Congressional republicans say they will keep pushing the Obama administration to approve the Keystone project.

But the administration says a plan for a new, more environmentally-sensitive route has to be submitted first.

Foreign minister John Baird expressed the Canadian government’s disappointment with the White House decision not to approve the project for now.

But even before this matter is sorted out, there is another political battle over another proposed pipeline.

This battle is within Canada over a proposed pipeline that would go west from Alberta through a remote wilderness area to an isolated stretch of coast in British Columbia.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to Canadian journalist Peter Fairley, who is following the story in Victoria, British Columbia.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: Hi. I’m Marco Werman, and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH Boston. The U.S. battle over that proposed oil pipeline from Canada to Texas isn’t over. Congressional Republicans say they’ll keep pushing the Obama administration to approve the Keystone project, but the administration says a plan for a new, more environmentally sensitive route has to be submitted first. Foreign Minister John Baird expressed the Canadian government’s disappointment with the White House decision not to approve the project for now.

John Baird: Obviously, this whole episode underlines the importance of diversifying our market. We can’t have only one customer.

Werman: That’s where another proposed pipeline comes in and another political battle, this one within Canada. This pipeline would go west from Alberta, through a remote wilderness area to an isolated stretch of coast in British Columbia. Freelance reporter Peter Fairley is following the story in Victoria, British Columbia. He says the proposed Northern Gateway project is broadly opposed by environmental groups and by the native peoples whose territory the pipeline would cross.

Peter Fairley: Essentially, the opposition is”¦ I would say it’s similar to that which has stalled the Keystone pipeline. We’re talking about impacts on climate from the production of crude oil in the oil sands, but also, and I think probably more so in this case, we’re talking about concerns over oil spills. Kitimat, where this pipeline will end up, is along this storied inside passage, a beautiful site, and it’s also a sensitive salmon habitat, bear habitat, whale habitat. So the thought of mega-tankers coming in and out of there is quite disturbing to many Canadians, I think.

Werman: Well, the Northern Gateway pipeline is big news in Canada, and Canada’s Nature Resources Minister, Joe Oliver issued an open letter last week in which he rails against foreign special interest and, quote, “jet-setting celebrities with some of the largest personal carbon footprints in the world.” These are the people he says have upended their tar sands plan. Who is he talking about, and how have those comments gone down in Canada?

Fairley: [laughs] They’re not going down very well. He’s painting a pretty broad brush. And when he talks about jet-setting celebrities, I think the poster child would be Robert Redford, who was up in Vancouver a couple months ago shooting a film, and while there, published an op-ed in The Globe and Mail, Canada’s biggest newspaper, railing against both the Keystone pipeline and the Northern Gateway. So Oliver went on to say that U.S. funds were flowing to Canadian environmental groups that are on the front lines of opposing the Northern Gateway pipeline, and essentially you know, he’s saying that, you know, Canada’s economic interests are being upended by outside influences.

Werman: Is anyone saying that Joe Oliver has a point?

Fairley: If it sells anywhere, it’s in Alberta, where there’s certainly a lot of economic interest, and jobs are focused on the industry there. But I don’t think it’s selling broadly. People are quite incensed that their concerns are being belittled, and that they’re essentially being called traitors for being concerned about water quality, for example.

Werman: So Canada has this enormously valuable resource in Alberta. They’d like to get it to the U.S. gulf, and ports on the U.S. west coast, and to British Columbia, and they’d also like to sell to China. What is the big picture here? Are the Canadian oil industry and the Canadian government partnered on getting Alberta oil to anywhere in the world?

Fairley: They absolutely are partnered. The Harper Conservative government has made exporting oil sands products a priority for the government. They see this as one of Canada’s big economic opportunities, and they want it to continue. The pipeline to the west coast has a strategic advantage over something like Keystone in that right now, all of Canada’s oil essentially goes to the U.S. via pipelines, and that means that we’re captive to U.S. buyers. By putting a pipeline out to the west coast, Canadian oil producers would be in a position to play Asian buyers off of American buyers.

Werman: Peter, how will the Northern Gateway pipeline actually be decided? Is it headed for a major showdown, as Keystone XL has, here in the U.S.?

Fairley: I think it is. The hearings began this month, and the panel that’s conducting the hearings will make a decision sometime, maybe eighteen months from now, but the government can override that. I think the Harper government would be tempted to do that, and there you have a real political showdown.

Werman: Reporter Peter Fairley in Victoria, British Columbia. Thank you for your time.

Fairley: It’s been a pleasure.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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In the past decade, three million immigrants have been detained in the system. One of them, a Canadian citizen, was a woman we’ll call Mary. She agreed to speak only if we disguised her identity.

Her detention began when local police in Florida pulled her over in a routine traffic stop. They found a warrant for her arrest for a check she had bounced 10 years earlier. ICE discovered she had been living in the US for 15 years without a visa, so the agency sent her a thousand miles away to the Willacy detention center in Texas.

During her three months there, Mary says she endured repeated sexual assaults by a guard. Her voice choking with emotion, she told me how she tried to fight him off, and how he threatened her. “He said, ‘if you tell anyone, you wouldn’t come out of here alive to see your family.’ So then, who do you go and tell?”

A cache of government documents recently obtained by the ACLU details more than 170 allegations of sexual abuse during the past four years. And FRONTLINE’s investigation uncovered more than a dozen stories of sexual abuse at Willacy, and many other accounts of racial and physical abuse. When we visited Willacy, ICE would not let us talk with detainees or interview the local ICE officials. But we did speak with dozens of former detainees and staff.

In 2009, Twana Cooks-Allen was the mental health coordinator at Willacy. She was asked to survey all detainees as part of a broad review of the detention system, undertaken by ICE officials in Washington. When Cooks-Allen delivered initial findings of the survey, she says local ICE officials began a cover-up.

“I got bombarded throughout the day with those first 38 people that I had interviewed and the majority of them came in complaining or crying that they had been harassed by ICE.” The survey was shut down, and, soon after, Cooks-Allen resigned her position at Willacy.

Despite all the problems, a 2009 audit gave the detention center a rating of “good.” At the same time, the audit also said that 900 grievances had been filed by the detainees. Sigrid Adameit, a former guard says she saw a surveillance video of a vicious beating of a detainee in 2007.

“I basically saw a lieutenant, a sergeant and two officers beat up on a detainee. To me, it just looked half to death,” she says. “He had been knocked off his front teeth, a busted nose. He had a black eye. He was bleeding everywhere.” The reason for the altercation? Adameit says, “from my understanding, he talked back.” Adameit says that officials asked her to clean up the statements of the guards to make them consistent and that the beaten detainee was deported the next day. “It was just covered up and next morning he was shipped out. If I’m not mistaken, he was from Ecuador, so he was on the first plane out.”

Mary says that after three months at Willacy, she just couldn’t take it anymore. “I said ‘I want to go back home. Please. I want to go back home. Get me out of here. Because if this goes on one more time with me and I don’t get out of here, I’m going to kill myself.” Desperate to get out, Mary asked to be deported back to Canada, where we spoke with her. She left behind four US citizen children in the care of a relative. She says she’s been unable to see them for more than two years.

As a candidate, Barack Obama had been sympathetic to cases like Mary’s. At the July 2008 Annual Conference of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy organization, Obama said, “When communities are terrorized by ICE immigration raids – when nursing mothers are torn from their babies, when children come home from school to find their parents missing, when people are detained without access to legal counsel. When all that’s happening, the system just isn’t working. And we need to change it.”

This summer, the government did make changes at Willacy. The facility is still run by a private contractor, but has been taken over by the Bureau of Prisons. It now serves as a prison for repeat offenders caught crossing the border illegally. And ICE says it’s now trying to reform entire civil detention system in the country.

“We’re trying to do the best we can to move the system in a way that treats our detainees in a respectful way,” says Kumar Kibble, the Deputy Director of ICE. “There are areas that we need to improve on. There are areas, places that we need to continue to work towards making better, but we’re committed to doing that. It’s an ongoing process and it’s something that we’re going to continue.”

But critics say the vast network of 250 detention centers – the fastest growing incarceration system in the country — will not be easy to reform. Recently, the administration announced — that for the third year running — it expects to break records for deportations.

Watch Obama Official Defends Immigrant Deportations on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

The World’s Marco Werman tells anchor Lisa Mullins about the Japanese girl group Zukuna Sisters who played a poignantly uplifting version of “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong at the South by Southwest music festival.

• Official website of Zukuna Sisters

Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with The World’s Marco Werman at the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas. Marco met with a couple of attendees from Japan, and spoke to them about the tragedy and nuclear crisis unfolding in their country right now.

A Groupon commercial in the Super Bowl championship game offended many people (Photo: Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Frankie J. Colbry)

Yesterday’s Super Bowl featured the usual highly-produced commercials for soda, beer and cars.

Some of the ads featured innuendo and vulgar humor. Yet, you don’t hear much of an outcry these days; it’s hard to offend viewers.

But one advertisement managed to offend people across the globe.

The advertisement for the two-year-old company Groupon, which sells group discounts, begins as an earnest plea for the Tibetan people living under Chinese rule. The commercial shows snowy mountain peaks, Tibetan monks, and Tibetan children dancing. The narrator, actor Timothy Hutton, provided the voiceover.

“The people of Tibet are in trouble; their very culture is in jeopardy.”

Then, the narration takes a turn, telling the viewer about other parts of Tibet.

“But they still whip up an amazing fish curry, and since 200 of us bought at Groupon.com, we’re each getting $30 worth of Tibetan food for just $15 at Himalayan restaurant in Chicago.”

The company also spoofed the causes of saving the whales and the Brazilian rainforest.

The advertising message was intended to be this: Save something valuable, and save money using our coupons. It didn’t work, said Wendy Melillo, an assistant professor of communication at American University in Washington.

“The ad is crass and greedy, and it’s poking fun at philanthropy, which typically doesn’t go over very well.”

Buzz at what cost?

Melillo said for an advertisement to be effective, it has to do two things: get noticed and change behavior. She added that the Groupon advertisement scores very well in the first category. The Tibet commercial has created tremendous buzz in online chat rooms and social media sites.

But Melillo said with the second category of changing customer behavior, “It fails miserably because it’s kind of a bait and switch, and people don’t like that because the hook draws you in and you’re thinking one way, and then the switch at the end, I think, has rightly angered people.”

Advertisers have long tried to slightly offend and provoke to grab our attention. But you have to know which topics are out of bounds, said Charles R. Taylor, professor of marketing at the Villanova School of Business. The cause of Tibet is one of those topics.

“In many ways, I think it (the Groupon commercial) presents Americans in a bad light in that it suggests that the plight of the people in Tibet is not all that important relative to getting a good deal when a relatively wealthy American goes out to eat,” said Taylor.

Silver lining

The director of the organization Free Tibet, Stephanie Brigden also felt the advertisement was in bad taste. But she did find a silver lining.

“If it raises the profile of Tibet, obviously that’s positive. People need to understand what’s going on,” said Brigden. “What would be great if this now kind of pricks people’s consciousness into saying, actually, I need to do something. And then it will have a really great outcome.”

The company Groupon said the advertisements were parodies meant to poke fun at themselves. They’re also offering matching donations, up to $100,000, to support the causes they spoofed.

• Groupon’s ‘Tibet’ Super Bowl Ad: Harmless Fun Or Offensive?
• Tibet Ad Not Likely to Help Groupon in China

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: Ciudad Juarez in Mexico is one of the world’s most dangerous cities. Nobody’s safe there. And that includes reporters. Last week, a 21-year-old photographer became the second journalist with the newspaper El Diario to be killed in the past two years. At least 22 Mexican journalists have been murdered since 2006. Others have crossed the border to seek political asylum here in the US. Attorney Carlos Spector represents four of them. He and his clients pled their case at a news conference this afternoon in El Paso, Texas. Earlier, Mister Spector told us that Mexican authorities are sometimes unwilling and always unable to protect his clients from the drug cartels.

CARLOS SPECTOR:  I can get into the boxing ring with Mike Tyson and I am willing to fight him, but I am unable to sustain it. And so at this point, their good intentions have not gone rewarded. The fact that they’re willing to send the military to the north, that they’re willing to engage the cartels, does not mean that they’re being effective or that they can protect members of the Mexican press.

MULLINS:  Why are these members of the Mexican press under threat from the cartels, or as you say, even from the government at all?

SPECTOR: Most of the journalists who have been threatened by the cartels or the government have been covering the police or crime beats and they have had the misfortune of learning rather quickly the relationship between crime and policemen. And it’s one in the same in many instances. Corruption in Mexico is not a problem, it is an institution. When the cartels come after you, it’s generally in conjunction with the state, either explicitly or implicitly.

MULLINS: Give us an example of one of your clients’ stories, of one experience they’ve had where you believe that what’s happened to them implicates both the cartels and members of the Mexican government.

SPECTOR: Well, I have a police officer I represent, of which that case is a closed proceeding, and for security reasons won’t reveal, but he was a rather high-ranking individual in the Juarez state police. He had been promoted around a year and a half ago and as soon as he got promoted, two individuals with a bag of money came in and said El Commandante sends us, here’s a bag of money, give me your cell number because you now work for us. As soon as he said, well I can’t do that, he went and talked to his captain and says, I can’t do that, I got to go back to my prior position, and he did. And the threats at that point began. Moreover, let’s assume his name is Juan Cortez. Within a week, another police officer with the name of Juan Cortez had been killed. They had killed the wrong guy. And so they’re not playing around. And there’s much more than just anecdotal information about this. And as time goes on people are becoming more and more open to that type of testimony.

MULLINS: Well, there’s one particular client of yours who has indeed received political asylum here in the United States. Tell us about this client and why was he looking to leave Mexico at all?

SPECTOR: Jorge Luis Aguirre, who we helped initially, has been granted asylum. I didn’t officially represent him, but the organization that we’ve developed had sent him to the US Senate to testify. Now he had been threatened by a representative of the governor of Chihuahua with death as a result of him writing in his daily blog that he has which has become somewhat well-read in the border areas. And as a result of his opinions, he was threatened by the cartels and then when he started speaking out against the Mexican government, that increased his possibilities of winning because he now had political opinion as [INDISCERNIBLE] well-founded fear of persecution.

MULLINS: Alright. Attorney Carlos Spector represents several Mexican journalists who are seeking political asylum here in the United States. He spoke to us from El Paso, Texas. Thank you very much.

SPECTOR: Thank you very much.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

'Politically Incorrect' host Parvez Malik

Texas is home to one of the fastest growing Pakistani communities in the United States. In the Dallas area alone, there are at least three places on the radio dial where you can get news and music in Urdu. And on two popular South Asian talk shows, the Pakistani-American hosts address the problem of Muslim extremism. Shomial Ahmad listened in.

• Radio Hot Pepper

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  Three Pakistani men have been arrested in connection with the attempted car bombing in Times Square.  Authorities say the suspects supplied funds to alleged bomber Faisal Shahzad, but may not have known how the money would be used.  Pakistani Americans are concerned that arrests like these and the attempted bombing itself will lead to a backlash against their community.  That’s especially true in the burgeoning Pakistani community in Texas.  In the Dallas area Pakistanis tune in to several radio programs to vent their frustration, anger and fear.  Shomial Ahmad has this story.

SHOMIAL AHMAD:  Parvez Malik stands near his microphone.

PARVEZ MALIK:  You’re listening to Politically Incorrect, hosted by Parvez Malik with explosive, hottest, burning issues of today, right from the hip, as the say in Texas.  It just comes straight to the bull’s eye.

AHMAD: Malik, from Karachi, Pakistan, says Texas reminds him of home because of the family values and the weather.  He’s lived in the state for around 25 years and for more than 10 of those years, he’s been hosting a weekly AM radio show near Dallas.  Some 150,000 Indians and Paksitanis live in the area.  The burning issue on a recent show, not surprisingly, Muslim extremists.

CALLER:  We have no sympathies for these people.

MALIK: We have no sympathies for these people.

CALLER:  And we never had it and we never will.  We are on the lookout for such people.

MALIK: And we are going to be on the lookout for such people.  We are going to use all the avenues available by law to see that they are put wherever they belong.

CALLER:  Yeah, carry and FBI telephone number in your pocket, I do.

MALIK: Yeah, well just call 9-1-1.

CALLER:  Okay, that’s another good one.

AHMAD: The two hour show mixes listener phone calls and invited guests.  Malik recently spoke with an ex-FBI chief who gave tips on how to spot would-be terrorists.  While people debate on the airwaves in Texas, Pakistani Americans in Connecticut, where accused bomber Faisal Shahzad lived, are doing a little soul searching as well.  Saud Anwar is a past president of the Pakistani-American Association of Connecticut.

SAUD ANWAR:  We are now trying to identify that how a person who is educated, who is integrated into the society, I’ll use the term “flipped” or went crazy to think and act in the way that he did.

AHMAD: Anwar says his organization is hosting a conference this summer on understanding radicalization.  Anwar wants more open discussion on the issue and he said it’s a good thing that Pakistanis are talking about such charged topics on ethnic radio in Texas.

AZAD KHAN:  Let’s see who do we have, 972-490-0990 . . .

AHMAD: Pervez Malik’s show isn’t the only place on the Dallas radio dial that’s talking about extremism.  Azad Khan has a daily show with thousands of listeners.

KHAN: Hello, you’re on the air.

CALLER:  Asalamaluakam.

KHAN: Sir Walaikumas salaam, one man mission dot org.

AHMAD: Kahn moved to Texas from Pakistan three years ago.  This month was the first time his show discussed terrorism.  One caller highlights the mixed feelings that some Pakistanis have about the violence in their region.  They don’t condone terrorism, but do blame the west for its roots, dating back to the Soviet’s occupation of Afghanistan, and America’s training of the mujahedeen.

CALLER:  We had no idea who Taliban was.  We had no idea who an extremist was.  We had no idea what a Muslim terrorist looked like.  But in 30 years of time a lot has happened that has crated these so-called terrorists.

KHAN:  Perfectly fine.  Thank you very much sir.

AHMAD: Khan asked listeners if they think Islam is under attack.  One man answers no.  But another guy says having a Muslim name in America is definitely a liability.  One mother says she is worried about the taunts her 10-year-old son faces at school.  She wonders what kind of future there is for her son in America when classmates equate Pakistan with terrorism.  Khan argues for mutual respect.  He tells listeners to teach their kids about their faith and heritage so they can teach their friends.  Khan admits that nothing happens in a jiffy, but at least people are talking.  For The World, I’m Shomial Ahmad, Dallas, Texas.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Marco Werman

The presence of international artists at the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) music conference in Austin, Texas has steadily grown in recent years. A few years ago, The World’s Marco Werman began wondering what made those musicians from around the world who come to SXSW different from musicians who fall into the “world music” category.

“It’s kind of like the division in cinema: there are the Hollywood blockbusters, and then there are the small indy films, and they have more in common with foreign films.”

Thus was born the All Music Is World Music showcase at SXSW, sponsored by PRI’s The World and KUT 90.5 in Austin. “I just want to blur the lines because ‘world music’ has kind of fallen into its own ghetto,” says Werman. “Isn’t all music world music?”

Listen to all of the previous SXSW’s podcasts:

SXSW – All Music Is World Music: 2010

ChocQuibTown

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This is the final installment in our All Music Is World Music series of podcasts: the band ChocQuibTown from the region of Choco in Colombia. Imagine the Fugees, channelling both hip-hop and the hot and heavy Afro-Colombian beats of the wet Pacific coast of Colombia. This is a longer podcast than most in the All Music Is World Music series. Consider it an invitation to dance with the rest of the crowd at the South by Southwest show from this past March.

ChocQuibTown

Longital

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Longital are from Bratislava. They are Daniel Salontay and Shina. The couple have found their voice in avant-garde sounds, with an abiding interest in Soviet-era Slovakian experimental theater. It may appear disjointed on paper, but the music of Longital doesn’t wander too far from toe-tapping pop. This is their performance at All Music Is World Music 2010 in Austin.

Longital

The Unthanks

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This week, we feature the Unthanks, an ensemble from the north of England that plays traditional Brit-folk. This being the 21st century though, the Unthanks adorn their music with a contemporary perspective and voice. Sisters Rachel and Becky Unthank bring their heavenly voices and off-kilter arrangements to this SXSW performance from March 2010.

The Unthanks

Somi

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Somi is the first jazz performer All Music Is World Music has hosted. Her parents hail from Uganda and Rwanda, and she moved to the US as a youngster, growing up in Illinois. Now fully ensconsed in the New York jazz scene, she also represents the multi-kulti world that runs from the center to the fringes of that scene. And Somi takes it all in, as you will hear in this set from SXSW.

Somi

Gong Myoung

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We begin the All Music Is World Music showcase 2010 from SXSW with Gong Myoung, a four-man percussion ensemble from South Korea. Their music is as much about concentration as it is sound and rhythm. The artists are intense young men, and it’s evident in their drumming.

Gong Myoung

SXSW – All Music Is World Music: 2009

Cla

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Cla is a quirky and talented band from Porto, Portugal. Manuela Azcevedo — Cla’s charming frontwoman — says the city is grey, but has a lot of heart. Think of it as a small version of Detroit. Cla isn’t Motown. But they are one of Portugal’s most popular groups.

Cla

Monareta

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They met when they were kids, they’ve got a fetish for bicycle moto-cross, and you might see them on stage — throwing down electro-tropical beats — with BMX wheels on their heads. The duo is known as Monareta (the brand of a particularly good BMX bike in Colombia where they’re from), and they are Andres Martinez and Camilo Sanabria. This is their set from the 2009 All Music Is World Music showcase at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. By the way, this is great party music, if you need to get your houseguests shaking for 30 minutes.

Listen to The World’s report from January 2, 2009

Monareta

Ximena Sarinana

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Ximena Sarinana from Mexico City is a twenty-something singer-songwriter. Over lush arrangements, she brings a languid world-weary delivery, one that has electrified a large fan base. When she played at SXSW in 2009, the room suddenly filled up with young Mexican and Mexican-American women who hear in her music a simpatico voice. Given the Grammy and Latin Grammy nods she got in 2008, her admiring audience is clearly much bigger than the SXSW room.

Ximena Sarinana at SXSW

Asa

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Asa is a young singer-songwriter from Nigeria. Her US debut CD, “Asa” features songs that recall Bob Marley and Stevie Wonder, and themes that are uniquely Nigerian. Asa knows how to cloak those themes in infectious rhythms, and makes them universal.

Asa at SXSW 2009

Kingman and Jonah

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Kingman and Jonah are Claudius “Kingman” Linton and Ian “Jonah” Jones. Linton is an old-school reggae artist from Negril, Jamaica. Jones is a rock guitarist from Baltimore. The music they make is the result of a chance meeting on the beach in Negril.

Meza: “I like the hustle and the bustle of the place. And people coming in and out all of the time. Thank you. Hasta Luego. Thank you man. Appreciate it guys.”

Porzucki: This would be your standard Tex-Mex joint — there’s Tejano music in the background and Mexican pralines for sale — except Juan, has a taste for wordplay. When he opened the restaurant 29 years ago he needed a catchy name. Something that would stand out in Austin, a town with a glut of Mexican restaurants. It needed to be one in a million. No, make that…

Meza: “Juan in a Million. It’s a name that sticks.”

Porzucki: That’s right, Juan, J-U-A-N, in a Million It’s a bilingual pun. By definition, a pun is a form of wordplay that exploits the similar sounds of two words. A bilingual pun plays upon the sounds of two words in two languages. In this case, Juan and One. It’s not just between English and Spanish that restaurant owners are punning.

Hallock: “The Asian restaurants are the ones that are really thick with puns especially thai and wok.”

Porzucki: Gary Hallock is the local authority on all things punny. He organizes the annual O. Henry Pun-off World Championship here in Austin. It’s a verbal battle in which punsters compete for the title of Word Champion. Gary’s a Word Champion himself. I ask him about restaurants that pun bilingually. He pulls out a long handwritten list that he has compiled from around the country.

Porzucki: “Wow, you have quite a list here…”
Hallock: “I printed out a copy…My favorite was Thai Me Up (laugh) and Wok Around the Clock, En-Thai-Sing and Pho Shizzle, that’s P-H-O Shizzle
Porzucki: “That’s a play on sort of rap culture and…”
Hallock: “Right, right, right, that’s trilingual sort of. And I like Hard Wok Café and Thai Tanic.”

Porzucki: It’s true, ethnic cuisine is becoming more and more a part of the mainstream American diet. But according to Gary, some people may need a little more encouragement to try something new.

Hallock: “If you see a weird name that you can’t pronounce or doesn’t mean anything to you, you’ll think that’s a restaurant that’s probably this ethnic or that but if you see one where the owner of the restaurant is playing with the words and seeming to be having a little fun, you might feel a little more comfortable going in.”

Porzucki: Thai Tanic, Hard Wok Café, these names may be fun to say and perhaps, provoke a chuckle or two, but can a clever name really be a successful marketing strategy? For Kristen Studer and Cody Fields, wordplay is integral to marketing their product, empanadas. That is, mmmpanadas. The couple owns Mmmpanada! a food truck selling empanadas to late night Austiners. I caught up with the couple in their kitchen as they mixed up a batch of dough.

Kristen Studer and Cody Fields

Studer: “We decided on a different name that we weren’t all that excited about. It was Papa’s Empanadas Which is fine, you know…but…at our house we have those refrigerator magnets and Cody had spelled out empanada on the refrigerator but we didn’t have an ‘e.’ And then one day … I had just walked by the refrigerator and was like ‘mmmpanada,’ ‘mmmpanana,’ ‘MMMPANADA!’”

Porzucki: The name seems to be working. Kristin and Cody now bake more than 100 dozen empanadas each week..

Porzucki: Back at Juan in a Million, Juan is still at his post near the register greeting guests, smiling and shaking hands. The restaurant is packed. I speak with several customers who seem to agree. While the name is clever, the key to the restaurant’s decades of success according to one longtime patron Alberto Garcia…

Garcia: “It’s Juan, his personality runs this place. Without Juan there wouldn’t be this restaurant.”

Porzucki: He’s right. Without Juan, this would just be one among a million other Tex-Mex joints. A punny name may get you in the door, but as to bringing you back again – well that’s a whole other enchilada.

For The World, I’m Nina Porzucki in Austin.

• Pho Shizzle
• Thai Tanic
• Thai Me Up

We’re looking for a state that does border Texas, though. It’s Mexico’s biggest state. And it’s home to a vast desert and the majestic Sierra Madre Mountains.

Also in this state is Copper Canyon which dwarfs the American Grand Canyon. Along the US border you’ll find the city of Juarez and several maquiladora factories.

Maquiladora

They pump out consumer goods destined for the US market.

So, which Mexican state is known as the “Estado Grande”?

The vast Chihuahua Desert and the Sierra Madre Mountains give this state its “big” reputation. Marielo Solis Terrazas is a resident of Chihuahua — and she sent us this audio postcard:

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caught at the official US ports of entry. Roger Maier is a spokesman for US Customs and Border Protection.

ROGER MAIER: Our officers in El Paso encounter, any week, probably 125 to 150 immigration-related violations.

URIBE: Maier says visa violators have always existed even before the violence erupted in Mexico. Many use their tourist visa to work in the United States.

MAIER: During the course of our interview and inspection you know in some cases we’re able to determine that that person is either residing in the United States or working in the United States which is not allowed under that visa class.

URIBE: Those who are caught can lose their visa and be prohibited from returning to the United States. For Ortensia and her parents it’s a risk they’re willing to take right now.

ORTENSIA: I try not to think about it very hard. I just let God do his work. I already did mine.

URIBE: It’s much more difficult to track visa violators once they’re already in the country. Ortensia has submitted paperwork to secure her parent’s residency, a process she expects will only take a couple of years. In the meantime she and her parents miss their lives in Mexico every day. But going back is just not realistic.

ORTENSIA: I’m very proud to be a Mexican. And if I had a chance to survive with my family, to have the chances for them to study, yeah I’ll be happy to live there. But there’s no chances. Not for us.

URIBE: For The World I’m Monica Ortiz Uribe in El Paso, Texas.

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