[ALBSA-Info] News from the Immigration and Refugee Services of America, November 6, 2000

[irma spaho]

>
>News from the Immigration and Refugee Services of America
>November 6, 2000
>
>==================================
>INVESTIGATIVE REPORTS EXAMINES THE HORROR STORIES
>OF THOSE CAUGHT UP IN OUR COMPLEX WEB OF IMMIGRATION
>LAWS AND AGENCIES: AMERICAN DREAM, AMERICAN NIGHTMARE
>
>[This program will be aired on A&E on Friday, November 10 at 10PM.
>The program has been a year in the making. It should be very
>interesting.]
>
>NEW YORK, NY, November 2, 2000 --  The United States is often called
>a "nation of immigrants."  Unfortunately, as a result of recent reforms
>to our country's immigration laws, some have charged that thousands of
>permanent and legal U.S. residents are being unfairly targeted by the
>Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), destroying families and
>lives in the process.
>
>Host Bill Kurtis and an Investigative Reports team spent a year looking
>into the heart-wrenching stories of those caught up in the inconsistencies
>and technicalities of a system where there is little recourse or room
>for appeal.  INVESTIGATIVE REPORTS: AMERICAN DREAM, AMERICAN NIGHTMARE
>makes its A&E World Premiere on Friday, November 10 on 10-11pm ET/PT
>(The program was previously scheduled to air on November 9)
>
>Since Congress passed a series of immigration reforms in 1996, some
>feel that the INS has been too aggressive in their pursuit of immigrants
>who fall under the wide net cast by laws that many feel are overly harsh,
>and, at times, exceptionally inhumane.  INVESTIGATIVE REPORTS puts a
>human face on the tragedies that have followed by presenting dramatic
>profiles of four immigrants, all of whom are  permanent legal residents,
>who have been caught in a web of technicalities, and some charge, an
>indifferent and inflexible bureaucracy.  They are people who are waiting
>to be deported because the U.S. government says they are no longer welcome
>in their adopted country.
>
>* Frank Audia is a Youth Minister in Corydon, Indiana (on the outskirts of
>Louisville).  As a child, he was brought to the U.S. by his mother who was
>fleeing war-torn El Salvador.  While attending Bible College in Minnesota
>four years ago, he mistakenly voted in a local election, only to discover
>later, while trying to become a U.S. citizen that only citizens had the
>right to vote.  The I.N.S. promptly informed him he would not be allowed
>to become a citizen and that he was also being kicked out of the country.
>
>*  Joao Herbert was adopted from a Brazilian orphanage more than a decade
>ago by an American family outside of Akron, Ohio.  After being convicted
>of selling marijuana, the federal government decreed that he must be
>deported, despite the fact that he was not sentenced and has begun to
>turn his life around.  Today, Herbert sits in jail, waiting to be deported
>back to Brazil -- a country where he no longer has any friends or family.
>Furthermore, he will never again be allowed to return to the U.S. to visit
>his adoptive parents.
>
>* Convicted of shoplifting several years ago, the INS informed Rick
>Thongdara that he would be deported back to his birth country of Laos.
>However, since Laos does not accept INS deportees, Thongdara languished in
>jail for more than a year, while he waited to be sent back to a country he
>left as a child.  When eventually deported, he will also leave behind an
>8-year-old daughter.
>
>* Ybernia Gomez had one brush with the law, and that was 15 years ago when
>she was arrested for having two pain pills and two penicillin pills, which
>had been given to her by a friend for a toothache.  Now, this hard-working
>grandmother has learned that this one incident is enough for the U.S. to
>consider her a "criminal alien."  She has received a deportation order to
>the Dominican Republic, a place from which she legally immigrated almost
>20 years ago.
>
>AMERICAN DREAM, AMERICAN NIGHTMARE also spotlights Congress's lack of
>action to change the immigration laws that have placed the INS in the
>precarious position of enforcing what many feel are poorly drafted
>regulations -- and then shows the grim aftermath suffered by those at odds
>with the law.  Officially, the U.S. is a country which beckons to
>immigrants with open arms.  Unofficially, however, some of those who want
>to call America home are being subjected to worse treatment than they
>experienced in their native lands.
>
>---------------------------------------------
>To learn more about IRSA, visit our website at:
>http://www.refugeesusa.org
>==================================
>The Immigration and Refugee Services of America is a nonprofit,
>humanitarian organization that acts to defend human rights, build
>communities, foster education, promote self-sufficiency, and forge
>partnerships through an array of programs.
>
>Support us today!
>http://www.refugeesusa.org/how_help/how_help.cfm
>
>---
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