Viridiana Martinez of the N.C. Dream Team recently traveled to Georgia to protest efforts there to block undocumented immigrants from receiving higher education. Martinez was arrested for her efforts and faced deportation, though she ultimately was released and returned to North Carolina. Here, she faces similar efforts to stop undocumented immigrants from attending public colleges and universities. Two bills in the North Carolina House tackle the subject, and one of them also strengthens state enforcement of federal immigration laws. Host Frank Stasio will talk about efforts in North Carolina to crackdown on undocumented immigrants with Viridiana Martinez, co-founder and community organizer for the N.C. Dream Team; and William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC.
Alex Granados joined The State of Things in July 2010. He got his start in radio as an intern for the show in 2005 and loved it so much that after trying his hand as a government reporter, reader liaison, features, copy and editorial page editor at a small newspaper in Manassas, Virginia, he returned to WUNC. Born in Baltimore but raised in Morgantown, West Virginia, Alex moved to Raleigh in time to do third grade twice and adjust to public school after having spent years in the sheltered confines of a Christian elementary education. Alex received a degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also has a minor in philosophy, which basically means that he used to think he was really smart but realized he wasn’t in time to switch majors. Fishing, reading science fiction, watching crazy movies, writing bad short stories, and shooting pool are some of his favorite things to do. Alex still doesn’t know what he wants to be when he grows up, but he is holding out for astronaut.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.