Media

#ProjectIntern Hits the Road to Capture College Intern Stories

Pro Publica - October 2, 2013 - 10:06am

Three months ago, ProPublica launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise enough money to hire an intern to travel the country and document stories of the emerging intern economy.

Well, they succeeded – and now #ProjectIntern is hitting the road.

I’m Casey McDermott, and this week I am setting off on that cross-country trip to collect interns’ stories. (Meta, I know.)

Our goal here is pretty simple: We want to make the conversation about internships (more) personal.

The national dialogue about internships often focuses on the big picture: important discussions of ethics and lawsuits. What’s missing, though, is a sense of the intern experience from the people who actually take on these positions. By some estimates, that’s anywhere from half a million to one million interns every year. What do interns really do? When are they being paid for their work? What’s the financial or educational payoff? What kinds of sacrifices do interns make, if any, to take on these positions?

Over the next three months, I’ll travel to college campuses around the country to bring a firsthand perspective to the internship issue (check out our itinerary here).

You’ll be able to find stories from the interns I meet on our new Tumblr — The Intern Economy — along with perspectives from college internship coordinators, academic experts and employers.

We’re especially interested in exploring how unpaid internships have proliferated in some industries.

It’s worth noting that this issue is personal for me, too. I just graduated with journalism and sociology degrees from Penn State in May, and I’ve held four internships including this one. Some paid well, and others provided no more than a transportation stipend. Most of my friends have also been interns — paid, for academic credit, unpaid or some combination of the three. Some of my peers view internships as a valuable investment that can lead to future job opportunities — even if they’re not paid much at the time. And some have made unpaid or stipend-based positions work by living at home, or working part-time jobs.

Help Us Calculate the Cost of Unpaid Internships Sign Up

The internship issue affects students differently depending on their major, their financial situation, their career goals and more. According to a survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, students who completed an unpaid internship were only slightly better situated for future employment than those who had no internship: 37 percent of unpaid interns received at least one job offer, compared to 35.2 percent for non-interns. (Paid interns fared the best, with about 63 percent receiving at least one job offer.) The same survey also showed that paid interns often earned more as new employees, with median starting salaries of $51,930 versus $35,721 for those with unpaid internships, and $37,087 for those with no internship experience at all. 

An internship is a critical entry point into the workforce, and access, or lack thereof, to such opportunities can have lasting consequences for students. That’s one reason we’re focusing on college campuses — an important intersection between prospective interns and the larger intern economy — trying to document the implications of the “experiential learning” students are doing, or aren’t able to do, while they’re in college.

Check our itinerary to see if we’re coming to your school, and be sure to say hello or share your own intern story by tagging #ProjectIntern on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Stay tuned for more dispatches soon!

For more from our internships investigation, see our latest report on Northwestern's journalism program offering students internships without paychecks, or sign up to help us calculate the cost of college internships

Categories: Media, Politics

Book 'em

CJR Daily - October 2, 2013 - 10:00am
In anticipation of Congress' next big fight over copyright, legal academics are working to gather data and learn how copyright actually works in the real world. But lawyers aren't the only academics who have been using empirical techniques to gather information on the people who work within--and outside of--copyright law in its current form. Scholars of business, anthropology, and literature...
Categories: Media

Help Us Calculate the Cost of Unpaid Internships for Academic Credit

Pro Publica - October 2, 2013 - 9:59am

As part of our investigation into the U.S. intern economy, ProPublica is taking a closer look at the role colleges and universities play in promoting unpaid internships. And we want your help calculating the academic cost of these positions.

With proper supervision, off-campus internships can be invaluable. Employers prefer to hire grads with relevant work experience, according to one recent survey. Many who’ve shared their stories with us so far have said the connections and skills they gained at their internships were far more valuable than reading a textbook.

However, as Kara Brandeisky reports, getting academic credit for an internship doesn’t necessarily make it legal. Some colleges have promised to “take great pains” to ensure students aren’t exploited. But ultimately, students have no way to compare the cost and relative quality of schools’ internship programs – and some colleges are collecting tuition for unpaid internships that don’t meet federal guidelines.

To open the door on the murky world of college internship programs, we want to create a tool that lets people compare the cost and relative quality of schools’ internship programs: How much tuition does it cost to be an unpaid intern? How much would students have made if they’d been paid? What do students say about the quality of the program – and how does it compare to similar programs at other schools?

But to do this, we need your help. We're crowd-sourcing the tuition cost of internship programs at journalism departments across the country. Our College Internships Cost Calculator will compare the cost details, and let students rate and review their experiences.

Sign up: Adopt a School

We’re looking for college newspapers, student journalists or other volunteers to help us verify intern program cost details. We will publish results, along with any stories you report as a result, in our College Internships Cost Calculator.

To sign up, click "Adopt a School" below. We'll add you to our list, and send you further instructions on the research and reporting. 

If you have any questions, email GetInvolved@propublica.org

 

Adopt a School Report Your Results  

For more from our internships investigation, see our latest report on Northwestern's journalism program offering students internships without paychecks, or follow our new Tumblr on the Intern Economy.

Categories: Media, Politics

Lessons from The Dallas Morning News's failed paywall

CJR Daily - October 2, 2013 - 5:50am
In May 2009, Dallas Morning News publisher Jim Moroney told the Senate that a paywall didn't make sense for his newspaper unless everybody else did one too: if The Dallas Morning News today put up a paywall over its content, people would go to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. By January 2011, Moroney was saying this as the News launched a...
Categories: Media

Newspaper self-destruction: Providence Journal edition

CJR Daily - October 2, 2013 - 5:50am
If the digital revolution has done nothing else, it has exposed the extent to which American newspapers have relied on their quasi-monopolistic control over local advertising markets to fund news operations. CW Anderson, Emily Bell, and Clay Shirky, in their valuable report last year, called it a "subsidy," and that's a provocative way to put it. Here are the report's...
Categories: Media

Ex-Guatemalan Commando Guilty of Concealing Role in Massacre

Pro Publica - October 1, 2013 - 4:25pm

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — A federal jury convicted a former Guatemalan army lieutenant Tuesday of immigration fraud, finding that he obtained U.S. citizenship in 2008 by concealing his role in the massacre of 250 men, women and children during Guatemala’s civil war three decades ago.

Jorge Vinicio Sosa Orantes, who for a time had operated three karate schools in Southern California, became the highest-ranking former soldier convicted on charges related to the slaughter that wiped out the jungle hamlet of Dos Erres in 1982. Investigations in the United States and Guatemala have achieved unusual progress in the case, the only mass killing among hundreds in the 30-year Guatemalan civil war for which soldiers have been held accountable.

Sosa, 55, will be sentenced Dec. 9. He faces a prison term of at least 10 years, loss of U.S. citizenship and then deportation to Guatemala, where he is charged with murder. U.S. authorities also have jailed two other former members of Sosa’s commando squad on immigration charges, while Guatemalan courts have convicted five Army veterans for the Dos Erres massacre itself.

Seven suspects, including two commanders, remain at large in a nation where war criminals are often protected by the security forces and criminal mafias.

Sosa, a second lieutenant during the war, was the junior officer among four lieutenants in the 20-man elite unit of commandos known as “Kaibiles.”  Jurors heard grim testimony from two participants and a survivor during the five-day trial. Sosa played a key role as a leader of the squad’s “assault team” specialized in interrogations and hands-on killing, according to testimony of two former soldiers.

The compactly-built martial arts expert oversaw the systematic extermination of villagers in the center of the hamlet, ordering his men to throw victims — including babies — into a well. Sosa fired his gun and threw a grenade into the pile of living and dead bodies in the well, according to testimony.

The spectators in the courtroom for the verdict included a survivor of the massacre: Oscar RamírezCastañeda, a 34-year-old restaurant worker and father of four who came from Boston to this city on the inland edge of Southern California’s urban sprawl.

It was another remarkable moment in a unique odyssey. Ramírez was 3 years old in 1982 and has no memory of the massacre. The commandos killed his mother and eight siblings, but a lieutenant — Oscar Ramírez Ramos — spared the boy and brought him home to his family. The lieutenant died months later in an accident; his family raised Oscar as one of their own.

Ramírez immigrated to the United States as a young man and did not find out his true identity until 2011, when Guatemalan prosecutors tracked him down. A DNA test proved that Ramírez came from Dos Erres and reunited him with his father, who survived because he was in another village on the day of the military attack. The U.S. government gave Ramírez political asylum last year.

“Justice is being done for all the victims,” Ramírez said after the verdict. Although he said he condemns Sosa and the other commandos for their savagery, he walks an emotional tightrope because he feels gratitude for being spared. Seeing Sosa a few feet away stirred a mix of feelings, he said.

“I felt a little bit of everything,” Ramírez said. “Bitterness, hate, sympathy, because all of us are human beings.”

Ramírez had been prepared to testify for the prosecution, but the judge upheld a defense motion excluding him as a witness because he lacked memory of the events. Nonetheless, his attorney, R. Scott Greathead, said it is likely that Ramírez, as a victim of the massacre, could testify at Sosa’s sentencing.

Greathead called the verdict “an important validation” of efforts by human rights advocates and Guatemalan prosecutors who have long pursued cases against former Kaibiles. “What we have to look for now and press for now is for investigations and prosecutions of those who were in higher command, who were responsible for Dos Erres and other massacres,” he said.

Earlier this year, a Guatemalan court found the country’s former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt guilty of genocide for masterminding a military campaign that resulted in hundreds of similar mass killings in rural areas. His conviction was thrown out on procedural grounds, however, and a retrial is uncertain.

Because Sosa could not be tried for war crimes in U.S. courts, federal prosecutors pursued a strategy that has been effective in cases involving human rights abusers from around the world.

Prosecutors charged Sosa with unlawful procurement of naturalization and making false statements on U.S. immigration forms for omitting his membership in the Guatemalan military and lying when he indicated he had never committed a crime for which he had not been arrested.

Sosa’s lawyer asserted that his client did not think he committed a crime because he was an obedient soldier who followed orders. The lawyer also argued that the questions on the forms were vague.

Sosa’s ability to elude prosecution for three decades revealed lapses in both the U.S. and Canadian immigration systems. Three years after the 1982 massacre, Sosa deserted the Guatemalan army and fled to San Francisco for reasons that remain murky. He claimed that guerrillas were gunning for him, but his brother told ProPublica in an interview last year that Sosa also feared government intelligence agents because of an internecine military feud.

Sosa sought political asylum in the United States in an application that detailed his combat exploits. When U.S. authorities ruled that he did not have a well-founded fear of prosecution, Sosa went to Canada and gained political asylum and citizenship there. That decision showed a startling lack of scrutiny by Canadian officials, according to U.S. and Canadian human rights experts.

In 1998, Sosa divorced his wife and came to New York, where he married a U.S. citizen and obtained permanent residency, this time concealing his military service. During that process and his naturalization 10 years later in California, U.S. immigration officers failed to notice in his file that his 1985 asylum application had made clear that he was a veteran of the Guatemalan Army.

Although Sosa was convicted of a relatively minor crime, the role of the U.S. government in prosecuting the Dos Erres case reinforces the quest for justice in Guatemala, according to Fredy Peccerelli, a Guatemalan human rights activist and forensic anthropologist who investigates the crimes of the civil war. Peccerelli’s lab conducted the DNA tests that identified Oscar and another survivor as victims of Dos Erres.

“This strengthens the case in Guatemala because, although it’s for immigration, you have a U.S. jury that has heard the evidence and ruled that there was a massacre,” said Peccerelli, who attended the announcement of the verdict along with Ramírez and Greathead.

“This adds to an accumulation of evidence in both countries,” Peccerelli said.

The judicial and media attention in the United States is also important because powerful sectors in the economic and political elite of Guatemala are resisting efforts to pursue the atrocities of the past, Peccerelli said.

Categories: Media, Politics

Chris Powell doesn't get his own industry

CJR Daily - October 1, 2013 - 4:15pm
The fact that newspapers are suffering in the digital age is old news. Media watchers have been discussing how to salvage them for years, casting the internet as both the source of newsprint's declining revenues and as its potential savior. But Chris Powell, the managing editor of the Manchester, CT-based Journal Inquirer, apparently hasn't been paying attention to the changes...
Categories: Media

Risky business

CJR Daily - October 1, 2013 - 1:55pm
Since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its report summarizing six years of global warming science Friday, the mammoth document has been picked and prodded by just about every environmental journalist. Even before the report went public, much debate focused on how strongly the panel would weigh in on people's role in climate change: specifically, if the IPCC would...
Categories: Media

Radio watchdogs

CJR Daily - October 1, 2013 - 10:23am
On Saturday, the Public Radio Exchange and the Center for Investigative Reporting launched the pilot episode of Reveal, public radio's first program dedicated to investigative journalism and the work that goes into producing it. The hourlong show opened with an optimistic mission statement: "This is Reveal, where investigative journalism and you help change our world for the better." Journalists are...
Categories: Media

Northwestern’s Journalism Program Offers Students Internships with Prestige, But No Paycheck

Pro Publica - October 1, 2013 - 10:05am

Northwestern University’s journalism school boasts of its prowess in preparing students for prestigious careers — but it also serves as a pipeline for unpaid internships.

At Medill, students pay $15,040 in quarterly tuition for the privilege of working full-time jobs as unpaid interns. During their mandatory quarter in Journalism Residency, as it is known, students work full time at news organizations such as CNN Documentaries, Self and WGN Chicago. But instead of paying interns, employers pay Medill $1,250 for every student placed. In turn, students receive academic credit and a small stipend from the university for relocation expenses, ranging from $600 to $1,200. The most generous stipend amounts to just $2.72 an hour — far below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.  

It’s an arrangement that even Medill is second-guessing. According to a July 30 email obtained by ProPublica, Medill has begun asking news organizations whether they would consider paying students minimum wage.

“As always, Medill and the University are careful to make sure that the program is an academic experience that meets U.S. Department of Labor regulations under the Fair Labor Standards Act,” program coordinator Desiree Hanford wrote in an email to editors and internship coordinators at partner media companies.

“Some sites … have told Medill that their legal counsel require them to pay a student either in addition to the $1,250 or in lieu of the $1,250 to reflect the company’s own hiring policies that address this law,” Hanford wrote. (see full document)

“With this backdrop, Medill would like to know whether you would be willing to pay a student who is doing a residency at your site and, if so, how much you would be willing to pay?” Hanford asked. “Would you be willing to pay your state’s minimum wage?”

Jack Doppelt, Medill’s interim associate dean for journalism, said the program complies with Labor Department guidelines, but that the school is still considering whether to require employers to pay its students.

“For the purposes of the law, we’re comfortable,” Doppelt said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re comfortable with students not getting paid money.”

Alice Truong, a 2010 Medill graduate, wasn’t comfortable going unpaid, either. Truong said she didn’t have the finances to move to another city for three months on Medill’s internship stipend (which is usually $900). As a result, while some of her classmates had a list of 20 journalism residency options around the country, Truong’s financial constraints narrowed her choices to “two or three okay options” in the Chicago area.

“That alone was very frustrating, and I remember being very upset about this,” Truong said. “For most students at Northwestern, everything was within reach to them. I only had a handful of options.”

When Truong was in school, Medill also prohibited students from working other jobs during Journalism Residency, forcing Truong to give up her work-study job that quarter. Medill has repealed that policy as of this academic year.

Truong ended up interning at her first choice site, the RedEye, a Chicago-based daily tabloid. There, she wrote short pop culture articles and a few cover stories. She says her internship was a valuable experience that ultimately got her a paid internship and then a job at the Wall Street Journal. But she was still frustrated by the way the program was structured.

“I was close to graduating, and there are so many money stressors around that period of time,” Truong said. “So having to go to a very expensive school to start with, and having to do an internship where I essentially provided free labor for credit, while the school was paid — that was hard to stomach.”

Medill’s program has existed in some form since at least 1973, when it was known as  “Teaching Newspaper.” Roger Boye, an associate professor who has taught at Medill since 1971, said Medill initially gave students a choice between reporting on campus and reporting from a professional newsroom. The internship placements were so successful that Medill made the program a requirement in 1989.

“In the early days – and this is still true – we considered the [newsroom] editors basically part-time faculty members,” Boye said. “These were people that had an educational mission to their own work and wanted to be part of an educational process.”

Medill says its intern sites – more than 100 in all – are chosen carefully to ensure that supervisors will provide “substantive editorial experience” and “good mentoring.” Hanford, the program coordinator, said students must send weekly logs to their adviser and receive midterm and final evaluations from their employers. Medill advisers also visit their students midway through the quarter.

“When I have students go on [Journalism Residency], not one of them leaves without being given my cell phone number because I want to know if something is happening, if there’s an emergency,” Hanford said. “I don’t care what that emergency is.”

 

Is Academic Credit Enough?

Medill is reevaluating its program at a time when employers and students nationwide are questioning the legality of unpaid internships. In recent years, unpaid interns have brought several high-profile lawsuits seeking back pay, though most have resulted in settlements or findings that favor employers. Only one ruling addressed the issue of internships for academic credit.

According to Labor Department guidelines, an unpaid internship is more likely to be legal if a college grants academic credit and provides oversight. But oversight alone isn’t a guarantee — unpaid internships still must meet six key criteria. For example, the internship must be educational, benefit the intern more than the employer, and not displace paid employees. 

In the last three years, federal investigators have cited at least four employers for violating federal guidelines, even though their unpaid interns received academic credit. One of those cases faulted Rome Snowboards Corp. in Waterbury, Vt.  

Matthew Wolfe interned for free at Rome Snowboards during his senior year at Saint Michael’s College, doing data entry for 10 hours a week. Wolfe received four hours of academic credit for his time. He was surprised when, the summer after graduation, he received a letter from the government and a check for about $1,000.

“Of course I’d love to be compensated for the work, but as a college student – from all of our perspectives – that wasn’t a norm,” Wolfe said. “There weren’t many students who expected to be paid and get credit.”

The Labor Department concurred, finding that “unpaid internships at for-profit establishments appear to be prevalent in the area” and that Rome Snowboards seemed unaware that interns at “for-profit firms almost always have to be paid.”

Rome Snowboards co-founder Josh Reid, who declined to comment for this story, told the investigator that he was frustrated “with the interns’ colleges, whom he believed were complicit in the firm’s noncompliance involving the interns.”

Colleges clearly play a key role. Phil Gardner, director of the Collegiate Employment Research Institute, surveyed college officials last year and found that 75 percent thought academic credit was “an appropriate substitute” for wages in some or all cases.

Joanne LaBrake-Muehlberger, internship director at Saint Michael’s College, said she works with employers to ensure students receive educational training.

“Just because the student is earning the credit doesn’t mean that lets the site off the hook with their responsibility,” LaBrake-Muehlberger said. “We make that clear. I send out a letter, and I include the information from the Department of Labor, so they are made very much aware of the guidelines.”

But the federal investigator in the Rome Snowboards case reported that area schools were “either unaware of or turning a blind-eye to the requirements of the [Fair Labor Standards Act].”

Regardless, the department placed ultimate responsibility with the employer and ordered Rome Snowboards to pay $37,673 in back wages to 38 interns, ruling that because they provided an “immediate advantage” to the company, they should have been paid.

Help Us Calculate the Cost of Unpaid Internships Sign Up

The courts have also begun to weigh in on academic-based internships. In his June ruling against Fox Searchlight Pictures, federal Judge William H. Pauley III wrote, “A university’s decision to grant academic credit is not a determination that an unpaid internship complies with [New York labor law].”

“Universities may add additional requirements or coursework for students receiving internship credit, but the focus of the [New York labor law] is on the requirements and training provided by the alleged employer,” Pauley ruled.

The ruling could put a damper on unpaid internships for academic credit, according to David Yamada, a labor rights advocate and law professor at Suffolk University.

“If the judge’s observations in the Fox Searchlight case are affirmed and become law, then obviously those private sector internship placements at least are open for liability against that internship employer,” Yamada said. “And then the school might have to incur the wrath of that employer, who’s saying, ‘Oh gosh, you sent us this student, and they turned around and sued us.’”

 

Shrinking Newsrooms, Shrinking Wages

While unpaid internship postings are rampant on public job boards at journalism schools at New York University and the University of California, Berkeley, some media interns are starting to push back. Gawker Media, Condé Nast, NBCUniversal, Inc. and News Corp. are all facing lawsuits from former interns who say they should have been paid minimum wage.

The Nation Institute, a nonprofit, agreed to begin paying its interns minimum wage after an embarrassing public campaign by a group of former interns who had been paid only $150 a week.

But as newsrooms revisit internships, it’s clear that for some, even minimum wage can strain the budget. Newspaper staffs have shrunk by 30 percent since 2000, with newspapers employing fewer full-time staffers than they did in 1978, according to Pew’s 2013 State of the Media report.

The Charlotte Observer ended its paid summer internship program and stopped accepting Medill interns about four or five years ago to save money.

“This is strictly just a budget thing with us,” said Jim Walser, the Observer’s projects editor and intern coordinator. “We had to cut out everything that was extraneous to try to save as many permanent staffers as we could. We loved the kids coming in from Northwestern. We never had a bad one.”

Chicago Public Media stopped participating in Medill’s journalism residency in 2008.

“Medill charges news organizations a fee, and being that we’re a nonprofit, that’s not something we necessarily could absorb,” internship director George Lara said. He said the station continues to offer some unpaid and some grant-based internships.

Journalism graduates are feeling newsroom cutbacks, too. Only 60 percent of journalism majors reported holding a job related to their field of study six to eight months after graduation, according to a 2012 study at the University of Georgia. On average, journalism grads in 2012 made barely more than those who graduated in 1987, the study found.

Faced with such a tight job market, journalism students are hungry for the type of internships that will give them an edge, said Gina Neff, associate professor of communication at the University of Washington. But while Neff found that virtually all journalism schools offer internship programs, she estimates only about 10 percent of them provide students deep academic engagement.

“We’ve held up a class of jobs that are ‘the internship,’ that are typically unpaid or underpaid,” Neff said. “I would call on more professors to stand up and take notice that we’re in effect complicit in a system that is underpaying student labor.”

Medill’s dean says the school hopes to ensure students are compensated for their work, without limiting their options in a struggling industry.

“It’s a very delicate balance,” Doppelt said. “We’re trying to have that happen, and it’s a set of moving negotiations, and we have to be sensitive to what the field – that is hurting right now, financially – might be able to do.”

As Medill reevaluates its prestigious internship program, 15 news organizations have started to pay their Medill interns and at least 18 more said they would consider doing so, according to Hanford, the internship coordinator.

WGEM, a television station in Western Illinois, started paying them state minimum wage last year when the station’s owner, Quincy Broadcast Print Interactive, launched a paid internship program for the whole company.

Jena Schulz, director of human resources for Quincy, said each Medill student works as “a typical member of the news department team,” shooting video and going on air. From a legal standpoint, only paid interns can do that kind of work, Schulz said.

“We believe it is necessary for us to treat the interns as actual employees — and pay them — in order for them to receive the full benefit of the experience,” Schulz said. “Our company has operated by the letter of the law and said, if the interns are anything other than in your way, they probably don’t qualify as unpaid.”

The Kitsap Sun, a mid-sized newspaper in Bremerton, Wash., also started paying its Medill interns the state minimum wage of $9.19 per hour a few years ago.

“They should get paid for their time,” said editor David Nelson. “They’re here. They need to pay rent. They’re learning, but it’s not free to live.”

[View the story "Northwestern students and alums respond" on Storify]

 

For more from our internships investigation, follow our new Tumblr on the Intern Economy or sign up to help us calculate the cost of college internships

Categories: Media, Politics

Free speech threats in the US and UK

CJR Daily - October 1, 2013 - 10:00am
Everybody in public life in the US and UK claims to believe in freedom of expression and a free press. Strange, then, that a growing number of people should now choose to exercise that freedom in order to declare that it should be limited--at least for others. The mantra of the moment is, "Of course I believe in free speech--BUT..."...
Categories: Media

The roots of the shutdown fight

CJR Daily - October 1, 2013 - 10:00am
Washington is in full blame-game mode as the federal government moves into shutdown this morning, including facile attributions of blame to national leaders. The true culprit, however, is deepening legislative polarization, which has its roots in intra-party dynamics playing out in districts around the country. To help voters understand what is happening and why, reporters should go local, providing richer...
Categories: Media

Would You Take Our Reader Survey?

Pro Publica - October 1, 2013 - 9:47am

This summer, ProPublica celebrated its fifth year of publishing. As we continue to strive for hard-hitting journalism that generates impact, we’d like to ask you to fill out our quick reader survey so we can better assess what’s worked, what hasn’t and how we can improve in the months and years to come.

The survey is anonymous and will take about 5-10 minutes to complete. You can fill it out here.

Thank you for your time and support. We value your feedback.

P.S. We continue as participants in Survey Monkey Contribute. If you designate ProPublica as your chosen cause, we get a 50-cent donation for every survey you complete.

Categories: Media, Politics

Bill Clinton on deregulation: 'The Republicans made me do it!'

CJR Daily - October 1, 2013 - 6:02am
Bill Clinton sat down with Fareed Zakaria last week on CNN for a typically wide-ranging interview that touched on chemical weapons, big data and privacy, whether Chelsea Clinton should run for office, etc. You know, the usual Bill Clinton interview. But Clinton's comment about his record on regulation is an actual newsmaker, because it's a giant whopper: What happened? The...
Categories: Media

‘Nos Ordenaron que Matáramos a Toda la Gente’

Pro Publica - September 30, 2013 - 3:30pm

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – Sacudido por sollozos, con la cabeza bajada, un excomando guatemalteco testificó la semana pasada que había llorado mientras tiraba a un niño pequeño a su muerte en el pozo de un pueblo hace 31 años mientras un oficial al mando, el Teniente Jorge Vinicio Sosa Orantes, espetaba: “¡Esto es un trabajo de hombres!”

Sosa, quien hoy es un ciudadano estadounidense de 55 años de edad, observó este testimonio sombrio desde la mesa de la defensa vigilado por alguaciles federales en una sala de juicio aquí. Su excamarada en armas, Gilberto Jordán, acusó a Sosa de haber jugado un papel central en uno de los peores crímenes de guerra en la historia reciente del hemisferio: la masacre de 250 personas en la aldea guatemalteca de Dos Erres en 1982. Sosa está siendo procesado por cargos de haber obtenido su ciudadanía estadounidense de manera fraudulenta años más tarde, ocultando su participación en la masacre, según los fiscales.

El juicio empezó la semana pasada y es el primer juicio en Estados Unidos relacionado con una atrocidad de la guerra civil guatemalteca, que duró treinta años. También es la primera vez que el caso de Dos Erres es examinado en profundidad en una corte estadounidense. Sosa se convierte en el sospechoso de más alto rango en ser juzgado. Las autoridades estadounidenses habían previamente encarcelado a Jordán, quien se declaró culpable de cargos de fraude migratorio en 2010, y a otro exsoldado que había emigrado a Estados Unidos. Las cortes guatemaltecas han condenado a cinco exsoldados. Siete más permanecen fugitivos en un caso que ha desafiado la capacidad de la justicia en Guatemala de perseguir a criminales de guerra que son protegidos por fuerzas de seguridad corruptas y mafias poderosas.

Durante los primeros cuatro días del juicio, fiscales federales se enfrentaron a un reto poco común: intentar probar que Sosa participó en la matanza para condenarlo por el crimen relativamente menor de fraude al sistema de inmigración. Cuando Sosa obtuvo la ciudadanía en 2008 y una tarjeta verde en 1998, hizo declaraciones falsas en formularios de inmigración, según los fiscales, porque no reveló que había sido militar y dijo que nunca había cometido un crimen por el cual hubiera sido arrestado.

La defensa argumenta que Sosa no pensaba que había cometido un crimen porque era un soldado obedeciendo órdenes. El abogado de Sosa también aseveró que las preguntas en los formularios de inmigración eran vagas y que oficiales del servicio de inmigración estadounidense deberían haberse fijado que en el archivo de Sosa  él había descrito su servicio militar guatemalteco en una solicitud que presentó, sin éxito, para asilo político en 1985.

“Este caso se trata pura y sencillamente de las respuestas de un exsoldado en un formulario de inmigración,” dijo el abogado, H.H. (Shashi) Kewalramani durante los argumentos de apertura del juicio. “Por mucho que el gobierno de Estados Unidos quiera convertir esto en un caso de crímenes de guerra, no lo es.”

Sin embargo, sí parece mucho un caso de crímenes de guerra. Los testimonios de los testigos en esta ciudad ubicada a una hora de Los Ángeles sumergieron al jurado en el horror en una aldea de la selva guatemalteca de hace tres décadas. Dos excomandos contaron como el ataque fue un torbellino de violaciones y asesinatos que borró a Dos Erres del mapa. Un sobreviviente que era un niño en 1982 describió  como se agarró a la pierna de su madre mientras soldados la arrastraron a su muerte. Y la exmujer de Sosa y el investigador encargado del caso testificaron que hace tres años Sosa huyó a México y posteriormente a Canadá  después de que agentes federales ejecutaron una orden de registro en su casa de Riverside County.

La policía canadiense detuvo a Sosa, quien tiene ciudadanía canadiense además de estadounidense, en 2011 y lo extraditaron a los Estados Unidos el año pasado.

Los testimonios empezaron con una reunión dramática entre Sosa y Jordán, quien está cumpliendo una sentencia de prisión de diez años en Florida. En 1982, ambos  trabajaron como instructores en una escuela que entrenaba a “Kaibiles,” el nombre por cual son conocidos los comandos notoriamente brutales de Guatemala.

Sosa es un experto en artes marciales, bajo y fuerte con bigote negro. Durante la década antes de ser acusado en 2010, manejó escuelas de karate en el sur de California. Vestido con un traje negro y portando lentes, observó el martes pasado como los alguaciles federales escoltaban a la corte a Jordán, quien vestía un overol naranja de reo y tenía las piernas encadenadas. Ninguno de los dos veteranos de guerra dio señal alguna de reconocer la presencia del otro.

Jordán parecía mayor que sus 57 años: con lentes, el pelo gris, de aspecto atormentado. En 2010, confesó su involucramiento en la masacre cuando agentes federales fueron a su casa a entrevistarle. Dijo a los agentes que había sabido que vendría el día en que tendría que pagar por sus acciones.  Se enfrenta a ser deportado a Guatemala para ser juzgado por asesinato en masa cuando cumpla su sentencia.

Jordán testificó en español a través de un intérprete.  Dijo que no ha hecho ningún acuerdo con el gobierno norteamericano aparte de una promesa de que los fiscales estadounidenses escribirán una carta a la fiscal general de Guatemala diciendo que ha cooperado.

El objetivo inicial de la misión el 6 de diciembre de 1982 era recuperar  21 fusiles que unos guerrilleros se habían llevado después de una emboscada a soldados, según el testimonio de Jordán. Datos de inteligencia indicaban que los fusiles estaban en Dos Erres, pero Jordán dijo que la unidad no encontró ni fusiles ni guerrilleros y no hubo resistencia por parte de los ciudadanos pacíficos de la aldea. Los comandos separaron a los hombres de las mujeres y niños y arrearon a los dos grupos dentro de una iglesia y una escuela. La pesadilla empezó cuando un teniente violó a una de las mujeres, dijo Jordán. Después de una reunión entre los tenientes, se dieron nuevas órdenes, según el testimonio de Jordán.

“La misión cambió,” dijo. “Nos ordenaron que matáramos a toda la gente.”

Jordán era un paracaidista curtido en esa época, pero todavía no se había convertido en Kaibil. Se retrató como un participe reticente en la matanza. Testificó que recibió la orden de traer a un niño y tirarlo al pozo en el centro del pueblo, que se convirtió en el epicentro de la masacre.

Tenía como tres años, la edad de mi hijo,” testificó Jordán.

Jordán se inclinó hacia adelante en el estrado y lloró mientras continuaba su relato, mirando fijamente hacia abajo. Dijo: “Mientras estábamos en camino, yo estaba llorando. El me miraba y estaba llorando también. Un sargento me dijo que no llorara o terminaría en el pozo…Llegué y  fue cuando escuché al Señor Sosa, y dijo que esto era trabajo de hombres, y tiré el niño al pozo.”

El fiscal federal Brian D. Skaret preguntó cómo se había sentido Jordán en aquel momento. Jordán levantó la cabeza y espetó: “¡Mal!”

El testimonio de Jordán y de otro excomando, César Franco Ibañez, ubicó a Sosa al lado del pozo supervisando el exterminio metódico de los aldeanos. Los comandos vendaron los ojos de las víctimas, les interrogaron, les pegaron en la cabeza con una almádena de metal y los tiraron dentro del pozo, según los testimonios. Ambos testigos declararon que un hombre que se había caído encima del montón de victimas  insultó a Sosa, y que el enfurecido teniente disparó dentro del pozo. Jordán testificó que Sosa también tiró una granada dentro del pozo.

Creo que perdió la cabeza y empezó a disparar,” declaró Franco. “Les contestó con su fusil…Dijo: ‘Pues mueran, hijos de puta’.”

Franco permaneció impávido cuando dio testimonio de como él mismo mató a gente y violó a una mujer. El exsargento robusto y pequeño fue uno de los dos miembros de la unidad que rompieron el código de silencio militar en la mitad de los noventa y dieron testimonios de primera mano sin precedentes. Fiscales guatemaltecos concedieron a Franco el estatus de testigo protegido y lo mudaron a otro país, donde vive hoy con su familia. El gobierno guatemalteco le paga un estipendio de $550 al mes, dijo. Ha declarado en investigaciones anteriores hechas por autoridades guatemaltecas y norteamericanas y ha dado entrevistas a organizaciones periodísticas, entre ellas ProPublica.

Durante su interrogatorio, el abogado defensor intentó poner en duda la declaración de Franco, aseverando que su relato ha cambiado a través de los años acerca de detalles como si Sosa utilizó una escopeta o un fusil. Citando un informe de la fiscalía sobre una entrevista de Franco hecha por investigadores de Estados Unidos, Kewalramani dijo que durante aquella entrevista en la embajada estadounidense en el país donde vive Franco no había mencionado a Sosa en una lista de comandos que estaban al lado del pozo del pueblo.

Franco insistió en que el informe estaba equivocado.

También mencioné a Sosa,” testificó Franco. “…Le nombré desde el mero principio.”

Otro ataque a la declaración de Franco surgió de una fuente inesperada el viernes por la mañana. El fiscal Skaret reveló en el juzgado que el jefe de la unidad de crímenes de guerra del Departamento de Justicia había recibido un correo electrónico de un fiscal que está de baja. El fiscal, George Ferko, escribió en el correo electrónico que había estado leyendo noticias periodísticas sobre el testimonio de Franco y sintió la obligación de alertar a sus colegas de que pensaba que el testigo no era creíble, según Skaret. Ferko había entrevistado al excomando como parte de una investigación en 2009, dijo Skaret.

César es un mentiroso,” escribió Ferko, según el relato de Skaret en el juzgado.  “César ha cambiado su historia una vez más.”

Como resultado, el abogado de Sosa dijo que quería una oportunidad para hablar con Ferko para decidir si llamarlo como testigo. El episodio fue notable: es muy poco usual que un fiscal del Departamento de Justicia cuestione en pleno juicio la fiabilidad de un testigo que está siendo presentado por sus colegas.

Sin embargo, puede que el acontecimiento no tenga mucho impacto. La defensa no ha intentado refutar el punto central de las declaraciones de los dos exKaibiles: que Sosa participó en la masacre de Dos Erres.

Durante una entrevista telefónica con ProPublica el año pasado desde una cárcel canadiense, Sosa insistió en que no estuvo presente en Dos Erres el día del crimen. Durante la entrevista y por medio de cartas entregadas a ProPublica por su hermano, Sosa alegó que estaba trabajando a una distancia de cien millas de los hechos en un proyecto de asuntos civiles en un pueblo llamado Melchor de Mencos, donde dijo que ayudó a los residentes a obtener equipamiento escolar y deportivo.

La defensa no ha repetido esta versión durante el juicio. Sin reconocer explícitamente la participación de Sosa en la masacre, el argumento de apertura de Kewalramani subrayó la idea de que la guerra civil guatemalteca fue un conflicto brutal y que Sosa era parte de una unidad de elite que estaba entrenada para cumplir órdenes. Sosa no va a declarar, dijo su abogado el viernes.

La fiscalía terminó su presentación con el testimonio de Ramiro Osorio Cristales. Osorio es el mayor de dos niños que los comandos no mataron, sino raptaron y se los llevaron a sus casas para ser criados en las familias de dos de los soldados. El otro niño, Oscar Ramírez Castañeda, solo tenía tres años y no recuerda nada de Dos Erres. Ramírez vive ahora en Boston y ProPublica contó su historia el año pasado.

Osorio vive en Canadá. Tenía cinco años cuando perdió a sus padres y seis hermanos en la masacre. Describió sus memorias en un inglés con acento español pero claro, su voz quebrándose por momentos, tomando pausas para recobrar su compostura.

Osorio recordó como hombres armados irrumpieron en su casa durante la noche y arrastraron fuera a la familia. Los hombres ataron con cuerdas las manos y cuellos de su padre y hermano mayor y los llevaron a la escuela con los demás hombres de la aldea, declaró. Los asaltantes arrearon a los otros niños y su madre dentro de la iglesia con las aterrorizadas mujeres y niños de Dos Erres, según su testimonio.

Empezaron a sacar a las mujeres de la iglesia,” testificó Osorio. “Agarraron a una mujer por su pelo y la arrastraron afuera, algunas niñas jóvenes, adolescentes. Su madre decía, “Por favor no lleven a mis hijos’.”

Osorio miró a través de los resquicios de los listones de madera de las paredes de la iglesia como los soldados violaban a mujeres y mataban a niños, golpeándoles contra un árbol, según su declaración.

Los trataron como animales,” dijo.

Entonces los soldados vinieron a por la madre de Osorio, según su declaración.

Recuerdo agarrando a mi madre por la pierna,” testificó. “Estábamos peleando con los tipos…’No lleven a mi madre.’ Corrí a la parte de atrás de la iglesia para ver que le estaba pasando a mi madre. Estaba gritando, pidiendo auxilio: ‘Por favor no nos maten. No nos maten. No maten a mis niños, no saben nada’.”

Osorio dijo que finalmente se quedó dormido debajo de un banco de la iglesia. Cuando despertó, según su testimonio, solo quedaban otros cuatro niños. Tres eran niñas que los comandos violaron y asesinaron al día siguiente. Los otros dos, Osorio y Ramírez, sobrevivieron. Cuando Osorio terminó su declaración, algunos miembros del jurado y espectadores se secaron las lágrimas.

Es probable que el juicio termine el lunes porque la fiscalía ha reducido su lista inicial de testigos, optando por no llamar a dos excomandos más. La jueza dijo también que ha intentado apurar el juicio porque hay la inminente posibilidad de que el gobierno federal deje de funcionar. Si la defensa decide llamar al exfiscal que ha cuestionado la veracidad de Franco, el testimonio tendria lugar el lunes antes de los argumentos finales.

Categories: Media, Politics

To tell a complicated climate science story: simplify, shorten, list

CJR Daily - September 30, 2013 - 2:05pm
In a world of short attention spans, small screens, and social media, a massive United Nations report on the threat of global warming, compiled by hundreds of scientists over six years, presents a special journalistic challenge. How can the complexities of climate science be condensed into bite-size morsels for public, and political, consumption? It's simple: Take a page from Late...
Categories: Media

Place your bets

CJR Daily - September 30, 2013 - 1:50pm
You have to be in Vegas for a conference, and you decide to while some time away at the slots. Are you "gambling" or "gaming"? Many people not associated with the industry would call it "gambling." Inside the industry, the preferred term is "gaming." The terms have coexisted for years, with "gambling" being the more familiar term for the activity...
Categories: Media

Exchange Watch: Telling half a story about the federal exchanges

CJR Daily - September 30, 2013 - 1:50pm
We can probably forgive Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius for spinning tomorrow's debut of Obamacare in the best possible way for the administration. That's her job. But spinning doesn't cut it with journalists--or, shouldn't. That's why Politico deserves a shout-out for its coverage of the HHS conference call with reporters last week. When the administration released rates...
Categories: Media

California Poised to Broaden Access to Abortions

Pro Publica - September 30, 2013 - 1:49pm

Oct. 9: On Wednesday, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed two bills dramatically broadening access to early abortions in the state. Last week, we wrote about how researchers and lawmakers joined forces to pass the bills and how the legislation could influence abortion politics and access in other states.

When you read about abortion these days, the news is mostly about restrictions—new state laws, regulations, and court challenges that aim (depending on your point of view) either to make the procedure safer for women or to put providers out of business. But California is going in the opposite direction, with two bills that could lead to the one of the biggest expansions of access to abortion in the United States since the FDA approved mifepristone, aka the abortion pill, in 2000.

AB 154 would allow specially trained nurse practitioners, nurse midwives and physician assistants to perform first-trimester abortions without a doctor’s supervision. AB 980 would hold abortion clinics to the same building standards as other primary care facilities, instead of the stricter rules that some cities and counties would like to impose. Both are aimed at making the procedure more widely available in rural, largely conservative parts of the state where incomes are low, teen pregnancies are rampant, and finding an abortion provider often means taking the day off from work or school, getting on a bus, and traveling for hours or days.

Reaction has been predictably split. Margaret Crosby, the ACLU’s lead voice on reproductive issues in California, says one of the most significant things about the bills is that they “treat abortion like any other medical procedure. The fact that abortion is singled out for special consideration is a relic of the days when it was a felony,” she says. “It’s a reflection of where this country is politically rather than medically.”

That dismays Brian Johnston, director of the California Pro-Life Council, who sees what he calls the “minimization” and “casualization” of abortion as a terrible thing for women and girls. If the bills are signed, he says, “animals will have more dignity under the laws of California than human beings.”

Both sides do agree on one thing: The central role played by researchers in persuading lawmakers to pass the bills could change the terms of the whole debate.

Indeed, AB 154 would have gone nowhere but for a recent study out of the University of California–San Francisco that ranks as one of the largest examinations of abortion complication rates ever conducted. After monitoring more than 11,000 procedures over five years, researchers found very little difference in the rate of complications between first-trimester vacuum aspirations performed by experienced doctors and those done by skilled non-physicians.

“Other states that are adding restrictions and barriers are doing so purely out of politics,” says Kathy Kneer, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California. “It’s not based on any medical evidence. The California study gives people a way to push back. It’s like a factual slap in the face.”

But first, some back story.

California’s support for abortion rights goes back to at least 1967, when Governor Ronald Reagan signed a law legalizing the procedure, six years before Roe v Wade. The state is also one of only a handful to have the right to privacy written into its Constitution. Courts have cited that right many times over the years to reject attempts by abortion opponents to impose restrictions.

As a result, unlike the vast majority of other states, California pays for abortions for low-income women and lets teenage girls end their pregnancies without having to tell their parents first. It has about 500 providers scattered throughout the state. These providers accounted for 18 percent of all the abortions performed in the U.S. in 2008, the Guttmacher Institute says. California “does not have” an access problem, insists Carol Hogan, director of pastoral projects and communications for the California Catholic Conference.

But abortion advocates look at the same picture and see many glaring gaps. Some 52 percent of counties—mainly in conservative areas like the vast agricultural Central Valley—either don’t have any providers or lack accessible providers, defined as clinics that perform abortions routinely for a fee that women can afford. Medi-Cal (the state’s version of Medicaid) may pay for the procedure, but it does so at 1985 levels—as much of a disincentive for many doctors and hospitals as noisy protesters and bomb threats.

Plus, California is enormous. Kern County, for example, at the southern end of the Central Valley, has one abortion clinic to serve an area larger than New Jersey.

 “Maybe there’s a clinic in their area but it only offers the [abortion] pill and that’s only good through the eighth week of pregnancy,” says Sierra Harris, associate director of ACCESS: Women’s Health Justice, a nonprofit organization in Oakland that helps women make arrangements and sometimes pays for their trips. “They have to arrange childcare, transportation.” The more onerous the logistics, the longer it takes to obtain care, and many women miss the first-trimester cutoff that most clinics impose, making it even harder to find a provider. “The delays lead to more delays. It becomes a cycle,” Harris says.

Then there’s the chronic nationwide shortage of doctors trained to perform abortions. New Hampshire, Vermont, Oregon and Montana have long permitted physician assistants and nurse practitioners to pick up the slack.

Abortion advocates have been trying for years to revamp the California statutes. A turning point came in 2002, when lawmakers enacted a new law that enshrined Roe. The law also gave the go-ahead for non-physicians to perform “medical” (pill) abortions.

Yet even pro-choice lawmakers remained reluctant to let non-doctors do “surgical” (vacuum aspiration) abortions—as of 2008, about 83 percent of first-trimester procedures in the U.S., Guttmacher says. They wanted proof that patients would not be harmed (and assurances that the medical establishment wouldn’t be hurt, either).

But the same political forces that have made it difficult to build new clinics and train doctors have also made it nearly impossible for researchers to study abortion the way they do other medical procedures.

Enter Tracy Weitz, an associate professor in the ob/gyn department at UCSF. A social scientist by training, she heads the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health project at the school’s Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, one of the very few programs in the U.S. doing clinical research on abortion and contraception.

Weitz and her team discovered a little-known mechanism in California law that lets health care professionals conduct pilot projects—for example, studying whether dental hygienists can be trained to safely fill cavities. After a two-year approval process, the researchers quietly embarked on a study the likes of which has never been done in this country.

First, non-physicians around the state—nurse practitioners, certified midwives, and physician assistants who specialized in women’s health and were already doing procedures like inserting IUDs and taking Pap smears—received training in how to perform vacuum aspirations. After they could show they were competent, they were allowed to do first-trimester procedures at some 22 sites run by Planned Parenthood or Kaiser Permanente, the state’s largest HMO.

Eventually Weitz and her team gathered data comparing 5,675 abortions performed by non-physicians to 5,812 performed by doctors with years of experience. Given that the non-physicians were such novices, Weitz was expecting their complication rate to be as high as 5 or 6 percent. But problems like incomplete abortions and infections were so infrequent that the study had to be extended a year to capture more patients, she says. In the end, the complication rate was .9 percent for doctors and 1.8 percent for non-doctors—figures that Weitz calls “enormously, incredibly safe.”

She credits the same kinds of improvements in technology that have made many other medical procedures easier and safer since the 1970s. The instruments used in vacuum aspirations are less apt to puncture tissue, ultrasounds make it possible to tell the age of the fetus, and antibiotics given before the procedure reduce the risk of infection. Abortion opponents point out the non-physicians still had twice as many complications as the doctors, but Weitz dismisses this as “disingenuous,” given that some critics have been claiming complication rates of 10 percent or higher.

The UCSF study, published on the American Journal of Public Health’s website, didn’t just sway Democrats to pass the non-physicians bill. AB 980, the bill dealing with building codes, also benefited from the fresh information. Governor Jerry Brown, apro-choice former Jesuit with a long history of supporting women’s issues, could sign the two bills any day, although his slowness is causing jitters in some camps and hope in others.(Also on his desk is a narrower abortion-related bill that would protect the privacy rights of young adults who receive insurance through their parents; earlier this month, Brown signed a fourth bill buttressing the rights of foster kids to reproductive health information and services.)

No one seems to expect that the California bills will have any domino effect in conservative regions of the country. Even in California, Johnston says, there could be pushback in the form of court challenges or voter initiatives. Indeed, while a brand-new poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 61 percent of those surveyed don’t want the government to interfere with abortion access, that figure is 10 points lower than in 2000. [PDF here]

But Kneer says the UCSF study could have a major impact in liberal states concerned about abortion access for low-income and rural women. “Places that have a progressive political environment now have a large study to back them up so they can also expand,” she says,

Meanwhile, Weitz predicts, the effects of any new law could also be felt border states like Arizona that have more restrictive abortion rules. “I do think it’s likely that some women will come to California for services,” she says. “It happened in the 1970s. There’s no reason to think… that the same thing wouldn’t happen now.”

Categories: Media, Politics

U.S. Is Arming Syrian Rebels, But Refugees Who’ve Aided Them Are Considered Terrorists

Pro Publica - September 30, 2013 - 11:13am

Authorized by Congress, the CIA has started sending weapons to Syrian rebels. But under a legal definition of terrorism adopted by the U.S. government after the Sept. 11 attacks, those same rebel groups are considered terrorist organizations.

The designation could prevent some of the more than 2 million refugees who have fled Syria from coming to the United States, even if they haven’t actually taken up arms against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Groups that appear on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations have long been banned from entering the U.S. But two antiterrorism laws, the Patriot Act and the Real ID Act, also bar members of armed rebel groups that aren’t specifically designated as terrorist organizations.

The provisions, sometimes known as terrorism bars, apply to all armed rebel groups — even ones the U.S. is actively supporting.

The bars also deny entry to anyone who has given any kind of “material support” — transportation, shelter, money — to such groups.

The U.S. has accepted only 64 Syrian refugees in the last two years, according to a State Department spokeswoman. But it’s unclear how many, if any, Syrians have run afoul of the terrorism bars to date.

Few Syrians have been resettled overall since the conflict began there in 2011. Instead, the United Nations — which refers refugees for resettlement — has focused on aiding the refugees who are still flowing out of Syria into Lebanon, Turkey and other bordering countries.

But the U.N. is preparing to resettle up to 2,000 Syrians in the coming months, said Larry Yungk, senior resettlement officer for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Washington, and the terrorism bars could be a hurdle to resettling them in the U.S.

“We do foresee that there could be issues with some of these cases,” Yungk said.

David Garfield, a Washington lawyer who has represented immigrants caught up by the terrorism bars, was more blunt.

“For Syrians, I think it’s going to be a major problem,” Garfield said. “The thing about this law that’s so bizarre is that it doesn’t matter who you’re trying to overthrow.”

A U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman, Christopher Bentley, said in a statement to ProPublica that “any Syrians who do apply for refugee or asylum status could be subject” to the bars.

The Citizenship and Immigration website makes clear just how sweeping the laws are: “Significantly, there is no exception under the law for ‘freedom fighters,’ so most rebel groups would be considered to be engaging in terrorist activity even if fighting against an authoritarian regime.” The website also states that refugees can be barred for “providing food, helping to set up tents, distributing literature, or making a small monetary contribution” to rebel groups.

“Material support” is defined so broadly that immigrants can be turned away for giving members of rebel groups “a bowl of rice or a few dollars,” said Melanie Nezer, senior director for policy and advocacy with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.

More than 3,500 applications from those around the world seeking to come to or remain in the U.S. are currently on hold because of the terrorism bars, according to the government.  And that likely doesn’t capture the full effect of the bars. The U.N. often doesn’t try to resettle refugees in the U.S. if officials think they might be turned away because of the terrorism bars.

In 2007, Congress gave the secretary of homeland security more authority to grant exemptions to rebel groups that don’t pose a threat to the U.S. But putting the exemptions in place has proved to be a slow process that often takes years.

A proposed exemption “has to circulate through the whole alphabet soup of agencies in Washington,” said Thomas K. Ragland, a former Justice Department lawyer who has represented immigrants caught up by the terrorism bars.

Exemptions typically must be reviewed by, among others, the Citizenship and Immigration Services, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Department of Homeland Security’s general counsel and Office of Policy. If no objections are raised, exemptions eventually get sent to the secretary of homeland security, who must consult the secretary of state and the attorney general before they’re made official. “It moves at a glacial pace,” Ragland said.

Eighteen groups have received exemptions to date, including seven Burmese groups, three Iraqi groups and two Vietnamese groups. The Department of Homeland Security has also issued several broader exemptions, including for individuals who supported rebel groups “under duress.”

Citizenship and Immigration would not say whether any exemptions for Syrian groups were in the pipeline.

Granting exemptions for certain Syrian groups wouldn’t mean that refugees affiliated with them could automatically enter the U.S. — it would simply remove the legal barrier to letting Syrians who have aided the rebels into the country.

The government reviews the case of each refugee, and it would still have the authority to reject applicants with ties to groups such as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a rebel group with ties to Al Qaeda. (The State Department has already designated the Al Nusra Front, another group with Qaeda ties, as a terrorist organization, preventing anyone affiliated with it from entering the country.)

The government can also exempt individuals from the terrorism bars.

In 2008, the Washington Post ran a front-page story on Saman Kareem Ahmad, a client of Ragland’s who had worked as a translator for the Marines in Iraq but had been turned down when he applied for U.S. permanent residency. The reason: He had served in the militant arm of the Kurdish Democratic Party, which was considered a terrorist group because it had tried to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Ahmad was granted an individual exemption after the story ran, Ragland said. (Homeland Security later issued a group exemption for refugees affiliated with the Kurdish Democratic Party.) But Ragland said such exemptions are rare.

“They’re really, really the exception to the rule,” Ragland said. Citizenship and Immigration declined to say how many individual exemptions have been granted.

The Department of Homeland Security could issue a general exemption for all Syrians who provided nonviolent support to Syrian rebels, said Anwen Hughes, the deputy director of the refugee protection program at Human Rights First.

“There’s an opportunity right now for DHS to fix this and process an exemption that would resolve it,” she said, “before it becomes a crisis.”

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