As with many refugees, Azin Izadifar carried memories of violence and trauma with her to the US. She lives alone now in a small studio apartment in San Jose, Calif. When she first moved to the US in 2009, the troubled memories of her life in Iran followed her.

“At a certain time during the night I would wake up shouting. Like, having nightmares. I always always had this problem,” she said.

Izadifar was arrested for participating in secret meetings during Iran’s 1979 revolution, and spent the next three years being tortured in Iran’s notorious Evin prison. She continued to have run-ins with the Iranian government after her release, so she sought asylum in the US.

Izadifar found that even though she was in America, and “safe,” life was difficult. But cultural and practical barriers kept her from seeking help.

She eventually saw a therapist, and was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. She said she sees the same PTSD symptoms in new Iranian refugees -whether or not they did time in jail. And most of them, she said, aren’t seeking therapy.

“There’s a tendency in our culture to underestimate that and say, ‘Okay, that was passed. Now we are in a free society. We have to live our lives. We have to buy a car and get a job and just be normal,’” she said.

Jasmine, a 24-year-old Iraqi refugee, said she’s all too familiar with that cultural resistance to getting mental health care. In fact, that’s why she didn’t want to give her real name. She was diagnosed with PTSD, and doesn’t want the Iraqi community in San Jose to ostracize her family if they found out.

Jasmine fled Iraq with her family after insurgents killed her father in a drive-by shooting. They escaped to Syria, then resettled in San Jose three years later. And that’s when depression hit her hard.

“You left your home. You left the like place that you belong to. You left your people who loved there. Even like, sometimes I feel like everything’s like for me after I left Iraq is different. Even like a rose, the air, the dust. I know back home. The dust of back home. The air of back home. I know back home. The dust of back home. The air of back home,” she said.

It’s not just that refugees miss their homelands. Most have been exposed to violence and trauma unheard of in the west. In the United States, you would go to a therapist. But many in the refugee community would never think that way, said Sally Sharrock, a former therapist with Centers for Survivors of Torture. She said they’re more likely to go to a family member for help, or a medical doctor.

As part of the refugee package, people are entitled to medical and mental health care. Families with minors get five years of free social services. Refugees without kids get only eight months of services free, then they’re generally on their own. Either way, Sharrock’s job was to get people into counseling, and to keep them coming back after their first session. Sharrock said her stealth sessions often begin with her giving practical support.

“So a lot of people are really actually more interested in really being able to find a job and support their family and find good housing,” she said, “before they’re ready for any kind of psychological supportive services or therapy.”

As she begins addressing mental health issues with refugees, Sharrock said she avoids using terms that might be associated with a mental illness, like “depression,” or “anxiety.” She said she’s found that one term seems to work across the board.

“Often times we find the word “stress” works for people,” she said. “I may then ask them how they’ve been affected by stress, how they’ve been coping with it in their own culture up until now. And our conversation will kind of progress from there.”

Centers for Survivors of Torture uses other methods to bring in refugees to their office, like hosting potlucks and educational seminars. To make that approach work, they rely on other refugees in the community, like Jasmine. She now goes to Iraqi cultural events, handing out Arabic-language pamphlets about the free therapy at the Center.

“The whole situation in Iraq not normal. So we need like, more programs for mental health,” Jasmine said.

Jasmine said helping other refugees like her makes it easier to heal the wounds of her own past trauma.

Knocked Down by Globalization, Newton, Iowa Rebuilds

Downtown Newton (Photo: Jason Margolis)

Storm Lake, Iowa: A Meatpacking Town Fueled by Immigrant Labor

Storm Lake, Iowa (Photo: Jason Margolis)

How to Lure Foreign Money: Lessons from Fort Dodge, Iowa

A farm near Fort Dodge, Iowa (Photo: Jason Margolis)

Listen/download the three part series

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Apathy in Iowa

A farmhouse somewhere in Iowa (Photo: Jason Margolis)

Storm Lake is a city of some 10,000 tucked in the corn fields of northwestern Iowa. The main employers are a turkey and hog processing plant.

Storm Lake’s demographics run counter to the state. Iowa’s population is 91 percent white. In Storm Lake, the school district is 22 percent white. The students are a mix of mostly Latinos, along with Southeast Asians and Africans. Many here, like Sara Huddleston, proudly say this mix is working.

“We call ourselves the conquistadores of this little town in the middle of nowhere,” said Huddleston, who was among the very first Latinos to come here from Mexico back in 1989.

Sara Huddleston (Photo: Jason Margolis)

Sara Huddleston is living proof of the tolerance in Storm Lake: She was elected as Iowa’s first Latino city council member a decade ago.

Huddleston says when she moved here there were no ethnic grocery stores or Mexican restaurants. Today, she and her husband Matt Huddleston proudly say there are plenty to choose from. Juanita’s is their Mexican restaurant of choice.

“Everybody of different classes, different colors, different ages, they all go to Juanita’s. Everybody goes there,” said Sara Huddleston.

Her husband Matt added, “You have immigrants from Africa, and Eastern Europe, you have the Latinos, native born Iowans, everybody is in there, pretty much at the same time.”

This infusion of immigrants is also helping Storm Lake’s economy. Rural towns throughout the Midwest are dying. Storm Lake is not.

“Do we have some issues? Yes,” said Police Chief Mark Prosser, who took me on a ride through town. “But do we have growing school districts? Yes. Do we have an expanding medical center? Yes. Are we building new businesses? Yes. All because of our immigrant growth here.”

Yet the Congressman who represents Storm Lake is one of the most outspoken opponents of illegal immigration. Five years ago, Republican Steve King spoke in Congress about building a wall along the Mexican border and putting wire on top.

King said, “We could also electrify this wire with the kind of current that wouldn’t kill somebody, but it would simply be a discouragement for them to be fooling around with it. We do that with livestock all the time.”

Tyson Foods' hog processing plant in Storm Lake (Photo: Jason Margolis)

King is popular in western Iowa and Storm Lake. He’s been elected to Congress five times, winning his last race with two thirds of the vote.

David Swenson, an economist at Iowa State University, said there’s a disconnect between King’s popularity and his stance on immigration.

“I would argue that Steve King’s position puts him at great odds with many of the needs of many of his, ironically, supporters, like many of the rural agriculture leaders, many of the animal operations, the food and food processing industry,” said Swenson.

“These are all major businesses in western Iowa. Probably many of the officers and the people in those firms are conservative and conservative leaning. Yet they know darn well that their businesses thrive because they have access to this cheap labor.”

Tyson Foods is one of the two major employers in Storm Lake. The company says it uses all the available tools provided by the government, and more, to verify documents of the people it hires.

A Tyson spokesman said starting pay at the hog processing plant in Storm Lake is $11 an hour. That’s $4 above minimum wage. Tyson employees also get benefits like medical and dental insurance, paid vacations and a retirement savings plan.

That’s not enough to entice native Iowans to gut hogs though, says Police chief, Mark Prosser.

“It’s difficult work, hard work, repetitive work, monotonous work,” said Prosser. “Sometimes there’s the perception, and even criticism of shifting demographics that people categorized as ‘those people’ are taking jobs from the people who are native to this area, born and raised here, and that’s just not the case. That’s a myth. We don’t have lines at our packing plants trying to get jobs.”

Congressman Steve King disputes this. “When they say there are jobs that Americans won’t do, that’s not true, that’s a lie that’s been perpetrated against the American people.”

“Every job in this country is being done by Americans, there’s no job they won’t do,” said King. “But you need to pay them what it’s worth. And I would like to see a tighter labor supply in this country, so that a person could get out of bed, go to work, and make enough money to pay for a modest house, educate their children, and plan for retirement. It’s used to be that way.”

Art Cullen grew up in Storm Lake and talks about the white picket fences of his youth. He’s now the editor of the newspaper The Storm Lake Times. He’s no fan of Steve King and his stance on immigration.

Art Cullen (Photo: Storm Lake Times)

“I think he’s awful,” Cullen said.

But Cullen agrees with the Congressman on at least one point: The meatpacking plants, run by Tyson and Sara Lee, aren’t paying enough. Cullen says, sure immigrants keep this economy going, but the economic model isn’t bringing the town prosperity.

“When you’re living on $11 to $13 an hour, it’s really tough to get by. And it makes it tough for a newspaper to sell newspapers, when people can’t afford to buy a newspaper,” said Cullen.

I was curious what workers at the meatpacking plants thought, so I went to the Mexican restaurant Juanita’s.

The people I met said they like it here in Storm Lake, they’re treated well, there are festivals celebrating different cultures. Still, they want to see immigration reform. I asked what they thought of Congressman Steve King. The answer I got from a young woman named Sonia is what most everybody said.

“I haven’t paid too much attention.”

Sonia’s reaction was explained to me this way: Most Latino immigrants don’t trust politicians back home, so they don’t bother listening. Same goes for here too.

Minnie and Mickey (Photo: Bruce Wallace)

You might guess that finding a 5-foot tall woman dressed in a red-and-white Minnie Mouse costume would be easy. But, in this case, you’d be wrong.

The Minnie I wanted to talk to is named Andrea. I’d talked to her once before, but she was busy and told me to find her later. A day or two later I went to Times Square. The first Minnie I approached just shook her head. I walked up to a second. “Andrea?” I asked. “No soy Andrea, usted es Andrea?” she said, laughing. “I’m not Andrea, are you Andrea?” I’m pretty sure she was making fun of me.

I didn’t find Andrea that day.

I finally did catch up with her, and we made plans to meet at a small home she shares with a bunch of other folks in Passaic, New Jersey, a working-class town about 40 minutes by bus from Times Square. We sat at a table in a cramped kitchen. One of the Mickey Mouses-in civilian clothes– was there making soup.

The Mickeys, Minnies, Elmos, and Winnie the Poohs scattered across six or seven blocks in Times Square are mostly Latino, and mostly undocumented. On a typical day they’ll spend seven or eight hours waving hello and posing for pictures with the throngs of visitors who fill Times Square, asking for small tips in return.

Mickey and Winnie the Pooh (Photo: Bruce Wallace)

Mohammed Rahman has worked at a nearby newsstand for four years, and says he’s noticed a big increase in the fuzzy characters recently. They come over and buy sodas from him, sometimes he’ll talk business with them. He actually had his picture taken with one of the Mickeys; he put it on Facebook for his family back in Bangladesh to see.

“I have a little sister, they’re curious about this. You know the Mickey Mouse, so they’re looking like this and they’re feeling interesting and nice, that’s why.”

On a typical day, Andrea says they’ll make 50 or 60 dollars, minus about 10 dollars for bus fare. Alfredo, who lives in the house and is one of at least four Elmos working Times Square, says that in the summer they make less because they can only work for about four hours a day.

“Ah it’s so much, like 115 degrees, it’s so hot inside. Right there we’re cooking inside.”

Jorge-the one making the soup–started dressing up as Mickey about a year-and-a-half ago; Andrea’s been Minnie for about five months. Alfredo has been at it for about two months.

All three also work odd jobs through an agency: cleaning homes and offices, some factory work-but that’s slowed down a lot. Alfredo lost a job at a pizza restaurant when a new owner found out he didn’t have papers.

I asked him why he chose Elmo.

“Everybody loves Elmo. I love Elmo too, because he helps me. I don’t know but I like Elmo.”

Any money he has left over after he pays his bills he sends back home to his mom and sister in Cholula, Mexico.

Andrea has four children back home in Arequipa, Peru. Her face brightens when she talks about how being Minnie puts her in touch with kids.

“Porque tambien me gusta mucho los niños…”

“Because also I like children a lot. My kids are in Peru , and so it makes me happy to be around children.”

They also take some satisfaction from the acting chops they’ve developed. Andrea has gotten better at playing to the older audience members.

“‘Que linda’ dicen…”

They’ll say “How pretty,” and she’ll go to pose for a picture with them. They’ll demur, and she’ll pretend to be sad.

“‘Aye, pobrecita’ dicen, y ‘una photo’ dicen”

“Oh, you poor thing” they’ll say, and she gets the photo.

Winnie the Pooh (Photo: Bruce Wallace)

All three of them have been in the U.S. about seven years. They say it’s been a lot tougher than they’d imagined; money’s been a lot tighter. Andrea and Alfredo both told me they want to go back to their countries soon.

You might not guess any of this, though, if you saw them waving and posing and hamming it up for the cameras in Times Square.

“Okay” Child: “Bye Mickey Mouse!” Woman: “Bye Bye Mickey Mouse”

Coming to a new nation as a refugee — adjusting to a new language, culture, and climate — is always a struggle. But now in Fargo, N.D. many refugee parents are being manipulated by their children.

Fargo police officer Cristie Jacobsen works with refugee children (Photo: Fargo Police Department)

“The children didn’t like it,” said Jacobsen. “Because they had gotten used to drinking it, they enjoyed the caffeine splurge and things like that and so it became a power struggle.”

To help deal with problems like this, and explain to refugee adults and children what the law and police can and cannot do, the Fargo Police assigned Jacobsen to work as a cultural liaison officer with new refugees. She meets regularly with the refugee and immigrant community, holding workshops and visiting their schools and places of business. Close to 4,000 refugees have moved to the Fargo area since 1997. That’s about 2 percent of the greater population. The refugees have come from places like Bosnia, Liberia, Iraq, and most recently a large influx from Bhutan.

The children have one huge advantage over their parents: They’re able to master English much more quickly.

“The kids get to know the language and the culture, before the parents do. And the parents are terrified,” said Vonnie Sanders, who directs the English language learners program for the Fargo School District.

Sanders said when refugee children arrive in Fargo, they’re quickly placed in school; their parents go to work at isolating jobs such as cleaning hotel rooms or working in chicken processing plants. The parents do get some English instruction, but Sanders said the classroom time isn’t adequate.

“It’s two-and-a-half, three hours in the morning. That isn’t enough for them, four days a week,” said Sanders. “The other thing is then when it comes to the end of the month, it’s $2.50 to ride the bus, they can’t afford to get there. Or, they have a sick kid, they can’t go.”

In Fargo, there’s another barrier to English-learning: the winters.

“Fargo, we actually won some national competition of being the worst weather city in the US,” said Cristie Jacobsen. She pumped her fist and added with an insincere cheer, “Yea, us.”

Winter temperatures regularly dip down to below 10 or 20 degrees Fahrenheit in Fargo. “And then with our wind-chill factor, we can get into negative 30, or negative 40,” said Jacobsen.

Now imagine you’re a refugee from Rwanda or Sudan. And you don’t have a car because you came to this country with nothing. And there’s no direct bus to class.

“And so, you’ll see them just bundled up like little Eskimos, walking a couple of miles to English class and back to their homes,” said Jacobsen.

Heather Ranck teaches at the University of Mary in North Dakota (Photo: Heather Ranck)

“And time after time, in every class I would see a fairly negative article from the students about why there were so many immigrants moving into the community, a lack of understanding about who refugees were or why they were here,” said Ranck.

This got Ranck thinking: there has to be a better way. She helped raise money through the local Rotary Club to provide alternative places and times for refugees to learn English. They’re also using the classrooms and resources of the local school system, which the Fargo school district is providing.

In an evening class I visited, about a dozen refugees from Bhutan and Ethiopia were hunched over computers, looking at colorful images on the screens. They were using software from the company Rosetta Stone. A voice described the photo, then the students repeated a syllable, a word, or a phrase into a microphone. The students were paired with volunteer tutors from the Rotary Club.

The students were engaged and seemed to be learning, but the software wasn’t perfect. One woman was trying to say the last syllable of the word “children,” repeating the syllable “dren” over and over for about 30 seconds.

Refugee learning English in Fargo (Photo: Heather Ranck)

I spoke with several refugees about their experience learning English, unable to go too in-depth with my questions, because, not surprisingly, they don’t speak much English. Still, I asked Bedha Adhikari from Bhutan: What was better, the classroom or the computer?

“Easier in the computer,” said Adhikari. “Because we listen to the sound and accent, that is why it is easier to understand.”

Rosetta Stone has been used successfully with school children. The US government and military also utilizes the language immersion software. But there haven’t been any definitive studies that show how well the software works with refugees. But local Rotarian Heather Ranck provided this unscientific assessment: “I think it is working.”

When Ranck says “it is working,” she’s talking about more than just the software. She says it’s working because local volunteers are interacting with the new immigrants. And they’re creating connections between communities.

Ranck said eventually the Fargo Rotary Club would like to offer the computer-based program in more locations throughout the area, at places like local libraries. The limiting factor, however, as always, is cost. The software is expensive. Right now, the Rotary Club only has funds for about 15 software licenses.

A month ago, the Obama Administration announced a new policy that would suspend the deportation of undocumented immigrants who don’t pose a threat to public safety.

US officials said they’d review 300,000 pending deportation cases. However, they’re still working out the details of how they’ll wade through them and have yet to act on any case.

Across the country, the new policy has given hope to many undocumented immigrants, but has also caused confusion.

Juan, who asked not to use his real name out of fear, came to San Diego from Mexico illegally 24 years ago when he was only sixteen. He had quit school in Mexico and his family sent him to the United States with one of his brothers.

“So, really I never felt like it was my decision to come up here.” Juan tells his story sitting on the couch in his living room. His house is immaculate. So is he. His slacks and dress shirt are perfectly pressed.

Juan says they day after he arrived in San Diego, he began washing dishes at a tony restaurant. Juan says a cute hostess convinced him to enroll in high school. He learned English, moved up to busboy and became a statewide track star. Universities like UCLA courted him with scholarships.

“My goal always was to become a coach and a bilingual math teacher and it never happened,” he says. While Juan had the ability, he didn’t have the legal status to go to college. Juan has worked steadily for the last 25 years. He’s managing an upscale restaurant and raising a family. Juan’s 12-year-old son was recently assigned to the Gifted and Talented Education program at his junior high school.

Last January, Juan was detained at a major Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 5. Juan doesn’t have a criminal record but the government began the process of deporting him.

Immigration Attorney Ginger Jacobs sees these kinds of cases all the time. “Folks who, a few years ago, would never be placed into proceedings. They don’t have a criminal record but are placed into proceedings anyway.”

She says the potentially good news for Juan is that it appears his case is just the kind that the federal government will put on hold. During the last two years, President Obama has repeatedly said he was after undocumented immigrants who’d committed crimes – “the worst of the worst,” he called them.

Yet, on Obama’s watch, the federal government has deported a record 800,000 people. Last year, more than half of those deported either had no criminal record or had committed a misdemeanor or traffic violation.

The White House says the new deportation policy’s goal is to target more serious criminals, but immigration attorneys say their phones are ringing off the hook with confused clients.

Jacobs says some ask if they should turn themselves in. Some say they want to apply for the new amnesty law. “Questions for me that indicate that they’ve received some misinformation about the policy. There is no new law,” says Jacobs.

Jacobs, along with the American Immigration Lawyers Association, warn their clients not to be tricked by unscrupulous attorneys or “notarios” who capitalize on the confusion, falsely claiming they can legalize undocumented immigrants.

Critics of the new policy accuse the Obama Administration of acting illegally.

“This is an extra-constitutional act. I mean, I don’t know how else to put it,” says Mark Krikorian, who directs the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that favors tighter immigration controls.

Krikorian says if President Obama wanted to stay these deportations he should have gone through Congress to make a new law. Instead, Krikorian says Obama did an end-run around Congress because he failed to get it to move in immigration reform. “It’s a bridge amnesty, like a bridge loan to legalize them legalize them long enough until the pro-amnesty people can prevail in Congress.”

Legal analysts say the new deportation policy is not amnesty.

Aarti Kohli, Director of Immigration Policy at the UC Berkeley’s Boalt Law School, says the policy has the potential to affect only a small minority of the undocumented immigrants in the US.

“We’re talking 300,000 people, not the estimated 11 million who are in the country. You don’t actually get legalized. You just don’t get deported.”

At any time, the federal government can re-open the deportation cases it stays.

An official with the Department of Homeland Security says they’ve convened a team of 20 lawyers to determine how the process will proceed. The official would not say when the first case would be put on hold or how long it will take to review 300,000 cases.

Meanwhile, Juan says he’s only heard snipits about the policy. He says he used to spend hours pouring over everything he could about immigration reform, the Dream Act, Obama’s campaign promises.

“And, at the end, everything went back to the same. Good old nothing. So, lately, I been like, you know what? I’d rather sit with my little baby girl and read a book with her even if we have to read it over and over again because that’s what she likes to do, than try to look up what’s going on, who’s saying what. For what? ”

Juan prays that immigration laws will change. He still dreams of going to a US college, teaching bilingual math and coaching track.

Read the Transcript
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Marco Werman: It’s almost 10 years since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.  There are countless stories of that day and of the days that followed.  Thousands of lives were lost.  Thousands more were transformed. Here’s one story from a man who used to wait tables at the World Trade Center in New York in a restaurant at the top of tower one, the north tower.

Fekkak Mamdouh: My name is Fekkak Mamdouh and I’m an immigrant, come from Morocco.  And I find a job working at Winds on the World, two floors, 106 and 107 of tower one of the World Trade Center.  It was a good gig you know, people are like, we were family, we were really family.

Werman: Mamdouh was a shop steward for the restaurant union at Windows on the World.  He knew everyone who worked there, often their families too.  On the night of Sept. 10th, Mamdouh and his coworkers worked the dinner shift.

Mamdouh: We come, we serve, people come in from all over…joking, forget the name of one of the waiters that was joking the whole night, an Argentine waiter.  And on Sept. 11th I was sleeping when my sister called me from Italy and she said where are you?  And I said I’m sleeping.  And she said there was a plane that just hit the building.  And I said what?  I wake up and turned the TV [on] and I saw the building where I used to work, it’s in flames.  And I know that if it’s not in the floor that I was working, it’s just below it a little bit, because we are 106, 107.  And I was waiting for our people to go to the roof.  So a helicopter could come and pick them up because that’s what we’ve been told.  Even they told my wife, watch what’s going to happen…people are gonna go on top and a helicopter is gonna come and is gonna try to save some of them. No helicopters come, nobody come to their safety.  So, while I’m waiting for these helicopters to come to pick up my brothers and sisters, that they are stuck there, I saw another plane come in and hit in the second building.  I thought this is not an accident.  This is an act of whatever.  And I was like wow. And being a Muslim I was like I hope it’s not the Muslims.  I hope they’re not gonna put this on us and they’re not gonna blame us.  And I don’t even think about one of us would do any harm to this country because we are American.  I don’t see myself like I’m another alien from another place.  You know, we have kids, we have families and we’re like everybody else you know, we just come to this country late. The next day my job was like, I was outside looking for my brothers and sisters.  The union give me this tag where it said “search team.”  People who punch in and punch out, we don’t have no machines; we don’t know who made it that morning.  We don’t know if somebody called sick, we don’t know. So I went to hospitals.  I went all the way to New Jersey, all the hospitals here and across the river there to New Jersey to just look to see if one of us made it, or one of us in the hospital.  So it took us 3-4 days going all over looking.  We couldn’t find nobody.

Werman: Eventually, after about a week, Mamdouh and his colleagues realized that they’d lost 73 people.  After those long days of searching the demands of everyday life slowly returned; things like grocery shopping.

Mamdouh: I went to this big chain, it’s supermarkets, me and my wife.  And we were shopping, and while we were shopping we were passing by the fish place and we liked to get some fish.  So my wife stand there and the guy did not even pay attention to her.  She called him again and he did not pay attention.  And I told him yo, she’s talking to you.  Then he told me why, because you don’t know what you did?  I said what we did?  He told me well, the World Trade Center.  Then as soon as I heard that it all come up to me and I start screaming at his face.  I told him you just an idiot!  It was so emotional because you know, I lost a good job.  I lost a lot of good, good friends, and I’m blamed over it.

Werman: But Fekkak Mamdouh didn’t have time to stay angry.  350 of his colleagues from Windows on the World were now out of work and in many cases struggling to stay afloat.  He joined up with a partner and set about assisting them.

Mamdouh: So I was like I’m gonna go and find some money, and we’re gonna find some jobs and we’re gonna help those people.

Werman: The result was an advocacy group called the Restaurant Opportunity Center.  In the decade since Sept. 11th it’s expanded its operations to cities across the United States.  But Fekkak Mamdouh’s friends from that morning shift in New York are never far from his mind.  In fact, he says they’re his inspiration.

Mamdouh: It’s tough, it’s really hard, but we know that this is what the 73 people that were lost at Windows on the World would want us to do.  We’re gonna keep doing it.  They are helping us from there.  They are smiling.  They are happy and we’re gonna keep doing it to the last of our lives.

Werman: By the way, the Restaurant Opportunity Center runs its own co-op restaurant in New York called Colors.  A second restaurant is scheduled to open in Detroit Sept. 12th.

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by Ashley Ahearn

Imagine yourself for a moment on the slopes of Washington’s Mt. Rainier, near Puget Sound, one of the highest peaks in the western United States. “We are on the hike to Comet Falls in Mount Rainier national park. We’re looking at a number of cascades that are rushing down a rock canyon and we’re sitting over a wood trail bridge” says Tom Uniack who doesn’t have to imagine it.

As conservation director of the Washington Wilderness Coalition he comes here often. Mt. Rainier National Park is one of the natural jewels of the northwest. And it seems utterly untouched by the changes that have rippled across the US in the years since 9/11. But a bill now pending in Congress could change that.

HR1505, as the bill is called, would allow the Department of Homeland Security to build roads, transmission lines, and security installations on any federally owned land within 100 miles of the US coast or border.

Tom Uniak says that includes national Forests, wilderness areas and National Parks like this one. “The bill is written in a way that all these things, potentially, if seen as part of the national interest or national security, could apply and laws could be exempted.”

Altogether, the bill would allow DHS to override 36 environmental and other laws on these federal lands in the interest of border security, including such bedrock laws as the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.

The idea gives some environmentalists night sweats. But supporters say it just makes sense.

Representative Rob Bishop is the Utah Republican who introduced HR1505: “Wilderness designation in no way should trump border security.” Bishop says current law allows federal land managers to “bully” the US border patrol on public lands. “They can do what they need to do on private property, it’s only on public property that they’re restricted and that is ridiculous. That’s simply asinine.”

US-Canada Border Crossing North of Eureka, MT (Photo: Raymond Hitchcock/Flickr)

“To my belief it’s because 80 percent of the Arizona border with Mexico is federal property, over half of that is wilderness designation, Endangered Species habitat, conservation habitat where the border patrol is limited to the kind of access they have and what they can do,” says Bishop

But opponents of HR1505 say the bill would give unprecedented authority to a single federal agency to ignore environmental laws. Jane Danowitz, of the Pew Environmental Trust in Washington, DC, says there’s a lot more at stake than just the Arizona desert or Mt. Rainier. A huge amount of public land would fall under the bill’s scope.

“We’re talking about some of the nation’s most popular national parks and beaches. Glacier National Park, the Florida everglades, beaches along Cape Cod, the great lakes and the California coastline.” Danowitz says the bill is overkill.

“After 9/11 national security for all the right reasons jumped to the top of America’s priorities but the sweeping waiver of our bedrock environmental laws has little to do with accomplishing that goal.”

What it does have to do with, Danowitz asserts, is a rising anti-environmental movement in Congress. “There’s going to be a lot of things happening this fall in Congress that are under the radar. There are more than 70 provisions that would undo longstanding protections for clean air, clean water, wilderness, endangered species.”

Regardless of the intentions of its sponsors, it’s not just environmentalists who oppose this bill. The very agency that supporters say will benefit the most from HR1505 – Customs and Border Protection – doesn’t want the power it would be given.

When asked about a testimony in July in which the Customs and Border Protection* said it opposes 1505, Congressman Bishop replied: “I will tell you right now privately, when I talk to people who are current Border Patrol personnel as well as those who are retired Border Patrol, they have a different story than this current administration has.”

Along with Representative Bishop, HR1505 has 48 co-sponsors in the House, all Republicans. The bill, which is officially titled the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act, will begin working its way through the House early this fall.

Ashley Ahearn reports for EarthFix, a public media project that explores the environment of the Pacific Northwest.

Hussein Senussi (Photo: Hussein Senussi)

Nizar Senussi (Photo: Nizar Senussi)

It’s been a difficult few months for Libya’s residents – and for relatives in the United States worried about family back home. Host Marco Werman talks to retired doctor Hussein Senussi, who lives in Tripoli, and his son, Nizar Senussi, who’s in Chicago.

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Marco Werman:  I’m Marco Werman and this is The World. Another audio message from Muammar Gaddafi today.  The former Libyan dictator is still in hiding but he’s vowing that Libya  will be engulfed in flames as he and his supporters fight back against the rebels.

[Recording -  translation:  Let it be a long battle.  We will fight from place to place, from city to city, from hill to hill, from mountain to mountain.  Let it be a long battle so we can show them that they cannot rule the Libyan people.  They cannot subjugate our tribes.  Let it be a long battle until our final victory.]

Werman:  Gaddafi’s defiant message was broadcast just a Libya’s rebels, now in control of most of the country, extended their deadline for loyalists to surrender and it came as rebel leaders were hailed as Libya’s new government at an international summit in Paris.  This afternoon Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke to reporters in Paris about the challenges facing Libya now.

Hillary Clinton:  We know from experience that winning a war is no guarantee of winning the peace that follows.  That is why, even as we sought to protect civilians and pressured Gaddafi to step down, we have supported the Libyans as they laid the groundwork for a transition to democracy that is just, inclusive, and sustainable.

Werman:  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking at the Summit on Libya in Paris today.  Libyans have lived through a very difficult six months since the rebellion began in February.  Hopefully the fighting will be over soon but the food shortages, electricity outages, and water supply problems won’t go away over night.  Many Libyans view those as minor issues.  For example, Dr. Hussein Senussi.  He’s a retried physician who lives in the center of Tripoli.

Dr. Hussein Senussi:  We don’t have water for four to six days, the electricity is returning to be normal, obviously it is not perfect but despite that it is a small price we pay for our freedom.

Werman:  Dr. Senussi:  I mean 42 years is a long time for a leader to impose himself on a populations.  Does Gadaffi still instill fear among Libyans?

Senussi:  I think during the six months that the people sat around and couldn’t rode on the street, they in favor of him.  Within one night or two, you can count ten times to twenty times more [xx 00:02:29] so I am very confident that he can do nothing.  The Libyan people has been liberated forever.

Werman:  Well, you’ve been looking at the NATO bombings from your house.  Were you worried at any point, Dr. Senussi?

Senussi:  No, absolutely not because my house is situated directly in the center of Tripoli in Benashu area near what used to be American Embassy and we see the plane and the bomb falling and we are sure that they are very precise and only hitting military targets and when we hear it we know absolutely as a matter of fact, because of the bad he has done to us, we enjoy seeing and hearing what they’re doing.

Werman:  Dr. Senussi, you have family we should note in the United States, both of your twin sons are also doctors in Chicago.  We wondered how they might feel looking at all the TV coverage so we’ve got your son, Dr. Nizar Sunessi on the phone with us too.  Nizar, what concerns have most preoccupied you about what’s going on in Libya right now?

Nizar Senussi:  Well initially in the beginning of the revolution obviously it was frustration and fear and anxiety but right now at the moment I could say I’m absolutely 100% relieved.

Werman:  Are you tempted to go to Libya to help out?

Nizar:  Yes, maybe in the next coming months possibly but at the same time, I’m here, I’m basically here on a mission.  I’ve come to the United States to pursue post-graduate medical training and I think if I bear the course and finish what I came here to do and come back I’ll be much more useful to our society because we basically see ourselves as the building blocks of Libya and the youth and the young professionals.  I mean we owe it to our country because now is where the hard part starts.

Werman:  And let me turn that question around and put it to your father, Hussein Senussi.  You got your PhD at the University of Alabama and practiced medicine for awhile before going back to Libya.  Was it ever tempting, in the last six months especially, to leave Libya and get away from the potential danger?

Senussi:  No, absolutely not!  As a matter of fact, to tell you that my daughter has been born in the United States in Alabama and we received a very kind call from the American Embassy telling us if she wants to go to United States and I asked my daughter and my wife and we said, “No, we stay in our home in our country.  We want freedom.  We will not flee out.  We will stay here even if we are killed.”

Werman:  You know, we’ve heard various reports about the rebels love of the United States.  Is that true is it kind of wishful thinking here on the part of Americans?

Senussi:  No, it is true.  It is true.  We like the people and the government of the United States for the help they give us because we are sure without this help we would not have succeeded our revolution and the groups saying that United States and NATO want something comical and your policy can enter this, it is not the true, it cannot stand in front of the scientific facts.

Werman:  Nazir Senussi, what sort of country do you think will emerge from all of this?  Your Libya, what’s it going to look like?

Nazir:  My vision of Libya in the future, I see it as a democratic country with modern Islamic mindset.  I see a very progressive country and I see it as almost like a bridge between the east and the west.  I mean American with their invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, etc. it’s somewhat their reputation has been marred in the Mideast but I think that with what they did with Libya it kind of mended what happened.  I mean like the impact you have between Arabs and Americans, I think that is kind of like going to be our bridge and I think it’s going to be the beginning of a prosperous relationship between the West.

Werman:  And Hussein Senussi, in Tripoli, what do you see coming into the future for Libya?

Senussi:  It will be with what happened in Libya now, we will certainly have a democracy, just equality for everybody, opportunity for everybody, and a good relation balance on interest and on comprehension with all of the country who helped us like United States, Britain, and France.  Certainly I will say to you the Libyan keep a particular place for America because they started to help us and for France because they prevented the bloodshed which has been almost a few hours will be done in Benghazi if France were not intervene.  So my vision of Libya will be really a democratic, will be a bridge like my son said between the old idea and new idea and we will have cooperation and we are glad with what happened up to now.

Werman:  Dr. Hussein Senussi, a retired doctor in Tripoli, and his son Dr. Nazir Senussi who’s in Chicago.  Thanks to both of you indeed for your time.

Nazir:  Thank you very much.

Senussi:  Thank you.

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What of Glen Beck who likened Breivik’s victims at a political summer camp to the Hitler Youth? And what might the late Stieg Larsson have thought about this?

This week’s pod attempts to answer some of these questions with a series of reports and interviews culled from the BBC and the Big Show.

Among those featured: Nottingham University’s, Matthew Goodwin who studies fascist groups; former Norwegian diplomat Jan Egeland; Andrew Silke who advises the United Nations on terrorism and has written The Psychology of Counter-terrorism; Nick Fraser who edits the BBC’s Storyville series of international documentaries and wrote The Voice of Modern Hatred, a book about the far right in Europe.

And two more people, each with interesting back stories: Maajid Nawaz, who co-founded the UK-based think tank Quilliam which studies Islamic extremism. Nawaz himself was a self-confessed Islamic extremist: for 13 years, he was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir. Hizb ut-Tahrir is a global group dedicated to uniting Muslim countries in a caliphate governed by Islamic law.

Lastly, there is Lars Gule of Oslo University College. In the wake of the Norwegian atrocity, he was interviewed by many news organizations including the BBC piece that’s in the podcast. Gule tracks right wing extremists in Scandinavia, and believes that he was in communication via web chat with Anders Breivik. The Big Show also interviewed Gule, but decided against broadcasting the interview because of concerns about Gule’s own past.

In the 1970s, Gule spent several months in a Lebanese prison after being convicted of illegal possession of weapons. The weapons were explosives. Gule was carrying them on behalf of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The intended targets were Israelis.

When asked, Gule was happy confirm these details with us; he’s not trying to hide anything. But it seemed awkward and distracting to have him analyze violent extremism in his own country when he himself had been convicted in part because of his own link to violent extremism in another country. A counter argument might be that Gule, like Maajid Nawaz, has a special insight into such activities. With that in mind, I decided to run the BBC’s interview with Gule. It’s a pity that the interview itself doesn’t make note of Gule’s past.

To round things off, we have a profile of New York-based Ghanaian rapper Blitz the Ambassador. When he moved to the US, Blitz didn’t need to learn English; it’s widely spoken in Ghana. But he says he did have to “learn the lingo of rap.” Which makes Blitz a linguistic as well as a musical ambassador.

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In a class, provided by the International Institute of New Hampshire, about half a dozen ethnic Nepalese refugees try out some English phrases for a doctor’s appointment. The agency helps refugees find jobs, locate apartments and enroll their children in school. William Gillette, who chairs the agency’s board, claims refugees are making new lives here. “Under any definition, the refugees are better here, than they were, where they were coming from,” he said.

But Manchester Alderman Pat Long disagrees. “You know what, that’s a nice sound bite, but I don’t accept that,” Long said. He said that some refugees in the city are living in terrible conditions. He described the bedroom of one nine-year-old boy he visited. “There was a mural on the wall of blood from bed bugs being squashed. It’s lines, there were 200, 500 lines of bed bugs, when he squish it, he would drag it, and there were lines of blood on the guy’s wall. It’s stuck in my head forever.”

Manchester Alderman Pat Long in his neighborhood in downtown Manchester. (Photo: Dan Gorenstein)

Emile Hakizimana arrived last fall from Burundi with his wife and three children. He said he’s struggling to find work in this economy.

Hakizimana said he has a big problem because he doesn’t have money, but has bills and rent to pay. When asked about his future, he said he doesn’t know where he will be.

Hakizimana’s story isn’t unusual, said Maggie Fogarty, a refugee advocate with the American Friends Service Committee. “Refugees are being placed into poverty. There are refugees who have been here five, six, seven years and cannot earn their own income to live independently, which is what they want to do. There are refugees who are passing through the school system with their language needs unattended to. We are not doing a good enough job.”

Emile Hakizimana and his three children in Manchester. (Photo: Dan Gorenstein)

And neither does Suraj Budathoki, who came to the US three years ago. He said a moratorium would hurt his family. “My parents are still in Nepal. And they are probably coming here in September or October. So do you think I like moratorium? No.”

Manchester on its own cannot enforce a moratorium; that authority rests with the State Department. In the last decade, more than a half a dozen cities have called for some kind of resettlement slowdown. And in only two cases did the State Department restrict placement at all.

Lavinia Limon heads the U.S. Committee of Refugees and Immigrants, the agency that oversees the contract to resettle people in Manchester. She said people need to understand the only refugees who are being resettled in the city have family there, so a moratorium doesn’t make sense. “We can put those people someplace else. And then they will come there on their own to be with their family. Just like you or I would. So we think it’s better to do it initially and have the funds with their resettlement, rather than put them in Indiana and have them show up two weeks later.”

Everyone from the State Department on down agrees refugees need more resources to get on their feet. But Limon knows, at a time when Congress is embroiled in a nasty debate on paying off the nation’s debt, the refugee issue is way down the totem pole.

Parts of a tough new immigration law went into effect Friday in Georgia. It’s the latest instance of a US state seeking to make it harder for illegal immigrants to live and work within its borders.

Earlier this week, a federal judge blocked some of the law’s provisions. But other parts of the legislation are now being enforced, such as the one that makes it a felony to use false information when applying for a job.

The new law is already impacting Georgia industries that rely on undocumented workers.

(photo: Kristian Weatherspoon)

Rojas said there used to be 75 workers here, but now there are only 40 and that some migrant workers who came from Florida left after just one day. They were scared, she said, of the new Georgia law.

But Rojas, who herself is undocumented, plans on staying in the state even with the new law.

“I got all my babies here, they grow up, they marry,” Rojas said. “I’ve got five grandbabies. Here is my life.”

Georgia Governor Nathan Deal signed House Bill 87 into law right when the blackberries were ready to be harvested. At the bill’s signing in mid-May, Deal said his aim was to deal with an issue being ignored by the federal government, and to help his state during tough economic times.

“With an illegal population that is estimated to be almost 500,000, the collective financial cost to our educational, health care, and correctional infrastructure is in the billions,” Deal said.

(photo: Kristian Weatherspoon)

“So what we’ve seen is about a 30 percent loss in that labor force, so we’re looking at a 200 to $250 million loss potentially,” Tolar said.

Gary Paulk give me a tour of his blackberry farm where piles of berries rot on the ground. Paulk is one of the owners of the family-run farm where Rojas picks blackberries. He said he’s lost about $200,000 this blackberry season mainly because of Georgia’s new law.

But what bothers Paulk more than his financial loss, is how the law is punitive.

“Having a fake ID, a first-time offense can be up to 10 years, and $100,000 fine,” Paulk said. “I mean that’s, that’s like a felony. A felony to use a fake id to get a job to support your family.”

And what drove many workers to not come to Paulk’s fields this blackberry season is a fear that police would have increased power in immigration matters.

Javier Guerrero, a contractor who recruits workers for the farm, had a really hard time finding any migrant workers this year. Guerrero even went to Florida to try and recruit.

“I went to three or four places over there, and I don’t bring not even one,” he said. “A few call me when they find out about how the law was going to be here, they scared, they don’t come.”

(photo: Kristian Weatherspoon)

“Well, I think the damage, in my opinion, has already been done, because there’s so much hearsay, you know,” he said.

The blackberry harvesting season is almost over. Now it’s on to muscadine grapes. Paulk’s curious to see how many workers he’ll get to pick them later this summer. The grapes are his main crop.

The International Organization for Migration estimates a million people have poured out of Libya alone since the uprising began. Almost all of them stay in neighboring countries such as Tunisia, but thousands have headed north to Europe in search of stability and a better life.

They haven’t got any official papers, no money and the only roof over their heads is full of holes. But the migrants who have traveled thousands of miles to get to Calais still grasp at shreds of dignity. So Thursday, they are trying to clean the derelict buildings they are living in – in the only way possible.

Five men surround a huge pile of burning garbage, trying to control the flames and avoid the acrid smoke. Plastic bottles and bags, scraps of filthy clothing, broken furniture leftover from months of living in squalor are now turning to ash.

“Africa House” is the unofficial name for the former factory where between 100 and 200 people are squatting.

Even with Thursday’s housecleaning, much of the space is still filled with rubbish.
Areas are divided according to nationality. Eritreans, Somalians, Sudanese are grouped close to each other.

At lunchtime, though, everyone gathers together near the port. A long line forms next to a kiosk where volunteers hand out small portions of pasta and a baguette wrapped in plastic. It is not standard French cuisine, but it is food and it disappears quickly.

After finishing his meal, Yohanes sips a cup of coffee and talks to friends. He has been in Calais for two months, trying to make it just a few more miles across the English Channel into Britain.

He admits he has tried to cross the channel five or six times but he has not been lucky, because he was caught by the border police as he tried to stowaway inside a truck.

Yohanes knows it is dangerous. Some people have died after hiding inside trucks.
Still, he says he is not afraid to try even if he risks dying.
.
“Yeah, because it’s no different,” he said. “I’m dying here as well. I’m dying here.”

Yohanes had been living and working in Libya after making the difficult journey from Eritrea years before, but when the uprising started, Yohanes decided to make a risky voyage across the Mediterranean in a rickety boat.

“It’s difficult to survive,” he said. “Even before the war we are not living a good situation. But you can live you can survive. But when they start fight so that’s so difficult to live in Libya so you don’t live, you don’t have choice.”

There are thousands like Yohanes. Since the beginning of the year, the International Organization for Migration estimates about 42,000 people crossed into Italy and Malta by boat. That is more than in all of the previous peak year in 2008.

The few who come as far north as Calais say they are trying to get to Britain because they don’t speak French or because they have relatives there.

In early June, the British minister responsible for domestic security toured a special screening area at the Calais port where immigration officers use sniffer dogs and motion detectors to catch illegal stowaways hiding inside trucks.

The day Theresa May visited, Buster the dog found and arrested one man. May says the numbers of illegal migrants trying to break in to Britain is way down from years past, but the issue is so politically sensitive; May is not letting down her guard.

“And we’re looking to build on our cooperation with the French in terms of dealing with illegal immigration — people coming through Calais,” May said. “What we want to do is secure our borders, that’s what the new coalition government is working on.”

May’s comments underscore how touchy immigration is; not just for Britain but for all European countries. For the migrants though, there’s little chance of going back either to north Africa or to the countries where they were born; countries that are also wracked by violence and rights abuses.

Another Eritean man who worked in Libya for two years says in the weeks after fighting broke out, rebels accused him of being a mercenary fighting for Gadaffi.

He says he feared they were going to kill him.

Standing by the side of the road, his eyes shift toward the trucks heading for the port. He hopes one of them will eventually carry him to a new life, far away from the violence in Libya.

Immigration office in Liberia (Photo: Abdulai Bah)

The Obama Administration has deported record numbers of immigrants, some 393,000 in 2009. And Congress has yet to take up immigration reform.

So it appears that the immigration system will remain broken for a while. The impact on the US has been widely documented and debated. There’s been less focus on the impact on those who are deported.

Many deportees in the West African nation of Liberia, for example, are doing jail time, regardless of why they were sent back.

That’s what happened to Moriba Camara.

It’s the day after a big soccer match in Monrovia and at a local video club where many gathered to watch the game; the dusty wooden floor is littered with trash. Camara spends his afternoon sweeping up beer cans and soda bottles.

This is the only work that Moriba Camara can find in Monrovia, and it doesn’t even pay. The video club owner gives Camara a room in return for cleaning.

“Since I was released from the prison in Zwedru up to this present moment my life is just getting tough, tough, every day hard times,” he said.

Criminal

Camara cannot find a paying job because he said people see him as a criminal. After he was kicked out of the US, the Liberian government automatically incarcerated Camara on his return to Monrovia in 2008. And the government made sure to let people know that the deportees might be dangerous.

“I’ve been running after jobs all over but there’s nobody to give me a job because if I go in the community people are pointing at me,” he said. “And saying ‘this is the criminal that was brought from America.’ So people are afraid of me.”

Moriba Camara (photo: Abdulai Bah)

His nightmare began on the flight out of the US where he said Immigration and Customs Enforcement kept him shackled the entire flight.

“They just tied me up with the handcuff, you know, like a kind of a rope that tied me up with my hands by side. And they tied my legs that I don’t move freely.”

When Moriba Camara returned to Liberia, officials sent all the arriving deportees straight to jail in Zwedru, a city more then 300 miles from the capital Monrovia. Eric Mullbah, the director of prisons in the Ministry of Justice, said that when deportees arrive from the US, the presumption is that they are criminals.

Alarming for the Community

“A respected state, like the USA, is telling you that these guys are hard core criminals, that they have been involved in drug trafficking, that they been involved in theft, armed robbery and the like,” Mullbah said. “If you were to hear such, it’s alarming for the community.”

So Mullbah said the government has to hold all deportees until it can determine if they are safe to release.

Moriba Camara said that may be so, but he claimed his imprisonment for an undetermined length of time and without access to a lawyer was excessively harsh.

“The whole day we are locked up, whole night we are locked up. No access to go to recreation, nothing,” he said. “It got me sick, and when I got sick I tried to talk to the prison director to talk to them to take me to the hospital, but they said no, and didn’t take me to the hospital. I got dysentery.”

It took months for the Liberian government to confirm that Camara had not committed any crime in the US, that he’d only been denied asylum.

Electricity is still sporadic in Monrovia, making the use of generators crucial to getting anything done. But with the high price of gas, running a generator is limited to government buildings, some businesses and places like the video club when there’s a big soccer game on. So given these many basic infrastructure challenges for the Sirleaf-Johnson government, dealing with deportees from the US may be a low priority.

Meantime Camara continues looking for work as he struggles to eek out a living.

The Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute provided travel support for this story.

By Alex Collins

(Photo: Jamison Wieser)

Unlike heterosexuals with foreign partners, federal law prohibits Eric from sponsoring Angel for a green card. Without the option to marry, gay bi-national couples face tough choices. Either leave the United States – or spend your life evading authorities.

As we drive in Schnabel’s car, he explains to me that the couple have become experts at maintaining a low profile.

“You know we had to essentially pack up our whole life and move to somewhere else where immigration wouldn’t find Angel,” he said.

I asked Schnabel if they really had to live off the grid evading the authorities.

“Yes – so in a lot of ways were basically living were living an underground life,” he said. “You know we moved apartments. You now cut out some friends who we couldn’t trust sharing information and moved somewhere else … and tried to erase Angel from the system so he couldn’t be found.”

One step ahead

The stress of keeping one step ahead of immigration doesn’t make their relationship easy. Eric knows from talking to straight friends that all Americans face challenges in sponsoring their partners, regardless of sexual orientation. But for gay couples it’s worse.

Cara Jobson, an immigration lawyer in San Francisco, finds it galling that her straight clients can go to a courthouse, get married, and breeze through the immigration process.

“It’s a daily stark contrast,” Jobson said. “When someone comes into our office with a same sex partner and they want to file for a green card for that person we have to tell them no that they can’t. When an opposite sex couple comes in and a US citizen wants to file for their spouse we file and we have the green card in about three months.”

When American Liza Fulton saw that all legal avenues were closed to keep her British partner in the US – she felt she had no choice but to move to the United Kingdom – a country that legally recognizes same sex couples.

After four years the couple split. Fulton says that being forced to move for the relationship was a major factor in the break-up. Like many other bi-national couples, Fulton’s demands are simple – to be given the legal option to sponsor a same sex foreign partner. She doesn’t care about a ceremony.

“I was never concerned with gay marriage per say,” Fulton said. “I was just concerned with being able to live in the US with my partner from Britain. And there was no legal way to sponsor her. There were only illegal paths and we weren’t willing to do that. Unlike straight people who can just get married – I wasn’t allowed to get married – and I couldn’t sponsor her there was just no avenue.

Hope

But lately Fulton and others have had reason to hope … when the Obama administration decided not to defend the “Defense of Marriage Act,” or DOMA. For a short time, immigration officials didn’t automatically reject green card applications from same-sex couples.

But James Edwards, from the Center for Immigration Studies, says it’s unfair for the Obama administration to create a special pathway for gay Americans to work around immigration law. He says that right now marriage forms the backbone of immigration policy – and that American voters have been very clear about who they think should be entitled to get married.

“Every time there’s been a vote put to the people the states have always upheld Ddefense of Marriage, have always enacted their own defences of marriage and things like that,” Edwards said. “So the answer is pretty clear it’s not something that the US is ready for.”

Looking exasperated in his car, Eric tells me that he has heard this argument before.
But he says neither he nor Liza are pushing for a change in the law on gay marriage. But they do want same-sex bi-national couples to be able to make the same choices about where they live as straight couples do when planning for their future.