Can traditional Polish music sound funky? Or Asian? Or bluesy? The members of the Warsaw Village Band think it can, but some Polish immigrants in New York beg to disagree.
After President Obama announced a $75 billion plan for homeowners in distress, shady companies started offering Bushwick residents help with their mortgage modifications… for a fee.
Feet in 2 Worlds reporter Jelena Kopanja produced a piece for PRI’s nationally-syndicated daily program The World about how Ecuador tries to convince its expats to return home.
FI2W reporter Valeria Fernández was interviewed this Wednesday on public radio’s The Takeaway to talk about a sharp increase in immigration-related federal prosecutions with hosts Celeste Headlee and John Hockenberry and reporter John Schwartz of The New York Times.
Feet in 2 Worlds reporter Valeria Fernández was interviewed on the latest edition of the New America Now radio program to talk about the recent passage of a law in Arizona that forces public employees to report undocumented immigrants to the authorities if they apply for federal or state benefits.
Sandra Figueroa, an undocumented immigrant, first heard about the dance of the Matachines while she was in jail. She promised that she would learn it to honor the Virgin of Guadalupe and thank her for helping her to be free and to reunite with her family.
De Colores, a domestic violence shelter in Phoenix, specializes in helping undocumented Spanish-speaking migrant women like her.
This week the public radio program Making Contact features a story by Feet in Two Worlds reporter Valeria Fernández about the impact of an immigration raid on a family in Phoenix, Arizona. Valeria wrote the following reporter’s notebook about her experiences covering this story. You can listen to the story pressing “play” below or to find a station near you that carries the program click here.
[audio:http://media.libsyn.com/media/radioproject/MakingCon_091021_Ax.mp3]
Sandra hugs her daughter Katherine, her mother Mercedes and her sister Griselda after being released by Customs and Immigration Enforcement. (Photo: V. Fernández - Click for more.)
PHOENIX, Arizona — When I arrived at Katherine Figueroa’s house, it had only been two days since her parents –both undocumented immigrants– were arrested during a raid by Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies at the Phoenix car wash where they both worked.
Kathy is an outspoken 9-year-old who makes friends easily. She welcomes people with her easy smile, even those she has just met. She was born in the U.S. and like many children of undocumented parents she has lived in constant fear that her parents could be deported.
I knew this wasn’t going to be an ordinary story. It was going to be one I would follow for months, and very closely every week.
It’s the story behind news reports that people in the Phoenix area have grown accustomed to: another sweep, another immigration raid in Maricopa County. It is about what happens to communities and families impacted by a crackdown that has made Arizona ground zero in a divisive national debate over immigration.
Arpaio has been a controversial figure in Phoenix and in the immigration debate. Pictured is a demonstration in June 2009.
FI2W reporter Valeria Fernández was interviewed this morning on public radio’s The Takeaway to talk about an announced immigration raid by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
“There’s no federal law that gives him the authority to do these immigration sweeps, but he says that he can do it,” Valeria said during her conversation with The Takeaway’s Celeste Headlee and John Hockenberry, in which she explained the sheriff’s controversial tactics to detain undocumented immigrants in the Phoenix area.
You can listen to the interview below and you can visit the show’s story “A Rogue Sheriff Roams in Arizona.”
[audio:http://audio.wnyc.org/takeaway/takeaway101609j.mp3]Phoenix-based FI2W reporter Valeria Fernández produced a radio piece for NPR’s Latino USA on immigrants who work in the dairy industry and the farmers who hire them.
Here, Valeria narrates how she produced the piece, which airs this weekend on Latino USA. To listen to the piece, press “play” below.
[audio:http://latinousa.kut.org/wp-content/lusaaudio/859segAZdairies.mp3]
For almost two years now, one of my sources here in Arizona had insisted that I do a story about immigrants working in dairies. I finally started to work on this one about five months ago, before I even knew which direction it was going to take, or even that it was going to become a radio piece. I needed to become familiar with the universe of dairies at a time when Arizona was facing an intense crackdown on illegal immigration.
There was naturally going to be fear and resistance on the part of immigrant workers. For about two years now, the state has had a law in place that sanctions companies who knowingly hire undocumented labor.
Farmer Gerald Lunt says than “other than the economy and the price of milk,” finding workers is his biggest problem. (Photos: V. Fernández – Click to see more)
ALSO: Read a diary by the daughter of a Mexican immigrant dairy worker.
The law has been used mostly to conduct work-site raids in businesses, resulting in the arrest of a couple of hundred workers. The number is not large, but the chilling effect on local immigrant communities is much bigger.
In a couple of ways, this was unexplored territory for me. I was as nervous as the subjects of the story. Not only was I going to leave the comfort of print, but also, I was going to do it in English, my second language. I feared leaving my small notepad and using a microphone instead. Often times I would just tuck it away, and listen to people to help them relax.
There have been stories about workers in agriculture, but I wanted to do a story about what life was like in the dairies. I had all sorts of preconceptions.
