A PBS documentary examines the influx of migrant workers on Long Island in the early ’90s.
By: Elise Nakhnikian
The undocumented workers who made their way here from Mexico and Central American used to stay pretty close to the border. In recent years, they’ve also clustered in cities and towns deep in our country’s interior, and with them come changes that are profoundly unsettling to some of these new destinations. Farmingville, a no-frills but emotionally engaging documentary airing soon on PBS, is the story of a town that’s been unable or unwilling to handle that change.
A Long Island community of 15,000, Farmingville was transformed in the early 1990s when more than 1,000 undocumented workers arrived. The immigrants were attracted by day jobs in the area’s nursery and landscaping businesses, which paid enough to let them send money home to their families especially if they cut expenses by rooming with co-workers.
A group of Farmingville residents reacted to the influx by starting an anti-immigration group, Sachem Quality of Life. Although it couldn’t expel the aliens, SQL stirred up public opinion against them, importing organizers and speakers from a national group to help run meetings and demonstrations.
It wasn’t long before people were throwing things at the workers from passing cars, shouting accusations at them, and harassing a landlord who rented to them. Then one of the workers hit and killed a young mother while driving drunk and left town, leaving the rest to absorb the town’s wrath. Soon, two workers were stabbed and beaten nearly to death by two young white supremacists.
A newspaper story about that attack, titled "They Wanted to Get Some Mexicans," inspired Carlos Sandoval, a writer of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent, to make his documentary. "That was like a stab directly into my heart," he says in an interview on the PBS Web site. "I thought I would never hear language like that spoken in Long Island, of all places."
Sandoval had never made a movie before, but he enlisted the help of Catherine Tambini, an experienced producer who served as co-director, co-producer and cinematographer for Farmingville. The two moved into the town for nine months, getting to know the residents and shooting 200 hours of digital video.
Their persistence paid off, earning them access to people on all sides of the issue, from Margaret Bianculli-Dyber, the founder of SQL; to members of a pro-immigrant group formed to counter SQL’s efforts; to a woman who belongs to no group and says she has nothing against the immigrants but doesn’t like the way their presence has changed her quiet town. Her concern, she explains, are things like the trucks roaring in and out of driveways at all hours, the single-family houses where as many as 30 people crowd together, and the hundreds of men who line the streets every morning, hoping to be chosen to work.
Sandoval and Tambini also interview one of the contractors who hires the immigrants, who says they’re "good people and good workers," unlike the Americans he had to rely on before. "That’s what this economy is being built on right now, is day laborers," he says. "That’s why the government isn’t doing anything about it."
Intercut with the interviews are several sanctimonious speeches and a few heartfelt ones. "I’m here to remind everybody," a beefy ex-Marine testifies at a charged town meeting, "these are children of God who are coming here for some help." We also hear from several of the workers, primarily an eloquent, soft-spoken man named Eduardo.
One of Farmingville’s ironies is that the immigrants understand the principles behind our constitution much better than many of the native-born Americans do. They even put the motto on the back of our quarters into action, banding together to form a group they call Human Solidarity.
One of that group’s first acts is to fix up a neglected soccer field and start playing there once a week. In part, Eduardo explains, the men just want one two-hour period to look forward to every week, but they’re also doing it for educational purposes. If the Americans see them playing, he says, they may start to understand that "we’re human too. We don’t just want to work; we want to laugh, we want to play."
The camera sometimes editorializes, shooting the hard-liners from the national group in grotesque extreme close-up or focusing on the rows of empty seats at an SQL meeting while a speaker pontificates about the movement’s momentum. But the filmmakers generally prefer a more neutral approach, simply shooting while people talk. That doesn’t allow for many interesting visuals, but it does lead to some revealing moments.
In one memorable encounter, Bianculli-Dyber argues with a former Farmingville resident at a demonstration. When he asks what she has against the immigrants, she says she’s "trying to protect my country and my children."
"From what?" he asks. "What are you afraid of?"
All she can come up with is an often-repeated complaint that one of the men came on to some local girls at the 7-11.
Her fears, he says, are all in her own head.
"People like you discredit what I say," she fumes.
"No," he says. "You discredit yourself every time you open your mouth."
Not rated. Premieres on PBS June 22, 10 p.m.