James Pittman: Today on immigration uncovered the Docket Wise video podcast. We have Andrew Craybound, immigration law reporter for Bloomberg Law. To start. Could you briefly describe sort of your journey as a journalist and how you became interested in reporting on immigration policy?

Andrew Kreighbaum: Sure. So I've been reporting on legal immigration programs, especially within employment or workplace connection, for Bloomberg Law for about two years now. But I've been working as a reporter for more than a decade, actually started just after graduating college down in South Texas at the Laredo. Morning Times, and worked a few years in Laredo, the Rio Grande Valley, El Paso, and not covering immigration per se, but you do definitely get a certain appreciation of the border and how immigration is sort of a constant issue there. I covered K Twelve schools when I was in El Paso, and maybe the biggest story was a school cheating scandal. It involved migrant youth that school administrators basically tried to push out of the school system to improve test results, test scores for schools. Even when you're not covering immigration, you're covering education or health or whatever. Immigration can kind of be this issue in the background. After that, I actually covered higher education and a bit of K Twelve policy in DC for several years for Inside, IR, Ed and Bloomberg. This role opened up, yeah, a couple of years ago, and it's been an area of interest for a long time. I think partly because immigration says so much about, I guess, our current politics and the legal system sort of who we are as a society. I think a lot of times there can be this sense that something big happens, whether it's policies pushed by the Trump administration or what's happening on the border more recently. And what you'll hear the impression you can get, especially from a lot of politicians, people in the media too, is that this is brand new, this is the first time that this thing has happened. But I think a lot of these big controversies, they've been an ongoing story, an ongoing issue for leaders in DC and elsewhere to grapple with for a long time. So I really try know, add that context and that background for our audience.

James Pittman: Our know, when you're living in South Texas, immigration is really never far from one's mind. I also started out in immigration. It's interesting, we both sort of started out getting introduced in Texas, and with mine it was volunteering for the it was a program called Pro Bar, which was the Texas Bar Association. But my point and shout out to Pro Bar, anyone who ever wants to volunteer. It's an excellent program to provide pro bono representation on the border. My point being, when you're in Texas, especially South Texas, immigration can never be far from one's mind.

James Pittman: But Andrew, so you've knitted together sort of your experience with education policy or with labor policy and so forth, and then your latest sort of focus is immigration. Let's talk about some of the challenges in reporting on immigration policy. So what strategies do you use to present a balanced perspective, and what are some of the challenges associated with reporting on a complex topic like immigration? Polarized.

Andrew Kreighbaum: Yeah, it is a very polarized issue, and I think a lot of times it's an issue where there can be more heat than light in a lot of the coverage, a lot of the discussions. So I think that's one place you want to start by whatever issue you're covering is just getting past sort of the talking points and trying to lay out, like, okay, what are the facts here? What are the real issues? What are the real policy challenges, whether it's DACA or work authorization for more recent migrants, whether it's green card backlogs and just give people information they can use, basically. As far as the challenges, I think one thing I've experienced is that when it comes to federal agencies like USCIS, some agencies are more open, they do more public facing events than others. I won't say USCIS is one of the agencies that's doing a lot of press conferences. You need to pick the brains of officials there. So just getting perspective of people dealing with these issues up close every day, every week, can be a challenge. Sometimes all we can do is refer to further briefs filed in courts, look at what officials have told lawmakers in public hearings, et cetera. And a lot of times that challenge is because you're writing about litigation where a government agency isn't able to respond. You can have a plaintiff's attorney on the other side sort of framing the story to some extent. And I guess it's our responsibility to kind of fill in the details, fill in that context of why may the agency or whatever official involved here be taking that approach?

James Pittman: Well, how do you understand a journalist obligation to be balanced unless you're doing advocacy journalism, but if you're doing sort of mainstream journalism where you're supposed to sort of I mean, let me let you answer. How do you understand an obligation, if any, to be balanced in your covering of immigration issues?

Andrew Kreighbaum: I think this goes to the issue of trustworthiness to some extent. People want to read our stories and our coverage, I hope, because they consider us trustworthy, presenting all the facts and the context they need. If your coverage is slanted to one side or the other, I think that can damage your credibility with readers. It can damage your credibility with potential sources on either side. When you talk about balance, I think it's to some extent that's about covering all sides or as many sides of an issue as possible, whether it's a lawsuit, policy issue, something else. It's also a matter of you want to make sure everyone feels like they were heard or their perspective is represented accurately as well.

James Pittman: How do you view the role of journalists in shaping the public perception and the policy discussions related to immigration.

Andrew Kreighbaum: To some extent, we are reacting and covering the events that are unfolding. So whatever you think the story may be that month, the breaking news, whatever breaking news in the courts, some new policy the White House decides to unveil, it could always surprise you. A war can break out and then there's immigration issues that unfold from there. We do frame a lot of the issues in the sense that we decide to some extent what issues really matter, what are the priorities in terms of news coverage, who do we quote, whose views do we represent? So I think that we have to be aware of the way that we shape, I guess, our coverage and the stories and the perspectives that readers are getting understood.

James Pittman: Let's talk about what would be, in your view, some of the most pressing immigration policy issues facing the US. That you may have reported on.

Andrew Kreighbaum: It's been a little surprising to some extent the way that I found that those issues just haven't really changed for years and years on the beat. There's a lot of developing stories when you talk about DACA, for instance, facing continuous legal threats, and we don't know what the long term status of that program is going to be when it comes to broader immigration. In the US. We've had essentially for decades, the quotas for greed cards for temporary visas have remained flat. And so you talk to people who have worked in the immigration policy world for a while and you just get the sense that they've been having these same conversations for years and years. And I think what a lot of folks who work in the space would call a dysfunctional or antiquated system that hasn't really been updated for 2030 years at this point. We're going to get to a point in the future where we're not going to have the workers we need, possibly whether it's workers for seasonal industries or folks with more specialized skills. What you will hear from advocacy organizations, immigration experts is if Congress doesn't take action, raise the caps for new immigrants, we're going to have a major problem. We've already got a nursing shortage in the US. That's only going to get worse. And it looks like really the only solution we got right now is potentially bringing in nurses from abroad. But the immigration system doesn't really allow for that. I think maybe the biggest one is just at what point do policymakers sort of grapple with the connection between the immigration system and the labor needs of aging population in the US. The other issue, obviously, with DACA is sort of this stand in for the fact that there hasn't been any effort by Congress or Congress hasn't been able to pass any measure that deals with a pretty significant unauthorized population in this country. So even if DACA sticks around at this point because of the limitations the original limitations on that program, who was eligible, who wasn't. The reality is most undocumented kids graduating from high school today, that option was not going to be accessible to them. So when do policymakers deal seriously with opportunities for those folks to stay here, to work legally and use the skills and the education they get here? Those are two very broad ones, but I think when you look into the nitty gritty right now, DOL DHS, they're sort of churning out new regulations on temporary visa programs. H two A, H Two B workers later this fall, the H One B specialty occupation program. A lot of the DOL rules under the Biden administration are already being challenged in the courts. So to the extent they're trying to update or overhaul those programs, those efforts look like they're going to be contested pretty thoroughly by a lot of industry groups and other organizations.

James Pittman: Let's talk a little bit about a few of your articles. I mean, you wrote an article how H One B visas work and why they're back in the headlines, and certainly a lot of our listeners are immigration lawyers who handle H One B visas. So could you explain in your understanding the significance of the H One B visa program and why it frequently makes headlines?

Andrew Kreighbaum: It made headlines outside of the immigration world recently because of one of the Republican presidential contenders, viveka Ramaswami made some comments that as president, he would basically I don't recall the exact quote, but essentially do away with the program as we know it. When he dug into his statements a little more, he was essentially, I gathered, talking about making allocation or selection those visas based on merit or earnings, potential earnings, versus just a lottery, which is how they're awarded now. So, yeah, I guess to take a step back, this program, it's how a lot of the really, I guess it's thought of as being used for high school workers, it's really the best option and want to stay in the US. After getting a degree at a college or university. And it's especially big in the tech industry. And I think the controversy has basically been about whether these large tech employers in particular and the companies that contract with the Silicon Valley giants google, Amazon, et cetera, that are themselves big H One P users. The claim has been that they're using these visas to sort of undercut US. Workers or pay folks even less. Employers do have to basically attest that they're going to pay H One B workers the same as any American worker in that field. These folks have to have at least a bachelor's degree, 20,000 of the 85,000 H One B's each year. New H One B's are reserved for folks with master's degrees at least, and a lot of employers, industry groups will say that the problem is we don't have enough H One B's to meet the need in the US. For folks with certain tech skills, engineering folks working in the sciences, et cetera. I think rather than do we continue to have this program or not, I think the debate will probably continue to be about how do we allocate these visas to make sure we're getting the workers we really need here. With the skills we really need. And how do we structure the allocation, whether it's this lottery or something else in the most fair way possible?

James Pittman: Well, I wanted to ask you a question about best practices when dealing with the media. I mean, sometimes attorneys want to communicate something to the media, or the immigrants may also want to contact person who's an immigrant may want to contact the media because their story is newsworthy. So can you offer your thoughts on how attorneys or immigrants could most effectively communicate about issues with reporters or other people in the media? What would be some best practices?

Andrew Kreighbaum: Sure. I'll say from where we sit as reporters, we like to be able to break news, obviously, but cover it as it happens, even before it happens. If we can get an idea that a significant lawsuit, for example, is being filed, something like that, versus later that day or later that week. But I think for attorneys being able to just share with us, like we're filing this case, here's why it matters. Here's the complaint, or at least a draft of a complaint that allows us to sort of go, okay, I have more than 30 minutes at least to read through this process. It try to figure out why it matters, why it's significant, what's the important context here, what's the program that's being implicated if it's H one B or something else? You mentioned immigrants as well. I will say one of the real challenges covering immigration versus I covered higher ed for many years. A lot of immigrants, more folks on temporary visas, hoping to become permanent. Residents here can be somewhat hesitant to talk on the record with reporters for understandable reasons. To the extent people are willing to really share their stories, especially for these weedy policy or legal issues. If we can put a human face on that story or multiple faces, I think that always helps us to unpack to readers like, hey, this is really why this matters, because it has this human impact on someone like you that's in your community that could be doing important work in your community.

James Pittman: Well, let's talk about mean. Could you share some examples of human stories or experiences related to immigration policy that have left a lasting impact on you as a journalist?

Andrew Kreighbaum: Yeah, I mean, the one that immediately comes to mind is covering this continual fallout from the court challenges to DACA. And when you check in with current DACA recipients, people who have protections through that program, you just get this real sense of just being in limbo and waiting for some judge or some court years or maybe months now, deciding their future and their opportunities in the US. You also see a lot of issues develop for folks who have come through, I guess, the legal immigration system. This group of young people in the US. Though still pretty young at this point, called documented dreamers, who were the dependents of immigrants who came on H One B's, maybe from really back to countries like India, their parents, a person who had the underlying visa, is waiting so long for permanent residency decades in a lot of cases, that they can age out. They hit age of 21. If they're not able to figure out some other option to secure a visa and stay in the US. They're looking at being forced to basically leave, in many cases, go back to a country they haven't lived in for many years, they really have no experience of outside of early years they probably don't even remember. So that frustration, I think, is really helpful from folks who would say that they've done everything right and they're sort of suffering just because the system doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense.

James Pittman: And how do you verify and fact check information when you're doing a story on immigration?

Andrew Kreighbaum: It's basically using all of the sources that are available to you. It can be as basic as just checking on LinkedIn or company website that you've got the correct title and spelling of someone's name that you're quoting. But I think in the courts, anyone can file a lawsuit making a claim about a program. And when it comes to covering the facts of a case and not just the analysis or the legal arguments, sometimes you have to do a lot of legwork in confirming that that's correct. I talked earlier about a lot of the discourse on immigration, oftentimes having more heat than light, and I guess you see that in a lot of statements from policymakers who are maybe not well informed about how a program like H One B visas works. So you spend enough time on the beat and you educate yourself about all of the various requirements with these systems, and you can identify when people just had it wrong because they're not informed.

James Pittman: So, Andrew, are there any other media outlets or publications out there that you think are doing particularly good work on reporting on immigration policy?

Andrew Kreighbaum: Yeah, well, first of all, I want to give a shout out to the coverage of my Blimberg colleague, Ellen Gilmer, who covers DHS for us and spends a lot of time on the Hill. She does really excellent work. Michelle Hackman at The Wall Street Journal, I think, also does a lot of great reporting on immigration and the workplace. CBS News Roll Call, one of our competitors on the immigration beat, Suzanne Monek, actually just came over to report for Bloomberg Law. But there's a lot of folks doing great work in this area.

James Pittman: Let's talk about when you're doing a story andrew, on immigration, how do you go about researching the topic, and does it often involve collecting and analyzing data?

Andrew Kreighbaum: I think just about any immigration story I think that I've covered. It's hard to think of one where there hasn't been some prior coverage or at least coverage of a similar issue. One that comes to mind is I wrote a story earlier this year about the Biden administration's efforts to partially address labor market issues, partially address immigration issues by expanding the number of H two B supplemental visas available to seasonal industries. I did a lot of on the ground reporting. I should have went out to Michigan to visit employers, talk to workers. But before I even got that far, there was a lot of background reading on the supplemental visa cap and all the previous decisions to issue additional visas and the political back and forth involved. And so we always try to start there, like, okay, what's already been done on this topic, especially on a deeper dive story. As far as the immigration data goes, I think that's something that we do want to do. More original analysis. But there are a lot of folks in this area who put out a lot of great data. Like the track program. I'm not going to remember what the acronym stands for off top of my head.

James Pittman: And the access clearinghouse.

Andrew Kreighbaum: Yeah, they put out a lot of great data on the courts. And I wrote a story last year about something called mandamus lawsuits. I spent a lot of time just looking at court dockets and looking at the immigration cases that are filed, and I'd say for most of the past two years, it seems like the vast majority of immigration cases that wind up in the federal courts are about removal proceedings. Or there are these mandamus lawsuits where a plaintiff is basically arguing to the courts, like, hey, USCIS in many cases or whatever agency, they've been sitting on my application to adjust status or whatever kind of petition for months, or in some cases, years, and they're violating the Administrative Procedure Act. They're not in compliance with the law because they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, as they didn't see here. And Track, actually, I noticed that there are all of these cases, and then Track put out this data that showed that actually, yeah, the number of mandamus cases had just been shooting up and up and up in recent years. And that's partly a function of the backlogs and the system. And there's so many cases, USCIS, which is a fee funded agency, they don't necessarily have the resources that they, you know, coming out of the pandemic, really struggled with a huge backlog of cases. So for a lot of immigrants with the means of hiring attorney and filing a lawsuit, this was one way to get some action by the agency to have court way in. Or the agency might just say, we're not going to fight this. We're just going to deal with the case. And of course, it also just highlights how, if that's the route people are going, well, the system is not functioning very well. So we look at sort of how all these cases are adding up, but also look at how can the data that groups like Track are producing, how can that help us to tell a story and kind of back up the trends we're observing?

James Pittman: Well, Andrew, in immigration rights or immigration law and advocacy, there are a lot of sort of activist groups, immigrant rights groups, advocacy groups, et cetera, and they often play a role in shaping the debates. Certainly, they sometimes get media coverage. Have you had occasion to cover the activities of any of these groups? And if so, how do you do it while maintaining journalistic impartiality?

Andrew Kreighbaum: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I mentioned the case with the documented Dreamers or the issue involving documented Dreamers earlier, and I think that issue has gotten a lot of attention both in the national press as well as in local newspapers, because documented Dreamers have been organizing and advocating for themselves and talking to reporters, talking to folks on the Hill. I think. Same for Daga. There are a lot of national immigration groups who are working on that issue. They include a lot of staffers, some folks in leadership who are DACA recipients themselves, who are trying to get the story out of folks who have the status or experiencing uncertainty. I think that those organizations who are sort of, if you want to call them activists or advocates, they play an important role in highlighting what are the issues sometimes that aren't getting covered. And a lot of times they're able to connect you with folks who have the expertise or just have the expertise on the experience of being an immigrant and speaking to that. As far as maintaining balance, you try to speak to folks with various perspectives, and part of the challenge is just like explaining all of the political or bureaucratic barriers that are facing an immigrant with documented Dreamers. I'm sure there's someone in Congress, maybe I've heard Democrats and Republicans saying, we should really do something about this issue. And many times it's a matter of you do get some recognition from all sides that there's a problem here. But then the politics, the political challenges in DC. Are such that nothing happens again in this Congress, and then advocates hope that it's the next one where they can see a win on their issue.

James Pittman: And Andrew, how, measure the impact of your reporting on immigration? In other words, how do you define success? How do you know when a story has been a success in your eyes?

Andrew Kreighbaum: Number one, it's hard to predict when a story is going to have the impact or the success that you'd hope for. Sometimes a story you think would have, I guess, limited interest just gets hundreds or even thousands of views. And that's great. And maybe that tells you there was an audience there you didn't realize. I certainly look at reactions on social media. I use LinkedIn a lot more than Twitter these days for that and to connect with potential sources. We also see what are the readership numbers for stories that our team puts out. One thing you always, I guess, enjoy seeing is know a letter from a member of Congress to an agency or citing your story or your coverage, saying, hey, this is an issue because it's being reported here and what's going on, what's being done about it. You do look for stuff like that, enforcement actions by agencies. That stuff is like the kind of real world impact that I think most journalists sort of hope for beyond the readership. But it's always hard to predict. I guess that's why you look for stories or issues that matter, that have a real significance to readers, to employers, try to show how it's affecting real people, and if you can find some kind of policy failure that can or should be fixed, I think that's sort of the formula to some extent. And then you put that story out there, and then you hope the right people read it and push for action.

James Pittman: What were the things, Andrew, that you found most surprising, if anything, about immigration when you first started reporting on this area? Anything that shocked you or you found really surprising or unexpected? And were there any immigrants, any subjects of any reportage that you've done who had particularly unexpected profiles or experiences?

Andrew Kreighbaum: I'd had a little bit of exposure to illegal immigration programs, having covered a higher ed, putting on something like optional practical training, for instance. But there's a learning curve when you're covering a beat full time initially. And I think big picture, one thing got really taken away besides, just like there's this alphabet soup of visa types and programs. That's quite the challenge, I think, even for experts to navigate, much less for general readers. How hard it is to follow all the rules, quote unquote, do it the right way, get in line. Those kinds of talking points that you hear the ODS are incredibly slim for most folks who want to immigrate to the US legally because the options are so narrow and we really limit the legal pathways numerically bottom line. So that's been I guess my biggest takeaways is just what an impossible system the legal immigration programs in the US sort of add up to for most immigrants. And when I think about I mentioned focus going through challenges with DACA or the documented dreamers, the bureaucratic challenges that just anyone can encounter are sort of shocking. Have interviewed spouses of H One B visa holders, for example. They've seen their legal work authorization elapse because, again, backlogs in the system and these are highly educated immigrants, sometimes multiple degrees, and they just find themselves stuck at home, not being able to do much of anything while they're waiting for this piece of paper to be renewed by a federal agency. I would think most readers aren't familiar with the immigration system, would find it surprising. We've been talking about labor shortages, skill shortages coming out of the pandemic for a while, but we create a whole lot of challenges for folks who want to be here working to do just that, basically.

James Pittman: And what advice would you give to either aspiring journalists or others who are interested in covering immigration policy? Writing about immigration, I think, number one.

Andrew Kreighbaum: Just read anything you can, and not just about the border and immigration enforcement, but other parts of the system as well. And also to familiarize yourself with the history of the US legal immigration system. I guess you need to understand sort of how we got here and all the trade offs, fixing immigration policy and the post civil rights era. What else at this point to a system where I think most experts say isn't very functional at this point. As far as like, breaking in, I guess I would look at, even if you're not a full time immigration reporter, look for stories you can cover about immigrants or Miguel communities and how they sort of fit into your beat, your area. Like I mentioned earlier, the immigration system overlaps quite a bit with health care and employment, all of these other different weedy policy areas. I think immigration is interesting because it can impact all of these different pieces of our world.

James Pittman: Well, we're at the end of the hour and this has been a very informative and inspiring discussion with Andrew Craybaum, who is immigration law reporter for Bloomberg Law. So Andrew, thanks very much for joining us on Immigration Uncovered.

Andrew Kreighbaum: Thanks for having me, James.

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