Listen to a preview of the final installment of our series on domestic workers in the US.
Tune in for the full interview, today on The World.
This is a scene from ‘The Caretaker’, the full film will be released with the Immigrant Nation online platform in summer 2012.
The Caretaker is a short film about the relationship between an immigrant caretaker and an elderly woman in the last months of her life. Joesy, a Fijian immigrant, works long hours providing live-in care for 95-year-old Haru Tsurumoto. Through intimate and quiet scenes, we explore Joesy’s complex relationship with Haru. The two respect one another, because at different times, both have felt like outsiders in the U.S. - Joesy as an undocumented immigrant who fears she could be sent back to Fiji, and Haru as a Japanese American who was sent to the internment camps during World War II.
(Source: ow.ly)
Before you bite into your fast-food chicken, consider this: butchering meat and processing chickens is dangerous, low-paying factory work. And a lot of it in this country is done by immigrant workers - sometimes illegally.
(Photo: A Tyson Foods worker leaving home for the night shift in Noel, Missouri. Photo by Anna Boiko-Weyrauch)
At the West County Detention Facility, inmates can pay upwards of $20 for a five-minute phone call to friends, relatives or lawyers. While the high rates are a cash cow for the prison, for detainees they have become a major hurdle to staying in touch with the outside.
Butchering chicken and meat: it’s dangerous, low-paying factory work–and it leans heavily on immigrant workers, sometimes illegally.
Just like farm work, immigration reform could change this industry dramatically, from granting workers legal status to offering temporary work visas. At the same time, some immigrants are deciding to move on from such tough work: http://ow.ly/l32pn
When Ecuador-born Gaby Pacheco was in 8th grade in Miami, she realized she and her sisters weren’t US citizens and didn’t have all the rights conferred upon that status.
But instead of hiding, Pacheco became an activist and at 28, she’s still fighting to get immigration reform through Congress so she can become a legal resident. http://ow.ly/kVrpP
"Friendship and love have no border."
— Enrique Morones, border activist on Friendship Park, which he calls a “sacred place” for divided families
The US-Mexico border divides family members for all kinds of reasons. Some are undocumented. Some have been deported - one study found that half of all deportees leave behind family in the US. Others, like Luis and Jimena, just get stuck in the tangles of bureaucracy and their own complicated lives.
What happens when an immigrant becomes disillusioned with his adoptive country? It’s the timely subject of Mira Nair’s latest film: http://ow.ly/krW5B
