I grew up in newsrooms. I've been in newsrooms since I was 17 years old. Journalism has been like my church; it's been like my identity.

Film, as any immigrant will tell you, television and movies is the way we make sense of America when we first got here.

There's always to me a universality - one of the things I learned early on as a journalist and a writer is that there's a universality in specifics. The more specific you get, the more universal it can be.

Immigration is by far the most controversial yet least understood issue in America. Frankly, given the way we're talking about immigration, given the emphasis, the overemphasis on border security, I would argue that we're not on the same page when we debate this issue. We're doing far too much debating and not enough conversing.

I'm not a politician. I'm not a policy wonk. I was a political reporter, but that's not really what turns me on. What turns me on is how people perceive the issue and how people see people like me.

The hardest stories we tell are always about ourselves. How do you explain that you have been missing your mother for 20 years? I don't know how to explain that to you. I wasn't even sure I wanted to film that, because I don't know how I felt about it. I didn't want to put her through it, and I frankly wasn't ready. Because since I was 16, I just had created my own life for myself, you know? I left when I was 12. I'm 32. And I have gotten to know my mother more through editing her and looking and watching and editing her footage, you know.

I like Q&A's better than articles sometimes because I feel like I'd rather hear somebody actually talk or wrestle with.