Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra feature stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework, or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write an 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: President Bush Pushes Overhaul of Immigration Law, 04/11/07
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june07/immigration_4-11.html

Initiating Questions:

1. What is immigration? When is it legal or illegal?

2. Who should be allowed to be citizens of the United States?

3. How does the United States protect people from entering illegally?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What kind of immigration policy did President Bush support last year?

Last year, he supported a Senate bill that would have increased border security while giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship without leaving the country, provided that they learned English, paid back taxes, and had worked in the country for many years.

2. How has border security been tightened in the last year?

In the last nine months, 6,000 National Guard troops have been deployed to California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas to stem illegal crossings, as part of a program called Operation Jumpstart.

The number of Border Patrol agents has increased, too. Since last April, 4,000 new officers have been hired, bringing the total to 13,000. By year's end, that number will rise to 18,000.

Government officials also are building barricades and using a number of new surveillance technologies -- from skyboxes to portable watchtowers and even unmanned aircraft -- to deter crossings.

3. Mr. Bush said the new border security was working. What reasoning did he use?

In the last six months, the number of people caught illegally crossing into the United States from Mexico fell from 594,142 to 418,184 -- or 30 percent -- from the same period a year earlier. In his speech, the president reasoned that if fewer people were being caught, fewer were trying to cross.

4. What are the key points of the immigration reform the president is likely to support?

In addition to continued security, he called for a new immigration law that would include ways for employers to verify the legal status of the people they hire and a way for undocumented workers already living in the country attain legal status.

Though lawmakers have still not finalized a bill, the president is likely to support a plan allowing illegal immigrants to apply for a work visa that would cost $3,500 to renew every three years.

To apply for citizenship, illegal immigrants would first have to return to their home country and file paperwork at the U.S. consulate. There, they would have to get in line behind everyone else waiting for citizenship, then face an additional $10,000 penalty.

5. Why does the president now advocate a "touchback" approach to citizenship?

By advocating this "touchback" approach, the president hopes to avoid the claims that he is offering amnesty to the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already in the United States, while offering an alternative to mass deportation.

6. Why did thousands of people protest Mr. Bush's plan in Los Angeles last weekend?

Over the weekend, thousands marched in Los Angeles, saying that these new measures were a "betrayal by Mr. Bush" after last year's proposal to give illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.

7. What did Senator Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., say the president needed to pass an immigration bill?

One of the chief architects of last year's Senate immigration bill, Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said no measure would be approved unless it had "strong Republican support," the New York Times reported.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. Do you think the United States needs comprehensive immigration reform? What are the pros and cons of addressing border security, visa and citizenship issues in a single law rather than in separate laws?

2. Are you in favor of the "touchback" approach to citizenship or do you think undocumented workers should have a path to citizenship without leaving the country?

3. Immigration is a very emotional and political issue in the United States. How do you think it will affect the 2008 presidential elections?

Write a 300-500 word essay on either of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra (extra@newshour.org). Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.