Immigrant rights have become one of the largest civil rights issues of our era, with the undocumented playing the moving targets. In The Visitor, the latest film from award-winning Irish American actor/director Thomas McCarthy, the filmmaker explores both sides of an explosive national debate. CAHIR O'DOHERTY speaks to McCarthy about the film.

WHEN it comes to immigrants' rights there's no doubt that America sends out mixed messages - next to the massive "Keep Out" sign hangs another equally massive one that reads "Help Wanted." The question is, which one do you choose to answer?

Timely and consequential questions like these animate director Thomas McCarthy's (best known for his role as the morally challenged attorney on HBO's The Wire) fascinating and discreetly political drama, The Visitor, now playing in special release before going nationwide in May.

When the State Department asked McCarthy, 41, to travel to the Middle East in 2006 to promote his previous feature The Station Agent (another multi-award winner) he was so inspired by what he saw there that the idea to write The Visitor hit him right away. Traveling to Oman and Lebanon, which he calls "amazing countries," he was struck by how little he actually knew about the region, its people and culture - and he is, he reminds me, a pretty well traveled guy.

It was eye opening, he says, to be in a place that the United States is so involved in politically and militarily - and it was a call to arms, an opportunity for McCarthy to illuminate the experiences of people we hear about in the nightly headlines but know so little about.

Always the most cautious of directors, McCarthy wasn't looking for a public soapbox. Rather, he approached the themes of his new film with unusual sensitivity, reminding us that he's dealing with people, not causes or religions.

In the film we meet 62-year-old Walter Vale (played by Six Foot Under star Richard Jenkins), who is sleepwalking through his life. Having lost his passion for teaching and writing, he fills the void by unsuccessfully trying to learn to play classical piano. When his college sends him to Manhattan to attend a conference, Walter is surprised to find a young couple has taken up residence in his apartment.

Tarek, a Syrian man, and Zainab, his Senegalese girlfriend, are the victims of a real estate scam and they have nowhere else to go. After an initial confrontation Walter reluctantly allows the couple to stay with him.

A fragile friendship between Walter and Tarek takes its first faltering steps, and when the young man insists on teaching the frosty academic to play the African drum the music revitalizes Walter's faltering spirit, opening his eyes to a hidden world of local jazz clubs and Central Park drum circles.

As the friendship between the two men deepens, the differences in culture, age and temperament all fall away. But then after being stopped by police in the subway, Tarek is arrested as an undocumented citizen and held for deportation.

As his situation turns desperate, Walter finds himself compelled to help his new friend with a passion he thought he had long ago lost. When Tarek's beautiful mother Mouna arrives unexpectedly in search of her son, the professor's personal commitment develops into an unlikely romance.

And it's through these new found connections with these virtual strangers that Walter is awakened to a completely new world and a new life.

"I was really struck by how little people actually knew what was happening in this country in these detention facilities," McCarthy told the Irish Voice. "After my first visit I thought, well, here's my story."

Bringing Arab characters to life in America cinema - where, if they're portrayed at all, it's most often as mustache twirling villains - was also a revelation. McCarthy discovered how stringent immigration policies are now, and how forbidding detention facilities have become in the aftermath of 9/11.

It's a far cry from the early days when he and his friends would visit Ireland and dream about the big shot movie directors they would all become.

"When I was in my twenties I used to visit Cahirciveen in the ring of Kerry a lot with my friends, and I'd talk about the business of filmmaking. It was such a small town, but I was amazed by how well versed in the arts the locals were. They all had far better ideas than I did about how to frame a scene. They were all autures," says McCarthy laughing.

McCarthy grew up in northern New Jersey and got his graduate degree from Boston College and his masters degree from the Yale School of Drama.

"I've been to Ireland many times and I feel a strong connection to the place. I go back quite a bit," McCarthy says. "We always go to the same pub where they close the door at the end of the night and there's songs and stories. I'm an actor as well as a director, so they put pressure on me to perform too."

McCarthy once chose a piece from Shakespeare's Henry IV, and knocked it out of the park, or so he thought. "For the rest of the night the locals were sidling up to me to correct me or give me direction notes or say things like, 'It was well played, but did you know you left out a word at the end there?,'" he laughs

McCarthy's family are professionals, mostly in the business world, but spend a weekend with them, he says, and you'll see why he ended up telling stories. What he calls that Irish note is still very much in them: dynamic personalities, the ability to tell a good story, it's why he ended up doing what he does he says.

As an actor fresh out of Yale, McCarthy toured the country doing regional theatre. He then moved to Broadway, but he still hankered to return to writing.

His first screenplay in 2003, The Station Agent, was such a hit that it changed his life and consolidated his directing career. It also allowed him the creative freedom to tackle any subject that interested him.

"I don't have a foolproof method for creating a screenplay," says McCarthy. "A lot of it does come out of experience and traveling. Whenever I'm out of my city and country I just slow down and appreciate what I may have missed before."

Writing The Visitor, which explores what can happen to illegal immigrants here, McCarthy was stunned by the recent changes in the law.

"My first visit to a detention center was shocking. I was just emotionally very moved by what horrible places they were, to be blunt about it," he says.

"I walked out of my first visit and I sat down on a little bench that's there for the guards to have lunch at and I started writing. I filled four pages with just my reaction - what it looked like, how sterile it was, how soulless the place was."

McCarthy isn't shocked by the fact that the world can be a tough place. But what gets lost in the immigration debate, he says, are the issues that are the most important - how we treat people as a country.

The way that people are herded off to anonymous places with no legal rights, no information, not being treated with respect or dignity, that's brutal and damaging, he feels. That should not be your introduction to America.

Says McCarthy, "I started to tune into the story of The Visitor when I realized what was happening. I have such great faith in this country; most people here don't understand this is how we're treating people.

"I know once the American have a better understanding of it, I have a lot of faith that they will respond quickly. This is an area that we can do better in."

The Visitor is now playing in special release, before opening nationwide in May.