Global Nation Archives - The World from PRX
153 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 3 years ago - ★★★★ - 4 ratingsA daily public radio broadcast program and podcast from PRX and WGBH, hosted by Marco Werman
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
Despite hateful social media attacks, local voters elect Muslim American candidates
November 07, 2019 22:20 - 2.52 MBSafiya Khalid says the recent elections send a powerful message. “You don't win elections on the internet. You win them at the doors.” Safiya Khalid, Lewiston City Council “You don't win elections on the internet,” the 23-year-old said. “You win them at the doors.” Khalid quit Facebook at one point during her campaign for a seat on the City Council of Lewiston, Maine, because she was getting so many hate-filled messages. Someone even posted her home address. “I even saw one that said, ...
Netflix's 'Ghee Happy' imagines life as a Hindu deity — in preschool
November 05, 2019 16:32 - 2.82 MBPicture this: an animated show for children where the main characters are Hindu deities — but they’re preschoolers in a day care together. That’s the premise of a new program, “Ghee Happy,” that’s been greenlighted by Netflix. Creator Sanjay Patel said it’s a result of his newest phase in life: being a father to two boys. “I was watching a ton of preschool [TV] and I was like, ‘Oh, man, there's so many great preschool shows.’ But I was also noticing that there wasn't a lot of great shows t...
Canadian court weighs whether the US is safe for asylum-seekers
November 04, 2019 20:05 - 2.01 MBThis week, a federal court in Toronto, Canada, is hearing from plaintiffs arguing the US is not a safe place for asylum-seekers. The lawsuit concerns a “safe-third country” agreement that the US and Canada signed shortly after 9/11, in 2002. Under the agreement, people who arrive in either country asking for asylum must apply in whichever country they arrive in first. So if asylum-seekers living in or transiting through the US go to a border crossing with Canada and say they want to apply ...
The Trump administration extended TPS for Salvadorans. But this activist says the fight is not over.
October 29, 2019 20:51Update 11/1: The Department of Homeland Security announced an extension of work permits to January 2021 for five additional TPS-designated countries: Haiti, Nicaragua, Honduras, Nepal and Sudan. Jose Palma felt conflicted when he heard the announcement Monday that the Trump administration would extend his work permit under a program called Temporary Protected Status by one year, to January 2021. The news, he said, was “bittersweet.” While it gives him more time in the US, it leaves his fu...
Immigration expert: Trump administration DNA collection plan is a 'waste of time'
October 23, 2019 20:46 - 1.88 MBMigrants crossing the border into the US may soon need a new form of identification: a DNA sample. That's if the Trump administration gets its way. The Justice Department published the proposal this week, opening up a 20-day period for public comments. The stated aim is to create a database of asylum-seekers and migrants that will help federal officials fight crime. Those who enter the country legally, including legal permanent residents, will not be affected. Alex Nowrasteh is the direct...
Trump ended DACA. This woman is suing to keep the program alive.
October 23, 2019 18:42 - 3.18 MBGrowing up in Las Vegas, Norma Ramírez set her sights on attending an Ivy League college. The daughter of Mexican immigrants, Ramírez excelled at school and thought she had a shot at Harvard or Yale. But as she was planning her future, her father told her to forget college. Ramírez didn’t have legal status in the United States, he reminded her. At five years old, she had arrived from Mexico without a visa, a country she barely remembered. The reality of being undocumented in America came ...
How immigrant workers are preparing for automation in agriculture
October 17, 2019 19:42 - 2.53 MBInside Taylor Farms’ massive, 120,000-square-foot warehouse in Salinas, California, millions of pounds of lettuce, cabbage and spinach are processed each day. It’s loud, and the temperature is kept at 35 degrees, so workers wear earmuffs and multiple layers of clothing. Vegetables from nearby fields are sent here to get chopped, washed, dried and packaged. When they’re ready for packing, a yellow robotic arm called a Quik Pick & Pack uses suction to pick up a 5-lb bag of greens and careful...
Legal status for thousands of Liberians in US hangs on court decision
October 11, 2019 18:22 - 2.22 MBYatta Kiazolu stood outside the federal courthouse in Worcester, Massachusetts, on Wednesday, clutching a loudspeaker as she and a group of Liberian immigrants chanted: “What do we want?” “Residency!” “When do we want it?” “Now!” “Now” is essential to Kiazolu and many other Liberians in the US. As of March 31, 2020, some 4,000 Liberians, most of whom have been living legally in the United States for decades, will lose their legal status due to the Trump administration’s terminati...
Harvard affirmative action case far from over as plans for appeal begin
October 02, 2019 19:20 - 2.75 MBA federal district judge in Boston issued a long-awaited decision Tuesday in the affirmative action lawsuit against Harvard University, ruling that the college’s consideration of race in its admissions process doesn’t violate the rights of Asian applicants. While opponents of the lawsuit celebrated Tuesday’s ruling, many watchers are cautious. They say the debate over race-conscious admissions policies at colleges is far from over. “There’s a lot of work that Harvard can do to improve it...
IRC ‘shocked again’ as Trump slashes refugee resettlement numbers
September 27, 2019 15:53 - 2.27 MBThe cut is deep. This week, the Trump administration announced that it will nearly halve the number of refugees admitted to the United States to up to 18,000 for fiscal year 2020, down from an already historically low 30,000 last year. The changes come at a time of a growing refugee population across the globe, with nearly 26 million refugees worldwide, according to the United Nations. Of that population, the UN finds more than 1.4 million people in urgent need of resettlement, with Syrian...
Florida teen girls step up to translate Indigenous Mayan languages
September 20, 2019 19:38 - 1.85 MBIt can be hard to find a truly quiet place in the Lake Worth, Florida-based Guatemalan-Maya Center. Just inside one door, case workers and other staff answer phones and talk clients through paperwork, immigration processes and other services. A long, narrow room on the ground floor has chairs along one wall that are often filled with people waiting for help. Other activities, like planning for cultural events and staging for projects and donations, spill over to the spaces in between. Re...
What it’s like to become a US citizen after a lifetime of statelessness
September 18, 2019 18:39 - 2.78 MBNasir Zakaria had never been a citizen of any country until he became an American this summer, at age 42. Like most Rohingya people, he had been stateless, meaning his country did not recognize him as a national. He was born and raised in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, where he and his fellow Rohingya faced routine persecution because of their minority status. In 2013, he came to the US via the United States’ refugee resettlement program. This summer, at his naturalization ceremony at a Chicago...
Immigrant FBI informant pressured to spy on NYC mosques seeks a way out
September 17, 2019 18:55 - 3.62 MBAt around 3 a.m. one night in 2017, Bilol, an Uzbek immigrant, heard a knock on his door. “There were around 25 people,” Bilol said later. They included FBI, immigration authorities and NYPD officers. Even an ambulance arrived. Related: What it’s like to become a US citizen after a lifetime of statelessness Bilol (he asked that we not use his actual name for fear of retaliation) was undocumented, having overstayed the tourist visa with which he first arrived in the US in 2012. That night,...
Supreme Court's asylum decision is a 'recipe for chaos,' experts say
September 12, 2019 20:58 - 2.82 MBThe fate of the US asylum system is uncertain after the Supreme Court issued a decision Wednesday night allowing the Trump administration to bar most asylum seekers from applying for asylum at the southern border as a lawsuit on the matter winds through the courts. On Twitter, President Donald Trump called the decision a “big win.” But south of the border, there's a lot of concern about the ruling. The decision makes asylum seekers ineligible to apply for asylum in the US if they've passed ...
USC students work with refugees to engineer solutions for better camp life
September 11, 2019 18:30 - 2.78 MBOmer Azizi knows what it’s like to be stuck in a squalid tent with only a United Nations-issued ID tag confirming his existence. He fled Afghanistan’s Taliban tucked in his mother’s arms, and spent his childhood in various Pakistani refugee camps. Over the years, he watched his parents fight the odds to get the family out of refugee camps. They finally made it to the United States in 2014, and today, Azizi is a recent graduate of the University of Southern California. But he hasn’t forgotte...
Build the wall across the San Pedro River? Many say no.
September 06, 2019 14:57 - 2.34 MBJohn Ladd’s family has run cattle on the same land for more than a century. Purple mountains rise in the distance above his ocotillo- and agave-studded ranch. We’re in his red truck, driving south toward the US-Mexico border. I point to a white tower in the distance. “Is that Border Patrol?” I ask. A surveillance tower can be seen in the distance on rancher John Ladd's property. Credit: Ariana Brocious/AZPM “Yeah, that’s a permanent camera,” says Ladd — it's one of four on his ran...
A father with HIV was separated from his daughters at the border
September 04, 2019 15:55 - 6.99 MBFourteen-year-old Andrea remembers the last time she saw her father. They had just crossed the border near El Paso, Texas, last November, together with her two younger sisters, Leiliana, 13, and Sofia, 11. Like many migrants, they were kept in one of the notoriously cold processing centers run by Customs and Border Protection known as hieleras. “It was closed and it was very cold,” she recalled in Spanish. The family had come from Honduras, traveling mostly by bus. They were cold, but the...
For these Latvian Americans, summer is for learning about their roots
September 02, 2019 20:12 - 3.64 MBA new academic year is kicking off around the world, but for some American teens, the end of summer brings a close to a different school experience — learning their immigration history and family language in heritage summer schools. The vast majority of Americans have a family backstory that originates somewhere other than the US. With DNA home-test kits readily available, it's become easier for people to learn about their ethnic ancestry. But living with hyphenated identities is something...
For undocumented workers, demanding better work conditions could mean deportation
August 26, 2019 05:07 - 3.35 MBThe cow kicked hard, and fast, straight into Luis Alberto Echeverría’s chest. It was 2008, and Echeverría said he was prepping the cow for milking at the dairy farm he worked at in Turlock, California, east of San Francisco. The cow’s kick left him unconscious. “When I came to, one of my co-workers was standing over me, fanning me, saying, ‘Wake up! Wake up!’” Echeverría said. But when he told his boss, Joe Sallaberry, about what happened, he was ordered to keep working — through any pain...
Iranian students in US scramble as sanctions ratchet up tuition costs
August 23, 2019 16:47 - 2.18 MBWhen Iran signed a multilateral nuclear deal in 2015 that lifted long-imposed sanctions on the country, Hossein Moghni dreamed of expanding his general law practice. The successful lawyer from Iran had nearly 20 years of legal experience under his belt. And as Iran began opening up economically to the rest of the world, Moghni saw new opportunities in international trade law. He decided to learn English and to study trade in the US. But when Moghni arrived in the US in August 2017 to begi...
Trump administration plans rule change that allows indefinite detention for migrants
August 22, 2019 22:25 - 1.77 MBThe Trump administration on Wednesday unveiled a rule that allows officials to detain migrant families indefinitely while judges consider whether to grant them asylum in the United States, abolishing a previous 20-day limit. The rule, which is certain to draw a legal challenge, would replace a 1997 court settlement that limits the amount of time US immigration authorities can detain migrant children. That agreement is generally interpreted as meaning families must be released within 20 day...
Growth of Oakland’s Guatemalan community sparks interest in Mam
August 19, 2019 18:05 - 1.84 MBEditor's note: This story originally appeared on KQED. You can find the original here. A handful of adults at an Oakland community college practiced how to say “good afternoon” in Mam, a Mayan language spoken in the western highlands of Guatemala. After teacher Henry Sales, a native Mam speaker, wrote “Qal te tiy” on a whiteboard, students took turns repeating the words slowly after him: “Qaaaal te tiy.” Learning even a few words in Mam has already helped Mirtha Ninayahuar break the ice ...
Public charge rule has history of ‘racial exclusion,’ says immigration historian
August 14, 2019 20:13 - 2.06 MBTwo California counties are suing the Trump Administration to block a new rule that would make it harder for immigrants to gain permanent residency in the US. Other lawsuits are expected to follow. The new policy, called the public charge rule, could deny green cards to legal immigrants who are judged likely to use government benefits — things like food stamps and subsidized housing. But the rule isn't new. "During the colonial era, there are many states — Massachusetts, in particular — th...
Metro banned ads for this art exhibition on the immigration crisis, then changed its mind
August 13, 2019 16:27 - 1.84 MBThe Phillips Collection was founded nearly 100 years ago in a sprawling, elegant Dupont Circle mansion in Washington, DC. This summer, it’s been transformed. Curators have devoted three floors of gallery space to the exhibition “The Warmth of Other Suns: Stories of Global Displacement,” on view through Sept. 22. It’s the most ambitious exhibition the museum has ever undertaken, according to Klaus Ottmann, the Phillips’ chief curator and deputy director for academic affairs. It includes more...
Trump’s public charge rule is ‘really ripe for abuse,’ says migration expert
August 12, 2019 20:11 - 1.89 MBThe Trump administration issued a new rule Monday designed to sharply restrict legal residency to immigrants who receive public assistance. The long-anticipated "public charge rule," pushed by Trump's leading aide on immigration Stephen Miller, takes effect Oct. 15 and would reject applicants for temporary or permanent visas for failing to meet income standards or for receiving public assistance such as welfare or Medicaid. Immediately after the rule was announced, the National Immigration...
US and Mexico need to 'work against a discourse of hate and racism,' ambassador says
August 07, 2019 19:58 - 2.33 MBUS officials say they're investigating the Saturday shooting rampage in El Paso, Texas, as an act of domestic terrorism and that the suspect will face the death penalty, but federal officials in Mexico are also speaking up. At least eight of the 22 people murdered at the Walmart in El Paso were Mexican nationals. Mexico's Foreign Ministry called the shooting a “terrorist act against innocent Mexicans,” and the Mexican government is contemplating an extradition of the suspect on terrorism ch...
A new Trump administration policy could lead to more US citizens being deported
July 23, 2019 19:18 - 2.37 MBEffective today, the Department of Homeland Security has a new policy that could speed up deportations all over the US. The Trump administration announced on Monday new rules that allow immigration officers to deport undocumented immigrants without a court hearing if they are unable to demonstrate they’ve been in the country, continuously, for at least two years. Legal experts have said that this was a dramatic expansion of a program already used along the US-Mexican border that cuts out rev...
Marine vet denied entry to US for scheduled citizenship interview
July 17, 2019 20:24 - 1.97 MBRoman Sabal served in the United States Marine Corps for six years, and in the US Army Reserves for several more. But on Monday, border officials at San Ysidro denied Sabal entry to the US for a scheduled citizenship interview. Sabal lived in the US for more than a decade and joined the Marines in 1987, eager to serve the US. In 2008, he returned to Belize for a visit and while he was gone, a judge ordered him to be deported at a court hearing he was not aware of because he was not in the U...
Trump administration moves to stop more immigrants from seeking US asylum
July 15, 2019 18:24 - 2.27 MBThe Trump administration on Monday moved to bar almost all immigrants from applying for asylum at the country's southern border, requiring them to first pursue their claims in a third country they traveled through before seeking safe haven in the United States. The Department of Homeland Security, in a statement issued with the Department of Justice, said the interim rule would set a "new bar" for immigrants "by placing further restrictions or limitations on eligibility for aliens who seek ...
Students at this Minneapolis charter school prep for immigration raids
July 11, 2019 21:22 - 2.68 MBRoundups of undocumented immigrant families conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents could start Sunday in 10 US cities, fulfilling a hardline immigration stance from US President Donald Trump, the New York Times reported, citing unnamed sources including two current and one former homeland security officials. Trump said on July 5 that the mass roundups would begin "fairly soon," after postponing the operation last month when the date was leaked. The threatened raids ...
Trump's hard-line immigration policies build on the history of former US presidents
July 11, 2019 20:42 - 2.3 MBOnce again, immigrant communities are bracing for immigration raids that will target people with final deportation orders, including parents of children who are US citizens. Meanwhile, a small US Border Patrol holding facility in Clint, Texas, has recently become a focal point for debate after government inspectors and lawyers documented its squalid, overcrowded conditions. Border officials have denied the reports. Related: How an ICE contract divided a Rhode Island city along racial and ...
Detention centers are ‘worthy of your disgust’ in their own right, says Jewish Latina activist
July 11, 2019 17:23 - 2.07 MBThe Trump administration's infamous family separation policy and images of children in detention centers on the US southern border have drawn broad international condemnation — but not without controversy. Recently, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called the detention centers at the US-Mexico border concentration camps. But is it appropriate to use language from the Holocaust to describe the crisis at the border? These are concentration camps. According to concentration camp experts...
Activists urge undocumented immigrants to fill out census, regardless of citizenship question
July 09, 2019 18:25 - 1.95 MBPresident Donald Trump said last week that he was moving ahead with adding a contentious citizenship question to the 2020 US census in a dramatic reversal after his own administration, including Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, announced a day earlier that the plan had been dropped. A senior Justice Department lawyer told a Maryland-based federal judge overseeing litigation in the matter that the administration was seeking a “path forward” to add a citizenship question after the Supreme Cour...
Supreme Court ruling leaves citizenship question for the 2020 census in doubt
June 27, 2019 20:29 - 2.08 MBA citizenship question is off the 2020 US census form — for now. The US Supreme Court sent back to the lower courts a case looking at whether the federal government has the right to ask a person's citizenship status on the census. Related: Here's why the US census citizenship question stokes mistrust The 5 to 4 ruling said that the federal government needs to provide clearer justification for asking the question. In its opinion, the court found that federal officials’ reasoning was “inco...
Oklahoma's Fort Sill has a history of jailing minority groups. Migrant children could be next.
June 26, 2019 18:42 - 2.08 MBMinority groups gathered Saturday at Fort Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma, to protest plans to house more than 1,400 migrant children there later this summer. But for many among the 200-some that gathered last week, Fort Sill has a history of incarcerating minority groups. The site was used in the 1860s and 70s to jail Native Americans — notably Geronimo — and served as an internment camp for 700 Japanese Americans during World War II. The group has plans for more demonstrations. "We as minor...
This Brooklyn pop-up school taps immigrants’ expertise — by making them teachers
June 24, 2019 22:05 - 2.3 MBProspect Park in Brooklyn is often packed, but its Rose Garden — a grassy hollow built around two old fountains — is an oasis of calm. On a recent afternoon, it’s walled off by a thick patchwork cloth hanging between tall wooden posts. To get inside, you’re forced to double back several times. Soon people get frustrated and start ducking under the barrier. The art installation is a metaphor about the difficulty immigrants face getting to the United States and making it here. According to t...
Immigrants prepare for ICE raids despite cancellation of Trump order
June 24, 2019 20:42 - 1.81 MBPresident Donald Trump has delayed the mass deportations he had threatened would start this week. They were to target undocumented people who already had deportation orders or had missed court dates, and they were also to focus on families. The president said the deportations would now be postponed for two weeks — and in the meantime, he is pressuring Democrats to commit to an immigration deal. But people in several major cities are still bracing for the deportations. Cesar Espinosa is t...
Settled but unsettled: 4 years on, a Syrian refugee family still torn by US policy
June 20, 2019 20:38 - 2.48 MBWhen Wajed al-Khalifa and her family arrived in the US as refugees in 2015, everything about the United States seemed foreign. They were resettled to Turlock, California, a rural city about two hours east of San Francisco. Yet it wasn’t long before they started hitting milestones: Khalifa and her husband, Gasem al-Hamad, got driver’s licenses. Their four kids excelled in school, quickly overcoming barriers such as English-language instruction and a new education system. It was a big change...
Migration to US is a family ‘duty’ for many Guatemalans
June 18, 2019 20:45 - 2.36 MBGuatemalan voters went to the polls Sunday, sending two presidential candidates to a runoff election in August. Whoever wins will be under enormous pressure to stop Guatemalans from migrating: US President Donald Trump doubled down this week on his promise to withhold millions of dollars in aid to the country until it reduces the number of migrants reaching the US border. But stopping people from leaving Guatemala may be a tall order. Migration has become a duty for many families in some pa...
Portland, Maine, turns ‘crisis’ to ‘opportunity’ for African migrants
June 17, 2019 18:22 - 2.6 MBThe city of Portland, Maine, has seen an influx of migrants from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola. And as the nation engages in a heated debate over whether to welcome immigrants or keep them out, Maine's governor, Janet Mills, has said the state will help those who arrive. "Obviously, we're having a situation here by fate, by circumstance, by the hand of God," Mills said in a meeting with municipal and state leaders in June. "And there are those who might want to make it polit...
Mexico's goodwill wanes as more migrants arrive
June 12, 2019 22:21 - 2.37 MBWhen a caravan of roughly 8,000 migrants passed through Tapachula, Mexico, last October, residents lined the highways giving out food and water. The migrants were neighbors, after all, and the Christian thing to do was help. But the caravans kept coming — none as big, but more frequently. They can in groups of between 500 and 2,000. Mexicans’ perception of the migrants began to change: Yes, they needed help, but they were pushy, and some were criminals. “There is not space for them. We don...
A new generation of ‘un-DACAmented’ high school graduates fights hurdles to higher ed
June 07, 2019 15:57 - 1.89 MBFor Ximena, a high school senior in California, college applications were a breeze. The straight-A student takes college-level courses and is meticulous with her schedule, so she didn’t have difficulty turning in applications on time to nearly two dozen colleges. What was harder for the 18-year-old was deciding where to apply — and finding universities that had resources and scholarships for undocumented students like her. Ximena was brought to the US from Mexico without documentation whe...
War or no war? Iranians in California try to make sense of US-Iran tensions
June 07, 2019 14:38 - 3.22 MBEditor's note: This story ran as two parts on the radio broadcast. Part one is linked above. Part two is here: For more than 40 years, Homa Sarshar has kept a handful of documents inside a safe at her home: club membership cards, bank records, old passports. There is one document that is familiar to nearly all Iranians: a turquoise airline ticket that bears the mythical bird of happiness — the iconic logo of Iran’s national airline. "This ticket is useless [today], but it’s a part of my ...
Crimes of compassion: US follows Europe's lead in prosecuting those who help migrants
June 06, 2019 21:53 - 2.02 MBSometimes the defendant is a Spanish firefighter who saved migrants from drowning at sea. Other times it is elderly couples in Denmark, France and Greece who gave people a lift in their cars. Their crimes? Aiding fellow humans. At least 250 volunteers and aid workers across 14 European countries have been arrested, charged or investigated for supporting undocumented migrants in the past five years, according to a comprehensive report released last month by UK-based news organization Open D...
This immigrant student's detention serves as a cautionary tale for DACA recipients
June 04, 2019 22:03 - 2.11 MBIn March of 2018, Omar Helalat was a college student at SUNY Albany preparing to earn his bachelor’s degree in business administration. He said he was bound for an internship in New York City. "I was two months away from graduating," he recalled. "I was really excited." But then he was arrested in his dorm after a fight with his ex-girlfriend. Helalat was accused of trying to strangle her. He denied the charges and expected his father would bail him out of the Albany County jail the next d...
I am from Hong Kong, not China
June 04, 2019 15:27 - 2.16 MBI am from a city owned by a country that I don’t belong to. Britain colonized Hong Kong as a consequence of the Opium War in 1842. While China gave up part of Hong Kong permanently to Britain, the New Territories, which makes up 86 percent of Hong Kong, was also under British control in a 99-year lease. In 1997, when the lease ended, the British government decided to give all of Hong Kong back to the People’s Republic of China, known just as China today, as a “special administrative region”...
A Japanese American newspaper chronicles the ‘searing’ history of immigrant incarceration
May 30, 2019 16:17 - 2.41 MBTwice per week, Maggie Ishino, a 94-year-old newspaper columnist, takes three buses across Los Angeles’ sprawl to the office of The Rafu Shimpo, the last bilingual Japanese-English daily paper in the US mainland. At her seat in the middle of a row of journalists, Ishino gets to work on her column, “Maggie’s Meow.” In it, she shares her frank observations: Hipster beards look like a “lion with an undeveloped mane.” Living alone makes you “the odd one out” at family gatherings. Sometimes, ...
How an ICE contract divided a Rhode Island city along racial and generational lines
May 29, 2019 19:32 - 3.54 MBCentral Falls, Rhode Island, is one dense, urban square mile. As a mill town, it’s drawn immigrants for generations. Next to Central Falls High School’s outdoor stadium (closed for soil remediation) is a brown, concrete building surrounded by fences and barbed wire: the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility, known locally as “the Wyatt.” “It's huge,” said Daniella Magana, 18, a Central Falls native and senior at Blackstone Valley Prep Mayoral Academy. “You know, you can't really miss it. But I...
How a US policy is tearing apart this same-sex couple and their children
May 21, 2019 22:00 - 3.13 MBLucas Zaccari is the 4-year-old son of American citizen Allison Blixt and her wife, Italian citizen Stefania Zaccari. But in the eyes of the State Department, Lucas isn't eligible for US citizenship through Blixt — a right typically afforded all children of US citizens, even when they are born abroad. That's because Zaccari, not Blizt, gave birth to the boy. The State Department deemed Lucas' younger brother, Massi, eligible for citizenship, however, because Blixt was the one who gave birth ...
California governor halts deportations of 2 Cambodian refugees, thwarting Trump administration
May 15, 2019 20:11 - 1.9 MBEscalating his opposition of Trump administration policies, California Gov. Gavin Newsom this week pardoned two Cambodian refugees that immigration officials wanted to deport. Hay Hov's and Kang Hen’s families fled Cambodia and the genocidal, communist Khmer Rouge regime. Hov’s family landed in Oakland, California. Kevin Lo, Hov’s attorney, described it as another kind of war zone. “He was beaten up, he was stabbed,” says Lo, who’s with Asian Americans Advancing Justice. “At age 13, he alm...