Award-winning immigration attorney Fiona McEntee (and friend of the firm) has written a children’s book about immigrants. As an immigrant herself and mother of two young children, Fiona wrote Our American Dream to “help explain the importance of a diverse and welcoming America.” The book, the first in a series, celebrates immigrant stories and is inspired by Fiona’s real-life clients, family, and friends, including a Syrian refugee working in Congress, a ”Dreamer” hoping for a Green Card, and a painter from Russia using her extraordinary talent to achieve the American dream. McEntee explained the book came about after she failed to find a book about immigration that she could read to her daughter’s class. “I looked for a book that reflected what has been going on with the types of immigration issues I was dealing with and that children might be hearing about in the news,” she told the Chicago Tribune. “There are a number of good books about immigrants but usually they are focused on a specific story. I thought there should be a book for kids that concentrated on immigration in positive ways.” I read the book with my own son this week and he said he thoroughly enjoyed it. (Okay, he can’t talk yet but he did make some delighted noises!) A portion of the book’s proceeds will be donated to FWD.us I Stand With Immigrants Initiative, as well as to the American Immigration Council.
Living the American Dream
Our American Dream
Field of Dreams
The Guardian: "'These people aren't just statistics': behind the year's most personal look at immigration"
“I want you to imagine waking up one morning, and your father is just gone,” Awa Sow says at the beginning of Living Undocumented, Netflix’s six-part series executive produced by Selena Gomez. The show follows eight undocumented families from across America as they navigate the US immigration system under the Trump administration. One family is the Sows, from Mauritania and now living in Ohio, whose father Amadou was arrested and was being held indefinitely in detention. Director Aaron Saidman told The Guardian that the series was intended as “a more comprehensive story of immigration, but directly from the immigrants themselves.” Along with harrowing footage and emotional interviews with the families, the series also features interviews with attorneys, advocates, and journalists to explain how the US immigration system functions and how “complicated and daunting and intimidating that system is for the immigrants who are going through it.”
“This was specifically designed to not be a political story,” Saidman said. “This is meant to be a human interest story where you can get a sense of what these people are really going through.” He added: “Hopefully this series will help accomplish this, that they understand that these people aren’t just statistics.” Selena Gomez, the show’s executive producer, wants viewers to look beyond the headlines. “I watched footage outlining their deeply personal journeys and I cried,” she wrote in Time Magazine of the series. “It captured the shame, uncertainty, and fear I saw my own family struggle with. But it also captured the hope, optimism, and patriotism so many undocumented immigrants still hold in their hearts despite the hell they go through.”
The Washington Post: “A renowned scientist wants to thank the stranger who helped him stay in America”
Mahmoud Ghannoum, a prominent scientist and the director of the Center for Medical Mycology at Case Western Reserve University and the leading microbiome gut researcher in the world, wants to thank a generous travel agent who was instrumental in helping him immigrate to America almost thirty years ago. It was 1990, and Ghannoum’s country, Kuwait, had just been invaded by Saddam Hussein. With his family staying in a dorm room in England, and his town in Kuwait destroyed and financial assets frozen, Ghannoum traveled to Washington, D.C. for a conference where he had planned to speak. He believed his best chance for establishing a new life was in America, and he hoped to find a job through the conference. But the scientists there told him it was the wrong conference for job hunting, and if he could wait in D.C. for one week, he’d likely get a job at another conference.
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Take an Immigrant’s Journey
Experience Magazine, published by Northeastern University, aims to take readers inside eight immigrant stories, each told through “composite characters but based on real laws and historically documented scenarios.” In the fascinating interactive article, readers are invited to follow their paths and respond to often incredibly difficult choices many immigrants have faced in their lives. The stories introduce the eight characters in various time periods in history and at various stages of their life. They include Margaret (age eighteen) from Ireland starting in 1848; Li Wei (age eighteen) from China starting in 1868; Joyce (age eight) from the Philippines starting in 1990; Yesenia (age twenty-three) from El Salvador starting in 1981; Ama (age twenty-six) from Ghana starting in 1992; and others.
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