The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MAC NEIL: Good evening. I'm Robert MacNeil in New York. On the NewsHour this 4th of July, four new immigrant writers talk about immigration from their personal experience, then a Paul Solman report on reshaping business, and excerpts from a speech by Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun on principles of freedom. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MAC NEIL: This 4th of July Holiday was marred by brush fires in several western states. At Lake Arrowhead in California, about 50 miles East of Los Angeles, a fire which started yesterday has burned across 10,000 acres. In nearby Palm Desert, 500 homes were threatened by a blaze which has already destroyed 10 homes and burned 13,000 acres of land. Officials said many of the fires were ignited by lightning and spread by high winds and high temperatures. Large fires were also reported in Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming. In overseas news, rebels in Rwanda seized control of the country's two largest cities, including the capital, Kigali. Robin White of Independent Television News has this report.

ROBIN WHITE, ITN: This was the prize that the Tutsi rebels most wanted, the Rwandan capital Kigali seen recently. After more fierce fighting, rebel forces are now in control of the city. They have reportedly captured several key compounds, including the Ministry of Defense Building. From Kigali, the rebels have already launched a sweep South and Westwards through Rwanda, taking Butari and pushing back government Hutu troops. In Kigali, itself, aid center workers say thousands of refugees are starting to emerge from hiding.

DR. JAMES ORBINSKI, Medecins San Frontieres: [speaking from Kigali] The people that are coming to the centers are in really, really desperate need of basic assistance, food, water, blankets, medical care. Some are very badly injured and wounded. Some are very sick, and they've been sick for a long time.

MR. WHITE: And positioned between government and rebel forces are some 2,500 French U.N. troops with, they say, new orders to halt the rebel advance. Whether that can be achieved is another matter.

MR. MAC NEIL: In the Middle East today, two Israeli soldiers were killed and two wounded in an attack by Iranian-backed guerrillas in Southern Lebanon. Israel quickly fired back from the Hezbollah outpost, but it was not known whether there were casualties in the counter attack. Also today, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat continued his visit to the Gaza Strip. He went to a former Israeli prison for Palestinians which today houses Palestinian security forces. Tomorrow he visits the world's oldest city, Jericho. It'll be the final leg of his trip to the new self-ruled territories. U.S. currency traders were off for the holiday but in London trading, the dollar gained slightly against the Japanese yen. However, that rise followed another slide overnight in Tokyo, where the dollar again fell to a record low versus the yen. President Clinton expressed concern about the dollar's continuing dissent. He said, "I'm not trying to expand the American economy through a low dollar. No country has ever devalued itself into prosperity." He made the remarks in a recent interview with foreign journalists. The interview was released today. Marian Williams, one of America's best known gospel singers, has died. Her distinctive style inspired other gospel and secular performers, including Aretha Franklin and Little Richard. Williams' music was heard in the movie "Fried Green Tomatoes" and "Mississippi Masala." Last year, she received a MacArthur Foundation genius award and a Kennedy Center honor. She died Saturday in Philadelphia from vascular disease at the age of 66. That ends our summary of the day's top stories. Now it's on to four immigrant writers, reshaping business, and Justice Harry Blackmun. FOCUS - NEWEST AMERICANS

MR. MAC NEIL: First tonight, for the 4th of July, we have a special focus on immigration. What's it like for those who come to the United States now, and how do they handle what appears to be a growing public sentiment against large numbers of new immigrants? Last Friday, I talked with four writers who are, themselves, immigrants. But first, a personal view from one our regular essayists, Richard Rodriguez, editor of the Pacific News Service.

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ: Come to Ellis Island, a friend of mine said, "I will show you my Russian grandfather's name on a wall." On a weekday morning, I have come to Ellis Island with little armies of schoolchildren in search of ghosts. But I am left thinking about the descendants of the immigrants who came through this place. Recent polls indicate that the majority of Americans favor a moratorium on immigration. Some even thing we should stop immigration altogether. They say, America has an immigrant problem. No one wonders if America perhaps has a native-born problem. No one asks, "Do we need the native born?" "We are a nation of immigrants," Americans like to say. But we tend to celebrate immigration after the fact. When these pavilions were crowded at the turn of the century, most Americans didn't like them the way they looked, spoke, smelled, their garlic and their crucifixes, their funny clothes. Idealism prevailed, pragmatism prevailed. America needed the cheap labor of Yiddish- speaking grandmothers in the sweat shops of the lower East side. We needed immigrants to build our bridges and carve out the great plains. Out West, the Chinese were imported to build the railroads. Once the Chinese had finished, Americans wished the Chinese would go back to China. But idealism also created Ellis Island. Americans in the 19th century understood the individual's right to flee from the past. How could America resist these newcomers? Just like the foreign immigrants, native-born Americans habitually are on the move, moving today from Ohio to Kansas, moving from Dallas to Orlando, Portland to Boise, our highways are crowded with the restlessness we inherit from immigrant ancestors. The trouble is we never measure up. We, the grandchildren of immigrants, are never as bold, never as driven as our grandparents. That is why we are annoyed sometimes by the immigrants' ambition. In California, the destination of the majority of today's immigrants, people complain that the immigrants are coming for welfare dollars. But the more interesting complaint one hears these days in California is that the immigrants work too hard. One hears it particularly about illegal immigrants. They are taking our jobs. Or I remember the parent who told me after his children failed to gain entrance to the University of California, he told me that Asians were unfair because they work too hard, because of the immigrants, Los Angeles had become a working town, no longer the blond, laid-back city of leisure. Immigrants are blamed for the change, the traffic, the bad air. Immigrants have turned LA into Cleveland. The Puritans were the first immigrants to America. They came, fleeing intolerance. Puritans ended up intolerant of other immigrants who came after. Nonetheless, what they planted on American soil was a Protestant faith. It can be born again in America. In the 1840's, the Irish were America's major immigrant group. The nativist complaint against the Irish was theological. Today we talk ethnicity and race. In the 19th century, it wasn't a question of Asians and Hispanics but whether a Catholic could become a good American. Could a Jew? The irony is that the Jews, the Orthodox Greeks, the Mennonites, the Irish and Italian Catholics who came through Ellis Island became the new Puritans restored the early Protestant determination, the founder's optimism. Who doubts it now? The immigrants of Ellis Island created America. We, their children and grandchildren, we inherited America. And that is the source of the problem. For those of us who are native born America is not a destination. America is our address. We lack the immigrants' thrilling sense of discontinuity. Rather, we are carriers of memory. Immigrants tore down the forest. We become environmentalists. They were fiercely set on the new. We remember when it was possible to find parking in downtown LA. Who will say it? Native born blacks are being outpaced by immigrant blacks from the Caribbean. I worry less about a Mexican immigrant who is today looking for a job in LA than I worry about the third generation Chicano at UCLA who is mired in the despair of pop American culture. This morning, coming to Ellis Island, I expected the place to be haunted. Instead, I found a place filled with freshly painted irony. A few years ago, Ellis Island was restored by native-born Americans as a monument to our immigrant past. For us, Ellis Island is an historical landmark. But for the immigrants who rushed through this place, Ellis Island was only a stop on their way to the future. They rushed away. That is why the place is not haunted. I'm Richard Rodriguez.

MR. MAC NEIL: Now to four people who have lived and written about today's immigrant experience. Edwidge Danticat came to the United States from Haiti in 1981, when she was 12. Her first novel is Breath, Eyes, Memory about a young Haitian's arrival and experience in the United States. She lives and works in New York. David Gurevich now lives in New York as well. He was born in Russia and came to the United States in 1976. He's the author of the memoir From Lenin to Lennon. Nguyen Qui Duc was born in Vietnam and came to the United States in 1975, a contributor to National Public Radio, he's the author of Where the Ashes Are, a memoir of his family's experience in the two countries. He lives today in San Francisco. Rose Del Castillo Guilbaut was born in Mexico and crossed the border with her mother when she was five years old. She's written on the Mexican experience in the United States as a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and the Pacific News Service. Edwidge Danticat, do you feel welcome here as an immigrant?

MS. DANTICAT: Sometimes. I feel -- I didn't feel welcome certainly when I came because it was the 1980's, and it was a time of -- that the onslaught of boat people, you know, coming, and it was a time of AIDS and a lot of Haitians along with homosexuals and heroin addicts were accused of being sort of the people who brought AIDS to this country. Umm, I'm starting to feel a little more welcome because I've been here 13 years, but in the beginning, it was extremely rough.

MR. MAC NEIL: How about you, Mr. Gurevich?

MR. GUREVICH: I think that it was really -- the word "welcome" was really outside the frame, because frankly coming out of Russia, I felt happy just being left alone. So welcome -- sometimes I was welcome, it was gravy.

MR. MAC NEIL: Uh huh. How about you, Ms. Guilbault?

MS. GUILBAULT: I was very little when I came to this country, so I feel that I grew up here. I was more American. I lived on a farm with my parents, who were -- worked in the fields, but we had the ability to be at one place all year round. We weren't migrant workers. So, therefore, my house became Mexico where we spoke the language. We ate the food. We spoke or listened to Mexican news, whatever it was, and I essentially crossed the border every day and went into the outside world, which is America, which was the school, so feeling welcomed, well, I felt like an outsider but it was part of the growing up process that alienation I think young people go through in this country anyway.

MR. MAC NEIL: What's been your experience, Nyugen Duc?

MR. QUI DUC: Because I came here at the end of a war, to find the doors of America open was to feel welcomed, was to feel accepted, and to feel gratitude for this country, and at the same time I knew that as I walked --

MR. MAC NEIL: I'm sorry, we've had an interruption from San Francisco. Do you, Mr. Gurevich, do you feel right now -- in your own life - - any signs of the so-called anti-immigrant feeling which is reported today?

MR. GUREVICH: Well, I would say that I would have to say yes. There is certainly a -- it's very nuance, it's very subtle. It never comes to the point go back to where you came from, no. But it's rather -- I realize -- I have been realizing for some time that no matter what I do, no matter what I achieve in this country, I will always be a Russian first and whatever I do it would be second. In other words, if I, you know, no matter what prizes I win or in literary activity or whatever, it will be always this Russian guy who write a book, it will not be a writer who happens to be Russian.

MR. MAC NEIL: Do you feel any of this anti-immigrant feeling that Richard Rodriguez referred to in the essay?

MS. DANTICAT: I certainly, I certainly do. I think it's very specific in the case of Haitian immigrants because of what we're seeing even in today's news about boat people coming from Haiti, sort of fleeing a country in turmoil. And you get a sense watching Haitian people on television that there -- these poor people crashing the floors of the shores of Florida -- and I think immigrants, people who've been here a long time or people who are just arriving from Haiti feel that -- sort of feel that the fact that they don't want Haitians here, and you sort of take it upon us. So in that way I feel, I feel that sort of end connection with the other Haitian immigrants who are newly arriving.

MR. MAC NEIL: Rose Guilbault, do you feel the new anti-immigrant feeling?

MS. GUILBAULT: Very much so, and it's interesting for me because to most people I don't look Mexican. I'm not brown. I don't have Indian features. So, therefore, they feel freer to say racial -- you know -- prejudiced remarks in front of me against those who do look that way. And in California, we're going through tremendous anti-immigrant feelings right now, especially toward Mexicans, because of the illegal alien issue that, you know, we have a ballot measure November which is the SOS, Save Our State. The economy is bad in California right now, and the illegal Mexican immigrants are the scapegoats.

MR. MAC NEIL: Are you experiencing it Duc?

MR. QUI DUC: In some ways, I've experienced the same thing that Rose just talked about, because we are newcomers as well, because the times are bad, and so there is that competition for economic power. I've also been told to go back to Japan, when I drive down the street, so we do experience that.

MR. MAC NEIL: Uh huh. Do you -- what is your explanation, Rose, for it? Is it strictly economic?

MS. GUILBAULT: I think that Mexicans have always been misunderstood in California even though California was once Mexico's. We're private people, and we haven't really allowed ourselves to be known to the outside. We've kept within our family, within our religious groups, and a lot of people weren't terribly interested. You know, America sometimes has a lack of curiosity about strangers. There's a sort of a feeling I have my own and just don't take it away from me and we'll all be okay. And I think that's part of it. It's just the American attitude.

MR. MAC NEIL: Do you think, Duc, that the governors of those sunbelt states, California included, who are suing Washington to, to be compensated for the cost of illegal immigration, whereas, for example, the governor of New York State has refused to do that, do you think that kind of activity is fanning the flames?

MR. QUI DUC: I certainly think that politicians are doing that and using the press, and the press play a role in making this problem a larger problem. Nobody's ever questioned the numbers that the politicians are putting out in terms of the cost of the immigration -- or the immigrants in the school system, in the social service system, and nobody's put those numbers next to the numbers of the contributions by the immigrant community. Certainly, I believe that the fanning of these emotions, anti- immigrant emotions, is being done.

MS. GUILBAULT: We have dueling statistics, actually. There's, there's documents that come out that say, look, the immigrants aren't taking away this much, here's the stats right here, and then we have people on the other side, I mean, you can have numbers say whatever you want them to say ultimately. But I understand that in Texas, which is another Southwest state, they don't have, they don't care as much about illegal immigration.

MR. MAC NEIL: What do you think is behind your experiences? Is it simply the Haitian specific right now?

MS. DANTICAT: No. I think part of the anti-immigrant feeling has to do with who the immigrants are, because in the piece that we just saw, Richard Rodriguez, and the earlier immigrants were not immigrants of color, and now for the most part, a lot of immigrants are immigrants of color, and part of it -- part of that might be affecting it, because Americans, including the politicians, and American citizens, might feel that the onslaught of immigration is destroying their American identity, sort of the bronzing of America.

MR. MAC NEIL: The bronzing of America. That wouldn't refer to you, Mr. Gurevich.

MR. GUREVICH: It wouldn't, but I would somewhat disagree in the sense that I feel that [a] economics is pretty much a part of the picture, because there's obviously different attitude towards a Haitian who is, you know, like I said, storming those -- falling into the sea off the boat, or a Mexican cross the border, and a Russia nuclear physicist who's coming to join the staff of Cornell or another university. Obviously, he will not have thesame feeling, although, as I mentioned previously, he is always Russian first and physicist second. But by the same token, it's also -- one has to keep in mind that Russia in for -- in many ways Russia is a third world country, so it does not necessarily mean -- although I will grant you that yes, the bronzing of America syndrome is pretty much there, but people as Russians become more known to, you know, in the part of the social system, the people who deal with them realize that their attitudes are not very different from those displayed by people from, you know, of a different color of skin.

MR. MAC NEIL: What do you -- what do you think the American dream -- I'll put it this way -- I'll put it to you first. How would Haitians define the American dream today, those coming here now? How would they define it, and can they realize it?

MS. DANTICAT: I think that as things get a little bit worse in Haiti, the American dream becomes sort of less demanding. It's pretty much peace, and just a better life than what's at home, pretty much.

MR. MAC NEIL: How would you define it now for Russians?

MR. GUREVICH: Well, in the first place, I grew up in a culture where I'm conditioned to beware all the words that are capitalized, you know. I mean, everything you say, American dream to me, that's like something -- you know, the rip in letters 10 foot tall, and that's something --

MR. MAC NEIL: That you were told to salute in Russia.

MR. GUREVICH: Right.

MR. MAC NEIL: Right.

MR. GUREVICH: But I'm not sure about the way this whole notion is defined, because, frankly, I think that to suggest that an American dream is different from an Armenian dream or Byelorussian dream is slightly ethnocentric, because, I mean, how different would be dreams of a person growing up in Armenia be from somebody growing up in Buffalo? I mean, these are the same basic things we're talking about, except for the difference I think is more quantitative than qualitative in the sense that in America all these things that are dreamed of in say Rwanda or Armenia, they are more easily available and on a grander scale. America loves things big, and, therefore, the dreams will automatically be bigger in this country.

MR. MAC NEIL: Rose Guilbault, what does the American dream represent to somebody like yourself now?

MS. GUILBAULT: To me, the American dream is the ability to redefine yourself, to start over in a country and be something different, because in Mexico, we're often defined by hierarchical systems. Nobody really seems to really understand that, but there is -- it's a very social system. If you were born in a lower caste system, that's pretty much where you stay, and it's difficult to get ahead. And in America, you can be whoever you want to be. And you can get an education. You can make money. You can buy a big screen TV. You can be those things, and you have those opportunities, where in Mexico and some of the Latin American countries, those opportunities really aren't afforded.

MR. MAC NEIL: Can you be whatever you want to be?

MS. GUILBAULT: Are you talking to me?

MR. MAC NEIL: No. I'm just talking to Edwidge a moment.

MS. GUILBAULT: I'm sorry.

MS. DANTICAT: Can I -- I guess it depends on what I want to be. I didn't think it was possible when I was in Haiti to become a writer, and certainly America has allowed me that possibility, and I think there are things that I, that I treasure that would not have been possible for me in Haiti in terms of freedom of expression and certain dreams that are not necessarily material things. But the abilityto even have a dream and thinking that it's possible to achieve is a, is a gift in itself that's not available where I come from, but is in America.

MR. MAC NEIL: How about you, Nguyen Duc?

MR. QUI DUC: You know, I think the important thing to point out is that these dreams, American dreams, or Vietnamese- American dreams, do change. When we come to America, we think, okay, we come to a country where we can do a certain amount of things, and so we, we are able to buy the house, we are able to buy the TV set, and then suddenly after a few years, within one generation, we realize we've been had, and now we're slaves, we've got to work to pay for the house. We can't do any other things that we really want to do, and we're stuck with this mortgage, we're stuck in this life now, and at that time you're not so free anymore to do what you really want to do, and --

MR. MAC NEIL: Is that a writer's point of view or is that common to Vietnamese in the states?

MR. QUI DUC: I certainly think it's common to Vietnamese, particularly those who came here who thought that by becoming engineers one would secure oneself, secure life, and with the changes in, in the Cold War and what not, these people are now without a job. Meanwhile, the support system that you counted on from your own community is disintegrating because you're now in America, where everybody's more individualistic. You can't go to your family anymore. You can't just bring your family or your immediate family to go live with your extended family. That doesn't happen in America. And so that's breaking down as well, and it's a really sad truth about a certain part of the Vietnamese community in America.

MR. GUREVICH: But doesn't it happen sometimes that you do bring your family and all of a sudden you find out that you're strangers?

MR. QUI DUC: Of course, there are difference in cultural adaptation. Once you've been here for a while, your new family comes, there are a lot of tremendous difficulties there, but that's part of the issue that we're talking about here is the sense of sacrifice, is the sense of sharing resources that's carried down by immigrants, and it's no different than the immigrants that came here a hundred or two hundred years ago.

MS. DANTICAT: Yes, certainly sort of the schizophrenia of having a legacy of two worlds, what he's talking about, sort of wanting part of what life was back there, the best of what you know of it, and in living, let's say, in an apartment compound, where you have no relations with other people and suddenly you are this solitary person rather than like the group person that you might have been back in your country.

MR. MAC NEIL: Do you think that's any different now than it was for immigrants generations ago, do you think?

MS. DANTICAT: I don't think -- it's -- that's probably one of the constants of the experience is, having to decide whether to totally assimilate or whether to retain some of who you are. And I think part of the debate of having immigrants in a country where they become Americans or do we want them to maintain their culture?

MR. MAC NEIL: What do you feel? What do you want, and what do you think is expected of you?

MS. DANTICAT: I think -- well, in my family it's always been expected of us that we maintain the best of both cultures what we can and sort of display that in our lives to the extent that we can be happy people.

MR. MAC NEIL: Rose Guilbault, do you feel that pressure, or did you -- was it expected of you that you would wipe out your Mexicanness?

MS. GUILBAULT: I think my family expected meto continue with my Mexican roots and to keep a lot of those traditions and, in fact, I have. I really feel that I am Mexican-American. My -- we speak Spanish at home. My older daughter speaks Spanish. My father lives with us at home, so we do have an extended family, and I try to maintain a lot of those traditions and try to pass it on to my children. I think America would like me to lose a lot of those traditions. I think America would like me to be American and let go of some of those things, and you know, that they don't understand. America wants Mexicans for their food, for their art, for their music, for the cinco de mayo, but that's not what we're about.

MR. MAC NEIL: What are you about?

MS. GUILBAULT: We're about family. We're about values. We're about art. We have some of the great traditions from our countries that we bring, some of the greatest artistic traditions, anthropological, so many letters, literature. In America, we don't often have a void. It's been very difficult for us as writers, as artists, to establish and to talk about who we are, because even now people don't publish us. There's a reluctance to hear about it us because we're often stereotyped, and if you look at television, commercial television, what do you see, who are Mexican, they're gang members, they're illegal aliens, but we're other things.

MR. MAC NEIL: How do you feel about that, Qui Duc?

MR. QUI DUC: Well, I do agree that we are very complex, that we are struggling, struggling two cultures, and we're expected to succeed as immigrants, and our families expect that, but in order to succeed in America you must leave your family, I'm always asked to be part of the family, part of the old values, and yet in order to be successful in America, I must leave that family, I must be out there, in the fundamental way that America's formed as a country to be interballistic, to think about myself, and to not think about the sacrifices for my family, for my neighbors, for my community. And it's a paradoxical thing, where we have to do two things, and at the same time I have to explain to the community at large to American society what we're all about were the whiz kid from the good universities as well as the Vietnamese who's on welfare, and to explain that whole complex society within the Vietnamese community is a very difficult position to be as writers.

MR. MAC NEIL: Do you think the -- Mr. Gurevich, there's a long tradition of Russian immigration to this country -- do you think there is the same pressure today to de-Russianize yourself and to assimilate as there may have been in other generations?

MR. GUREVICH: I think that one person, and, you know, myself included go through stages. At first, when I came to this country, you wanted like any greenhorn an obsolete word, some word, but emotionally remains the same. You want to be as American as possible because you want to raise all the negativity that you left behind, however, after a while, as I said, you realize that no matter what you do, you would be Russians first and everything else second, and namely if you can't be very nice party and if somebody's talking, and if you want to join a discussion on Ingrid Bergman, somebody will hear your accent and say, what about Gorbachev, what do you think is going to happen, although, you know, you really don't give a damn about Gorbachev, you know, you're sick and tired of hearing about it.

MR. MAC NEIL: I hope they're not still acting about Gorbachev.

MR. GUREVICH: They are -- they are asking about Yeltsin. They'll find, you know, whoever at thetime is writing about -- but -- so you have really no choice but to come to terms with that, and you realize that no matter what you do, you are always going to be that.

MR. MAC NEIL: Do you feel a pressure to assimilate or a desire to?

MS. DANTICAT: I felt the pressure I think in the beginning in terms of acquiring sort of a good education in America and making the best as Qui was saying to represent my family in the best way. And I do agree with you that there are times when we feel as though we're representing a whole group of people who -- and I sense the debate over Haitian immigrants is that they cannot assimilate, and some will say that's why we're having such big trouble, so much trouble getting into this country is because no one even has the illusion that we can assimilate first, you know, as black people we can maybe assimilate into the African-American community but probably not into the general community.

MR. GUREVICH: Well, let's face it. In New York, we're both cab drivers, right?

MR. MAC NEIL: And I think you've told us that Haitian-Americans are -- have taken over the cab system, their taxi system in Boston.

MS. DANTICAT: That's what I --

MR. MAC NEIL: Do you feel that there is more of a melting pot, less of a melting pot today than we suppose there was traditionally?

MS. DANTICAT: I think that certainly in New York there's a melting pot, but it's like chemistry. You know, I think we're reaching a saturation point, and that's the entire immigrant sentiments, you know, people are feeling how much more can we melt into this pot, and but in New York, I mean, New York is the greatest example of the melting pot that you can get.

MR. MAC NEIL: And what do you feel about the melting pot, Rose Guilbaut?

MS. GUILBAULT: Well, in San Francisco, it's so diverse, it's a very international city here, and we have people in neighborhoods that are separated. But I think that what happens is that as we reach different economic levels we do melt and assimilate. We intermarry. We become part of the system, and yet retain those traditions like other immigrants have, you know, who have become before us, those people from Ellis Island, you know, within our families, and they become sort of interesting facts like a nice dish that grandma makes every Christmas, you know, or that kind of thing.

MR. MAC NEIL: And Duc, do you, do you feel a melting pot?

MR. QUI DUC: Well, I think we're all trying to work out how are we to assimilate and yet remain diverse at the same, the same time, and we express our diversity with cinco de mayo or the Vietnamese touch festival, but is that all about Vietnamese or is that all about being Mexican? After we leave the festival, we may all go to the shopping mall and look the same and eat from McDonald's and go to Safeway and its corporate culture, and in that way, I think we do melt --

MR. MAC NEIL: Let me ask you, do you think you're here for good, or do you intend to go back to Vietnam?

MR. QUI DUC: I certainly would like to go back to Vietnam as soon as I can. I have things there that I miss tremendously, and I want to re-experience Vietnam. I've been back to visit. I'm looking forward to a chance to go back there.

MR. MAC NEIL: To go back to stay, or to go back to visit?

MR. QUI DUC: To stay for at least a couple of years, maybe more, to really learn the truth about the Vietnamese as well, because that's very much a part of me, no matter how long I've been here. And I've had the chance, and I'm grateful to be in America to have the chance to come back to America, and yet, there are things in America that I don't like, and there are things in America that I truly miss.

MR. MAC NEIL: Like what?

MR. QUI DUC: A sense of community perhaps, that I would perhaps have children that could walk down the streets in the neighborhood, and people who would know who these kids are, that they would impart lessons of morality, of culture and history. I don't find that in America. We all live inside our homes. We watch TV, and we don't talk to our neighbors.

MS. GUILBAULT: But we have immigrants who change that.

MR. QUI DUC: I hope so.

MS. GUILBAULT: That point of view -- that we can influence America to begin those kind of changes.

MR. QUI DUC: I can count on my fingers the amount of Vietnamese writers who are published in America, how do we change that unless we are accepted, unless we are in the media, unless we're able to have access to the public.

MR. MAC NEIL: Do you think about going back?

MR. GUREVICH: I do go back. I do go back like almost every year on writing assignments, and it's very dispiriting and it's very depressing, and I'm very happy to be back every time.

MR. MAC NEIL: Do you think about going back?

MS. DANTICAT: I think about going back, but I think having made this journey, we -- I have -- I now have this dual identity because I've been here half my life, and there half my life, but I would l love to go back at some point.

MR. MAC NEIL: Do you consider yourself an American?

MS. DANTICAT: I consider myself a Haitian-American just as Ms. Guilbault thinks that she's Mexican-American.

MR. MAC NEIL: What do you consider yourself, Duc?

MR. QUI DUC: I consider myself an American when I'm in America, I consider myself a Vietnamese when I'm in Vietnam.

MR. MAC NEIL: And Rose. Excuse me, just finishing up here, Rose.

MS. GUILBAULT: I view myself as a Mexican-American, American because I was raised here and my mind is American, because I think American, but my soul is Mexican.

MR. MAC NEIL: And what do you consider yourself?

MR. GUREVICH: I'm Russian and American, I'm an American and Russian, and all the rest of the time probably somewhere on Mars.

MR. MAC NEIL: Well, I wish you all a happy 4th of July. Thank you very much. SECOND LOOK - RESHAPING BUSINESS

MR. MAC NEIL: Next tonight, keeping jobs at home. It's an important issue for many Americans and one that will be a major sub-theme when the leaders of the industrialized nations meet later this week in Italy. Many Americans companies are changing their work habits to become more competitive in a global economy. It's an issue Business Correspondent Paul Solman examined last September, and we take a second look now.

MR. SOLMAN: Like his father and grandfather before him, Fred Levine is the girdle business. But with changing fashions and the coming of control top pantyhose, the girdle market is shrinking, Levine's family business hanging by a thread.

FRED LEVINE, Girdle Manufacturer: Today we really feel like we're just trying to save our own back sides, really trying hard to hold it up.

MR. SOLMAN: Now, you could say that as girdles go so goes the garment industry. And, in fact, it has been going for years to other countries. Since 1973, the U.S. apparel industry has lost one job in three, nearly 1/2 million in all. And that makes for a lot of spare factory space.

FRED LEVINE: Most of the building is like this now, and occasionally, I'll hold a meeting with my staff in here?

MR. SOLMAN: Really?

FRED LEVINE: Oh, yeah. For the impact, for the feeling, for the understanding of what we're really up against, and there just are no jobs left. There are very few people coming into the needle trades. And there's a sense of hopelessness.

MR. SOLMAN: Levine's company, Marcus & Wiesen, is the last one left in this Long Island City building. A group of nine other companies still on the directory [Nina Shoes; SKC Fashions Factory; Ideal Co.; United Togs Inc.; Glenora & Pinnacle; Junior Way Ltd.; York Factors; Robert Orsini; Greenbriar Fashions] went bust in a month before our visit. Levine's job is to keep Marcus & Wiesen from becoming yet another ghost of business past. One obvious problem, too much inventory piling up due to uneven work flows along the traditional assembly line.

FRED LEVINE: These are bundles of work in process.

MR. SOLMAN: And it's all the way down.

FRED LEVINE: All the way down, thousands of dollars.

MR. SOLMAN: Thousands of dollars.

FRED LEVINE: Thousands of dollars, and this bundle may have been worked on a week or two ago. To get to the point, so we may have paid the labor and the materials a week or two ago, and it's sitting here not paying interest.

MR. SOLMAN: In other words, a major problem is that Levine's money is tied up in pieces of girdle, money he can't get back until they are stitched together into the final product. Time is money, and both are running out here. And if they do, you can kiss another 40 American jobs good-bye. And so to the rescue, Peter Lazes, job saver. Lazes, who's with Cornell University's School of Industrial & Labor Relations, helps keep U.S. factories open by getting workers to make their own jobs more efficient. At Marcus & Wiesen, they're experimenting with team manufacturing to solve the inventory problem.

EMPLOYEE: Once you finish here, like I finish here, if she's got work for me, I go over there and put the bottoms in. Then I come back here.

MR. SOLMAN: These women have left the assembly line where they used to perform the same task over and over again on girdle after girdle. On the team, however, they all pitch in, doing whatever it takes to turn out one small batch at a time. From first stitch to last snip, a very fast 30 minutes.

MR. SOLMAN: Isn't it perfectly obvious that it's better to do it that way than this way? And this company's been in business for the whole century, right?

FRED LEVINE: Yes.

MR. SOLMAN: So I mean nobody ever thought of this before?

FRED LEVINE: No.

MR. SOLMAN: Well, why not?

FRED LEVINE: I don't know, Paul. A lot of work rules. There's a lot of things in American industry that are done because they were always done that way, and a lot of times we struggle with finding a fresh look, and sometimes we're so caught up in that tunnel we just don't see it. And the other part of it is to get a worker to accept a new way of working is probably the hardest thing that I've ever faced in my life.

PETER LAZES, Consultant: I think what their expectations were is that you come to work, you're given a set of materials to sew, to cut in the shop, and that's all you did. As long as you got that out, that was fine. Now we're seeing that if we're really serious about getting the shop more competitive, they need to be concerned about the quality of how the piece is put together, not just what their one operation is.

MR. SOLMAN: It takes time for both the workers and the company to make changes like these, but Lazes' methods seem to work and have saved jobs in the U.S. from Xerox to General Motors. But can U.S. workers, even team workers, really compete with cheap foreign labor, especially in the low-tech garment industry?

MR. SOLMAN: That womanover your should there, the one in yellow, or sort of gold-colored dress, roughly speaking, what does she make an hour, I mean, just the wildest guess?

PETER LAZES: Probably around $7 an hour.

MR. SOLMAN: Seven bucks an hour?

PETER LAZES: Right.

MR. SOLMAN: And there are people in China who do that same work for 25 cents an hour. How can she possibly compete?

PETER LAZES: The labor rates are not the whole part of the equation. The question is: Can we set up in this company a way in which they manufacture products in a short of period of time so Freddy Levine, the president of his company, can get that out to his customers quicker than air freighting it from a manufacturing environment in, you know, China, or the Pacific Rim? And that's what he's doing here.

MR. SOLMAN: Peter Lazes isn't just thinking wishfully. Across the 59th Street Bridge in Manhattan, Bud Konheim has brought jobs back to America. Konheim is a fourth generation garment maker who once manufactured in Hong Kong. He now does it at home because he says if he makes it in the USA, he can respond more quickly to the fickle market place. He says a shorter lead time saves him more money in lower inventory, for example, than cheap labor does.

BUD KONHEIM, Garment Manufacturer: By the time we had the customs and the freight and the handling and the agent's commission and bring it in here and then we factor in how much more we have to make to anticipate our needs here, and we're wrong a lot of the time, then we have to take that product and sell it for less and lose the profit. We're much better off dealing with labor right here, making exactly what we need, making a small profit on what we make, and just selling it out.

MR. SOLMAN: Konheim is president of one of New York's trendier fashion companies, Nicole Miller. That's Miller, herself, showing the company's wares to visiting French buyers. These are not garments for the faint of heart of short of change, a $60 tie, $35 for a G-string, a $105 corset, compared to $14.99 for Fred Levine's most popular girdle, model 1820. But both firms need to keep inventories low, delivery quick. Unlike Fred Levine, Bud Konheim doesn't own a factory. He contracts the work out. But on a visit to one of the shops that sews Nicole Miller clothes, we noticed a striking similarity to the girdle factory. In our admittedly limited survey, nearly every worker was an immigrant. Julie Lee, who came from Taiwan as a young girl, owns this factory with her husband.

MR. SOLMAN: Where are the people from who you employ?

JULIE LEE, Factory Owner: Oh, they are all different places. From Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Mainland China.

MR. SOLMAN: And what's the difference between them and native born American workers of the same age?

JULIE LEE: They are harder workers. They are much harder workers. And they don't mind working a little overtime, and they are more skilled.

MR. SOLMAN: We asked Lee what her employees earned.

JULIE LEE: They make about 10 to 20 dollars an hour.

MR. SOLMAN: Ten to twenty?

JULIE LEE: Yes.

MR. SOLMAN: This figure was somewhat contradicted, however, by Ngai Lai Zhen, a former math teacher from Mainland China. We asked her how much she made.

NGAI LAI ZHEN, Garment Worker: More than a thousand.

MR. SOLMAN: A thousand a month, more than a thousand a month.

MR. SOLMAN: Now, I suppose we might have a mini exposer on our hands here. A thousand a month comes out to more like five dollars an hour than ten or twenty. And that's assuming the total doesn't include overtime, which it well may. On the other hand,this is how capitalism has always worked in America, the way that people at the bottom have made their way up. The workers here are convincing when they say they're happier than they were in China, where 25 cents an hour can be a competitive wage. And you need look no further than the news footage of illegal Chinese aliens desperately trying to reach our shores to imagine what an opportunity factories like Julie Lee's represent compared to the alternative. So with regard to Peter Lazes and the whole "made in the USA" issue, one question is: Are we saving jobs that only immigrants will take? In other words, are we importing people to fill the jobs we're saving to avoid losing them to those same people overseas? In which case, what's the difference? On our way back to the Nicole Miller office, we ran into further evidence of the difference in job expectations between those born in America and those from abroad. Ruben Fraiburg is a person you could only meet in New York, an Argentinean cab driver of Polish descent.

MR. SOLMAN: What percentage of cab drivers are immigrants, as opposed to native born?

RUBEN FRAIBURG, Cab Driver: 99 percent.

MR. SOLMAN: 99?

RUBEN FRAIBURG: Yes.

MR. SOLMAN: Why?

RUBEN FRAIBURG: Why? Why is because no American is going to try to work 16 hours a day. It's very hard work, you know. It's like any other minority work in the city here.

MR. SOLMAN: But explain to me a little more why it is that native born Americans won't take those jobs, even if they're unemployed.

RUBEN FRAIBURG: Because it's degraded, you know.

MR. SOLMAN: Degrading?

RUBEN FRAIBURG: Right. It's not the kind of job that sends you to the top. You understand?

MR. SOLMAN: Bob Konheim says he can't remember the last time a U.S. born American applied for a sewing or other entry level job.

BUD KONHEIM: The idea that you should hit the top within 20 minutes is an American perception, and it comes from the "Picnic," the movie "Picnic." William Holden comes to his old college friend. He's a bum on a train, comes to his old college friend who's running a business someplace, and he says to the guy, I'd like you to give me a job. And the guy says, well, what can you do? He says, you know, like you, I could put my feet on a desk and talk on the telephone. That is the perception of what work should be.

MR. SOLMAN: When did that picture start?

BUD KONHEIM: It probably was part of the American overindulgence of the '50s after the war, where things got to be real easy here because there was a lot of money that was pumped into the society. We had a lot of needs which we don't have right now. And now we have to create wants. And that was a totally different picture than what exists today.

MR. SOLMAN: So for many U.S.-born Americans, expectations may simply be too high. Our post war "Picnic" may have been the economic exception, not the rule, and expectations of a return to the whopping growth rate we enjoyed between 1945 and 1973 may be keeping many U.S. born Americans, young and old, from taking lower end jobs. This suggests that the challenge is to upgrade jobs not just create them.

PETER LAZES: The question is how you maximize the skills of people that are competitive in a global economy, and this is the kind of thing that we're doing right here in this shop.

MR. SOLMAN: But what do you mean by high skill in a place like this?

PETER LAZES: Higher skill, I guess, maybe in a place like this in which the women in this shop are not only just sewing but they're making decisions about how the product goes together. That's a higher skill than what they did two years ago.

MR. SOLMAN: And a skill that is actually more and more valuable as they work it out in this particular place?

PETER LAZES: Absolutely. And I think if we don't tackle the issue of how we transform our work environments to deal with wages that have more value, I think there'll be a crisis on our society.

MR. SOLMAN: To sum up them, Peter Lazes and those who agree with him are not just trying to save jobs but to upgrade them. If workers have more valuable skills, they'll presumably be paid more, maybe even make up some of the economic ground they've lost. But given increasing competition from cheap labor and automation, can it really be done? We have one last question for Peter Lazes. If you and I are entrepreneurs, what's to stop us from applying what you're doing here to a factory in China that we've set up with new equipment and workers working at 25 cents an hour?

PETER LAZES: This is not transporting a piece of equipment. This is transporting an educational system. It's transporting a style of management.

MR. SOLMAN: In other words, Lazes is trying to create a new system with higher skilled jobs. But even he isn't sure you can transport this system abroad. Lazes, himself, has been trying to do just that in Eastern Europe. And his client here, Fred Levine, has already sent about 10 percent of his work down to Haiti where the finished products he says are gorgeous and much cheaper, all of which makes you wonder. Can we ever really make these into good American jobs at good American wages? Or instead of sending these jobs abroad, is the only alternative to use low paid immigrants with low expectations -- exactly what's been happening of late. FINALLY - INDEPENDENCE DAY

MR. MAC NEIL: Finally, today's 218th national birthday party was filled with the usual barbecues, fireworks, flag waving, and marching bands. But it is also a day for reflection by retiring Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, who stepped down from the High Court last week. He spoke at a ceremony this morning at the National Archives when he looked back at the 131-year-old words of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and its dedication to the proposition that all men are created equal.

HARRY BLACKMUN, U.S. Supreme Court Justice [Ret.]: We well might ask whether we had fulfilled that dedicatory proposition, would Mr. Lincoln think so? Since 1863, this country has gone through the reconstruction era, a number of lesser military and naval engagements, two great wars, and the prolonged Cold War and yet, here we still are. Indeed, the media and others tell us that this nation now is the only superpower. We are still a polyglot assembly of people and seem to be coming more so. We are regarded by many of the world's downtrodden as a safe haven if only they can get here and once here if only they are not turned away. The Haitians, the Vietnamese, those South of the border, who hope for comparative freedom, so view us, and yet, all must concede that we have not yet totally fulfilled that dedicatory promise. Always there are new problems and new heads of state, and not all are so sympathetic. The obvious point is that always is the case with super status comes responsibility. Mr. Lincoln knew his tender spot when he observed that the real test was whether a nation dedicated to the stated composition can long endure, as he put it. In the cases in our court, there is constant struggle in this respect as claim after clam is presented alleging that the right of equality has been violated or has not been observed. And there stand your judiciary and most important your Constitution, and I have a little copy of it here, and your Supreme Court, each enunciating thou shall and thou shalt not where indicated. We have gathered here this day to celebrate and perhaps to say to Abraham Lincoln that at least we conscientiously have tried to honor the command. That, to be sure, we have not done very well and that actually we have regressed here and there. But the dedicatory purpose remains as a bright beacon of national honor. Will we be able to say it still remains one hundred and two hundred years from now? I am optimistic. I know we can, and I'm thankful that all of us here are beneficiaries of our fathers' dedication to the proposition that all men are created equal. This is a day for rededication, even as we all celebrate, and let us keep that faith, and then we shall be able to say in the words of the old song, "Glory, glory, hallelujah, bless this day and all that it means for us." [applause] RECAP

MR. MAC NEIL: Again, the main stories of this July 4th, brush fires continued to burn in Southern California, scorching thousands of acres and endangering hundreds of homes. Rebel forces in Rwanda overran the capital, Kigali, and another major city. French forces in Rwanda were given orders to stop any further rebel advance. PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat prepared to go to Jericho tomorrow on the final part of his trip to Palestinian self-rule territories. That's the NewsHour for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night. Have a good holiday evening. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.