assignment but became convinced there was more to the story than a few days’ reporting would cover. So he quit the magazine and talked the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies into backing him in a more detailed operation.
Pretending to be Ron Furey, a sort of advance man for a fictional American millionaire who complains of the racial mongrelization of the United States, Solvay dangles $500,000 in support money before a chain of neo-Nazis that takes him to a very surprising leader.
Along the way, he proves a link between U.S. hate groups and their German counterparts, even as the apparent humanity of some of the fascists surprises him.
“It’s the damndest thing. I actually like your husband,” Svoray says at one point to the wife of one of the first middle-class Nazis he befriends, not realizing she speaks English.
It is a compelling and chilling story, one Svoray also tells with Nick Taylor in their current book “In Hitler’s Shadow.” Director John MacKenzie (“The Long Good Friday”) and screenwriter Guy Andrews keep the tension high, managing even to wring a surprise ending out of the political decision about what to do with Svoray’s information.
They recognize that the power of the material makes subtlety, not bombast, the key to conveying it.
The “Firing Line” debate (2 p.m. Sunday, WTTW-Ch. 11) does much to erase the memory of the countless tedious political “debates” that Americans are used to. It offers two entertaining and enlightening hours as two teams of four writers and thinkers argue the question of whether immigration to the U.S. should be drastically reduced.
To grossly oversimplify, the arguments come down to one side arguing that the U.S. is overtaxed and needs a “pause” in immigration to assimilate its current newcomers. The other side argues that racism–concern that too many of the newer immigrants aren’t European–is behind it all, just as racism has informed other such movements in U.S. history.
Key to the discussion is keeping the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants straight. And both sides don’t fail to note the irony that three of the eight debaters are foreigners who now live and work in America.
Buckley leads the side arguing for the curtailment, and his arch manner and general clubability infect the proceedings. Indeed, at one point Ariana Huffington, the Greek native arguing that immigration should be trimmed, and Ira Glasser, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, interrupt a heated argument to discuss their plans to attend a baseball game together.
