http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/ A product of the Medill News Service, ImmHT provides a cross-national perspective on immigration, enhancing exposure to world affairs for Americans, providing public space to air compelling stories about diaspora populations, and serving as a repository of facts and figures in an arena of often misleading information. en Copyright 2008 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.5/ Fri, 09 May 2008 11:27:43 -0600 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss BY ELISA MIGNOT, SCIENCES PO, SPECIAL TO THE MEDILL NEWS SERVICE "We were living in a truck when the Americans attacked," said the man in a low and shaky voice. "We hid behind the driver's seat." He was perched on a chair in the refugee service of Amnesty International in Paris, recounting his odyssey with his wife and three children from Iraq to France. His name is Yeshar, he is an Iraqi Kurd from Baghdad and he said he faces sure death if he has to go home. "We went all the way to Istanbul," he continued. "We stayed there http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2008/05/post_15.php http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2008/05/post_15.php Feature Stories Fri, 09 May 2008 11:27:43 -0600 BY ELISE BARTHET, SCIENCES PO, SPECIAL TO THE MEDILL NEWS SERVICE We stopped the car at an anonymous-looking building just outside Beirut that nearly disappeared behind an enormous yellow billboard. A blue drawing covers half the space of the ad. It pictures an Asian woman in an apron shyly proffering a tray of tea. Her look is submissive, the message eloquent. Even to customers who cannot read Arabic. Inside, the manager of the company, the Manco Group, is all business, seated in front of an empty desk. A brisk offer of coffee to the visitors, then, she plunges into a http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2008/05/by_elise_barthet_sciences_po.php http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2008/05/by_elise_barthet_sciences_po.php Lebanon Mon, 05 May 2008 09:52:53 -0600 BY ALEXANDER KNETIG, SCIENCES PO, SPECIAL TO THE MEDILL NEWS SERVICE Carera always rents a donkey from his friends A lonely man is crossing the Savannah in his wooden horse cart, hand-painted in red, yellow and green, the national colous of Senegal. In this wide emptiness burned by the torrid Sahel sun, his unhurried whistling is the only sound one can hear within a radius of several kilometers. Albert Carera left his hometown of Louga three hours earlier to amble slowly to his farm, located near the River Senegal more than 300 kilometers north of Dakar, close to the border http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2008/05/by_alexander_knetig_sciences_p.php http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2008/05/by_alexander_knetig_sciences_p.php Paris Dispatches Mon, 05 May 2008 08:56:27 -0600 BY MITCHELL WU, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE Photos by Mitch Wu Undocumented migrant praying Calais, France Neither of us can speak Arabic, but Ashraf knows enough English to get through to us. "I want to tell [the world] that they should help us," he says. "We cannot stay here." Every evening, at this empty loading dock in Calais, France, charity workers bring him and dozens of other refugees food and tea. The weather here is wet and colder than Paris. With winter approaching, it's only getting worse. Ashraf is still a teenager, but like all the others we talk to, he http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2008/04/no_heaven_on_earth.php http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2008/04/no_heaven_on_earth.php Feature Stories Tue, 08 Apr 2008 10:03:43 -0600 BY MATTHEW RUSLING, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE Just as there is a pizza shop or deli on every corner in New York City, so too there is there sex for sale almost everywhere you look in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. On the infamous street no. 63, customers meander nonchalantly in and out of local brothels located between busy coffee shops blasting music at ear-rupturing levels even at 9:30 a.m. School-aged girls on this street help out in cafés while classes are in session not far away, or just linger around watching bikini-clad, writhing Asian women on blaring flat-screen TVs. As a middle-aged http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2008/03/cambodias_vietnamese_community.php http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2008/03/cambodias_vietnamese_community.php Feature Stories Mon, 24 Mar 2008 20:05:43 -0600 BY PETER HOLDERNESS, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE [to the photo essay, "Portraits of Atletico, Louisiana"] Men from El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico approach a contractor's truck looking for day work in Kenner, Lousiana. Fernando Saucedo crossed the U.S.-Mexico border on July 4, 2005, headed for Houston. The farmer from Zacatecas joined a constant stream of Mexicans, Central and South Americans who look north for work and wages. Two months later, Hurricane Katrina crossed the Caribbean into New Orleans, bursting precarious levees to flood large swaths of the historic city and changing the fate of tens of thousands of long-rooted residents and http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2008/03/nuevo_new_orleans_latino_immig.php http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2008/03/nuevo_new_orleans_latino_immig.php Feature Stories Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:30:30 -0600 BY MATT RUSLING, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE After a decade long war, many of Sierra Leone's war wounded still slog through life, depending on handouts for survival. These two companion stories contrast the life of one amputee who has made it to the U.S. with the lives of his counterparts - disabled people who are left struggling for survival in his native Sierra Leone. [to companion story - Sierra Leone's amputees: A refugee in Chicago] Photos: Matt Rusling Surviving: Mohome Sankoh (middle) lost his leg to a machete-wielding female soldier when he was in his mid-teens. Mohome Sankoh, 19, whose leg http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2008/01/amputees_in_sierra_leone.php http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2008/01/amputees_in_sierra_leone.php Feature Stories Tue, 08 Jan 2008 10:39:33 -0600 BY MRINALINI REDDY, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE [to the sidebar story, "Scramble for Africa: Asian inroads into East Africa"] Debolina and Prashant Choudhary are recent transplants in Kampala, raising their two-year-old daughter. A family friend Goswami Debarata, from Calcutta, has been a resident for about ten years and plans to go back in a few years. Debolina Choudhary had been married only a few weeks when she left Calcutta to join her husband Prashant, who had relocated to Kampala four months earlier. Neither had visited the bustling capital city of Uganda, let alone Africa. Yet, this country, that threw out its http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2007/11/asians_in_uganda.php http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2007/11/asians_in_uganda.php Feature Stories Thu, 01 Nov 2007 07:13:59 -0600 BY JESSICA BERNSTEIN-WAX, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE [an earlier version of this story was published by the Associated Press in February 2007, and ran in dozens of news outlets around the world, including the International Herald Tribune] Milagros Vacas Arlandis had three biological children of her own and a demanding job as a medical doctor, but something was missing. For 10 years, she and her husband, Jose Antonio Revilla, had wanted to adopt a child, but long waits and complicated legal maneuverings made adopting within their native Spain virtually impossible. "My husband and I always wanted to provide a home for http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2007/09/post_14.php http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2007/09/post_14.php Feature Stories Fri, 07 Sep 2007 12:17:01 -0600 BY EMRE PEKER, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE [to the companion interview with Gunay Evinch, "The changing role of Young Turks in the U.S."] Serdar Özenalp arrived in Charlottesville, Va., around midnight after a 20-hour journey from Istanbul, Turkey. He hailed a cab with two friends who were also about to begin their undergraduate studies at the University of Virginia and drove south on Route 29 to University Circle, where he stayed at the cozy International House. It was August 1998 and it was hot. Eser Turan took a 24-hour trip from Istanbul to San Francisco. An African-American couple she met on http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2007/08/emre_pekers_story_on_turkey.php http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2007/08/emre_pekers_story_on_turkey.php Feature Stories Thu, 23 Aug 2007 15:17:20 -0600 BY MATT RUSLING, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE [to lead story, "Re-educating North Koreans in South Korea"] North Korea's state of impoverishment has spawned a steadily increasing influx of refugees into South Korea, from about ten a year in the early '90s to 1,894 in 2004 (and a 45.7 percent increase from 2003), according to the Korean Ministry of Unification, a government agency that promotes peace between the two Koreas. Currently, the ministry puts the number of North Koreans living in South Korea at 6,000. Estimates of the number in China vary widely from 60,000 to 200,000. The number slogging their way http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2007/08/matts_korea_sidebar_updated.php http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2007/08/matts_korea_sidebar_updated.php Feature Stories Wed, 22 Aug 2007 09:34:59 -0600 BY MATT RUSLING, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE [to the sidebar story, "The Perilous Road to Seoul"] Dong Seok Kim shows the scars inflicted by North Korean authorities Photo: Matthew Rusling With longish hair, strategically torn jeans, and a thin frame wrapped in a blue sweatshirt, Dong Seok Kim easily blends in with any crowd of twenty-something Seoulites amid the noisy clutter of the city's shops, restaurants and cafes. But lifting his shirt to reveal the scars inflicted by North Korean security officers, his origins as a Northerner become glaringly apparent. Kim, whose name is an alias used to protect relatives in http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2007/08/matts_korea_story_updated.php http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2007/08/matts_korea_story_updated.php Feature Stories Wed, 22 Aug 2007 09:33:13 -0600 BY ALEXANDRA STEIGRAD, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE [this story was originally published by Reuters on April 29, 2007, and ran in dozens of news outlets around the world, including Washingtonpost.com, Boston.com and NYTimes.com] to the companion story "'I have to do this.' Moroccan to have hymen resewn" Sitting in a cafe near the Champs Elysees, the 26-year-old French-born woman of Algerian descent looks like any other Parisian. But two months ago, she did something none of her friends have done. She had her hymen re-sewn, technically making her a virgin again. "I'm glad I had it done," said the woman, who http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2007/07/muslim_women_in_france_regain.php http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2007/07/muslim_women_in_france_regain.php Feature Stories Tue, 31 Jul 2007 14:54:22 -0600 BY SETARREH MASSIHZADEGAN, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE Magdi is different from the other four million Iraqi refugees who have been displaced since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. That he has survived a kidnapping in which he was left for dead may not make him distinct. Magdi was born in Egypt and has returned there with his family. But it is the fact that his children attend Egyptian public school that he and his friends consider miraculous. For Iraqis who have fled their war-ridden country to seek a secure life in Egypt, accessing education for their children is of high priority. An http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2007/07/post_13.php http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2007/07/post_13.php Feature Stories Tue, 24 Jul 2007 07:35:50 -0600 BY ERIN GOLDEN, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE An earlier version of this article appeared in The Irish Times on May 30, 2007. Child of Sarajevo Zlata Filipovic, author of Zlata's Diary Photograph: The Irish Times Zlata Filipovic's childhood was ruined by war in her native Sarajevo, but her diary provided an escape and was published to great acclaim. Now living in Ireland, she has become a leading humanitarian voice, writes Erin Golden Zlata Filipovic doesn't make five-year plans. Perhaps she would have, if life had been different: if there'd been no war, no diary, no MTV appearances, if the ordinary life http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2007/06/breaking_the_siege.php http://www.immigrationhereandthere.org/2007/06/breaking_the_siege.php Feature Stories Fri, 01 Jun 2007 08:49:30 -0600