Production Notes from Simon Burrow, Producer of Beyond Borders

I have been interested in immigration since the 1980’s when I first had factories in Mexico. But I was busy with other things, like making money, and didn’t do much about it except argue until a series of unlikely unrelated events happened in the first few years of the 2000’s. Some of them were books, some were observations and they all culminated in what I have to call an epiphany in the spring of 2005. I’ll write about the various roots first and them the epiphany.

• In 2003 I sold my business for enough money that I never had to work for money again. I was 56 years old.
• I heard Warren Buffett talk at Caltech. In his speech he mentioned the “ovarian lottery.” According to his idea, the way your life turns out is mostly a result of where you are born.
• I read Fewer a book about population trends by Ben Wattenberg that showed that the worlds population is stabilizing.
• I noticed that there were more stories in the US press about obesity than about starvation.
• I read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell and realized that the immigration debate was reaching a tipping point.
• I heard Angelica Salas speak on the Al Rantel show on talk radio and was deeply moved by her calm assertion of the rights of migrants.
• I read Strangers No Longer a booklet written by the Catholic Church that stated “persons have the right to live where they choose..”
• I read in a novel by Alexander McCall Smith an idea that the ethics of a society adjust to the needs of the society.
• I read the story of the SS St Louis and the refugees from the Nazis who were not allowed into Cuba and the United States and
• I saw the movie Amazing Grace and saw the parallel between slavery in the 18th century and the right to migrate today.

All of these ideas were bashing around in my head in the May of 2005. I was driving through the desert near the Salton Sea and they synthesized.
• The worlds view on immigrants was based on a paradyme of shortages. We are entering an unprecedented time of prosperity and the rules will need to change.
• In a world of material surplus where people are in short supply we will adjust our ethics away from tribal xenophobia and toward welcoming.
• The ethic that says it is okay to discriminate against people based on where they were born is morally bankrupt.
• The world will be a better fairer place when people can vote with their feet and governments are forced to compete.
• There are ways that the settled people in an area can accept new settlers without slamming the door completely or being overwhelmed.

These ideas made me so excited I gave up my other avocations, teaching and sculpting, and began learning everything I could about the current immigration debate in the USA and around the world. By December of 2005 after struggling for a few months with how to promote my new idea I saw Bowling for Columbine by Michael Moore and thought I could make a documentary. And so I did.

The Story Evolves

When I set out to make this documentary I envisioned a story telling the history of human migration:
This is the original treatment:

Scene One ”It is the Right of the State”

In this scene it is 1730 in central Europe. There are two families huddled on the village green. A man in an official looking uniform is speaking to them “I’m sorry” he says “the King has ruled that you will not be allowed to settle in the kingdom. You will have to leave.”

Should be clearly wrong, ugly but not violent.

Scene Two “The SS St Louis Story”

The SS St Louis left Nazi Germany with 1000 passengers mostly Jewish women and children. It was bound for Cuba but was denied entry there and then in the USA and other nations. Finally it was forced to return to Europe where hundreds of the passengers died at the hands of the Nazis.

There is a independent film about this story. Get one of the survivors to speak.

Scene Three “Free to Live”

It is Detroit and a black family is being kept from living in an all white suburb.

There is an important movie and or book about this story.

Scene Four “Dying at Borders”

Black Africa. This scene shows the misery of the camps on the Rwanda border. Perhaps with voice over from an aid worker talking about how people were turned back to their deaths.

Scene Five “Dying in the Desert”

Perhaps a series of interviews with survivors of the US/Mexico crossing saying how risky the crossing was is and why they attempted it. Show video and stills of the death

Scene Six “A Call to Action”

Oppose vigilanties (show Minuteman videos)

The underground railroad analogy?

Civil Disobedience. Stop the Wall!

What we actually made was completely different. Part of that was a result of events. Who would have guessed that 1,000,000 people would march in the streets of Los Angeles in the spring of 2006 and that we would be able to film it. And part of it was a result of the people I hired to direct the film. The first paid professional I hired was Dave Szamet. His first task was to put together a budget for filming the treatment shown above. Dave made it sound possible and I plunged ahead we hired Justin Daniels to be the director for a test of the concept. With Seth Orozco behind the camera Dave and Justin shot local scenes for a few months and made a five minute short out of it.

It now was the summer of 2006 and it looked possible that we could make the film and the political climate made it urgent. Dave dug into his bag of contacts and we interviewed several potential directors with experience. We settled on Brian Ging and after Brian wrote a revised script we started shooting again in September. For the next year the shooting went on intermittently all of the crew had other jobs or school or both and everything we did was the first time we did it. We fought, we argued, we complained about money, the schedule, the content and the methodology. But finally it was finished. We were able to interview lots of very smart people for the film and to get them to talk about whether there is a basic human right to migrate. The “B roll” was collected in three countries and six states and was a constant source of friction.