By Cory Bennett

As Ruddy Mirabal remembered it, he had a few hours to kill before a night class in April 2010. So he got in his cousin’s car not knowing where they were going.

When they made a pit stop in Hoboken, N.J., his cousin handed Mirabal something to hold.

It was cocaine. They were quickly arrested by undercover police and Mirabal said he was unknowingly caught up in a drug deal by his cousin.

Nineteen months later, this one night led to a felony cocaine possession conviction and the deportation of Mirabal, 21, back to the Dominican Republic, a country he left behind when he was 8 years old.

For Mirabal, the day was simply a blur.

“Everything was happening so fast and all I could think was, ‘Get me out, get me out, get me out,’” said Mirabal, sitting in the Essex County Correctional Facility, in an interview before his deportation.

As an immigrant without permanent residency, Mirabal’s aggravated felony charge was classified as a “Level 1” offense, resulting in a permanent ban from the United States.

His supporters hoped to reverse the decision citing that he the first student in New York State to earn his high school diploma in jail. But Mirabal was deported on Nov. 15, 2011.

A Supreme Court ruling last year set the precedent for pleas being vacated if immigrants were not properly informed of the possibility of deportation.

“Ineffective assistance of counsel is grounds to reopen a plea,” said Camille Mackler, an immigration attorney who represented Mirabal at his last two deportation hearings.

Mirabal is part of a growing number of immigrants with criminal convictions deported by immigration officials.

In 2008, convicted criminals deported made up just 31 percent of overall deportees. Through July of 2011, convicted criminals composed over half of all deportees. Of these convicted criminals, 26 percent fall into the “Level 1” category, which includes aggravated felonies, major drug offenses, national security crimes and violent crimes.

Mackler isn’t sure how Mirabal came to the attention of immigration authorities, but said there was a good chance it was through the Secure Communities program. The program, in rapid expansion around the country since 2008, directs local law enforcement to pass along the fingerprints of all criminals to the federal government, where the prints are checked with the FBI’s database to determine their owner’s immigration status.

Immigration officials have credited the program for the increase in overall deportations, but Secure Communities been come under fire from organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, as an unlawful form of detention.

But after three video conference immigration hearings in late September and early November, Mirabal got the deportation order. Mackler noted there were no legal grounds to fight the order. Their only hope, she said, was for immigration officials to grant a deferred action. They could exercise discretion and choose not to enforce a deportation order due to a variety of circumstances. For instance, judges have recently granted deferred action for undocumented immigrants attending college in the United States.

But Mirabal’s case was criminal and more complicated.

His cousin — who is a citizen and will eventually be released from jail— wrote a letter in July corroborating Mirabal’s story that he did not know he was holding cocaine.

“[Mirabal] had nothing to do with my dealings,” Tavarez wrote. “I acted alone and brought him along, which was a terrible mistake and I’m paying for it now and he doesn’t deserve this harsh consequence for my action.”

Mirabal’s permanent residency application was pending at the time he pleaded guilty to the charges. But the conviction made him ineligible to stay in the United States.

“I wanted him to graduate by June,” she said, so he could walk with the rest of his class in two months.

Previously, inmates had only been able to receive their General Equivalency Degree — a series of five exams to certify high-school level achievement — while incarcerated.

Mirabal got the diploma, but not the walk.

Instead, his case fell into delays and he was soon put into deportation hearings.

On Nov. 13, Mirabal was told to pack his bags and get set for a 3 a.m. departure in two days. He told his mom first.

“It felt like the whole world was coming down,” said his mother, Irma Calderon, using her son, Carlos Manuel, as an interpreter. “I didn’t eat well or sleep well for a while. Oh it’s the worst feeling you could have in your gut.”

Mirabal braced himself to face a country he barely remembered.

“I remember riding a bike down a hill and falling and that’s about it,” Mirabal said of his memories of the Dominican Republic, which he left with his mother and two younger brothers thirteen years ago. His older brother joined the family last year. His father is a U.S. citizen living in Brooklyn.

Mirabal’s story and endearing personality motivated people to lobby on his behalf. He’s often described as earnest, strong and optimistic. The security guard at Essex County Correctional Facility, where he is being held currently, noted, “Ruddy’s got a long visitor list.”

Kupferstein read the phrases written across the backs of some of the 35 letters that Mirabal sent her while incarcerated: “I’ll not fail you or give up. Take Care. Be safe. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

Mirabal’s athletic build fills out his green prison suit. He’s a former amateur boxer and claims to have “hops.” He’s gotten three tattoos in jail: his mother’s name across his chest, his initials on his arm and a five-point star with the number three in the middle, representing himself as the third of five brothers. He has a quick smile and holds eye contact describing them.

“My mom was terrified when I first showed her,” he said, laughing. “We’re very honest with each other.”

The New York State Leadership Council, an organization that advocates for access to education for the children of immigrants, circulated a petition and encouraged people to phone Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano regarding Mirabal’s case. Local businessman Daryl Thomas offered Mirabal a job with window supplier Window Master in New York City upon his release. Kupferstein wrote to everyone from local politicians to Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor about Mirabal.

“He was so thankful for the opportunity,” Kupferstein said, adding that Mirabal continued to ask for books she recommended after getting his diploma. She ordered two from Amazon for him. “It excited him because he thought he would be out,” she said.

If released, he hoped to attend a New York city college, Mirabal said. To get a jump, he applied to take college courses at Hudson County Correctional Facility after getting his diploma, but was transferred before he could start.

“I’ve always liked math,” Mirabal said, recalling a time where he befuddled a teacher by solving a problem on the board with a different procedure than the one in the book. “It just works in my head. No one else may understand it when I explain it, but it works.”

Before leaving the United States, Mirabal had only vague ideas of his next move. Maybe a college two hours outside of the capital, Santo Domingo, where he could continue his pursuit of a career in computer engineering. He considers himself quite the amateur hacker. But he couldn’t remember the school’s name, isn’t sure what city he would fly in to or even where he would spend his first night.

“The worst part is not knowing what’s going to happen,” he said at the time.

Several weeks after his deportation, he had only answered some of these questions. He was staying with an aunt he had down there, according to his mother. College was out of the question, she said. The Dominican Republic couldn’t offer him financial aid and the tuition was out of his price range. Instead, Mirabal was looking to parlay his dual language skills into a job as a translator.

“He feels bored over there,” Calderon said. “Everything is so different to him.”

She hopes to visit Mirabal next April, she said, to show him a familiar face and deliver the same message that was her parting words to her son before he left.

“Someday, something good will come of this,” she told him. “This isn’t the end. Something good come.”

By Lilian Tse

At a young age, Hala Deeb loved to argue with others and her parents knew that she was destined to be a lawyer. Deeb enrolled in law school at the Amman Arab University in Jordan and she distinctly remembers a moment that made her passionate about women’s rights. During one of her criminal law classes, the topic was on rape.

“The male students did not want any of the female students to join the class because it would make it awkward for them to ask honest questions. I refused to comply with this. If I have a client in the future who is raped, what will I do if I don’t attend this class?” she asked.

Deeb ignored her male classmates, got permission from the professor and sat in the class. There was only one other female student who was willing to stay in the class with her. Deeb realized that it was crucial for her to stand up for women’s rights in the Arab region. Standing up for women’s rights is about defending her own rights, she said.

Today, Deeb is a human rights activist helping to fight discrimination and violence against women in Arab countries. She works at the Jordanian Women’s Union that is based in Jordon, and collaborates with local NGOs in Egypt, Lebanon, and Morocco.  Deeb explained that female workers from poorer neighboring countries often leave their children at a young age and move to Jordon for work. “Many women get smuggled into Jordan with promises to have jobs in restaurants or hotels But when they arrive, they are forced into the sex trade and their families never find them,” she said.

The women who become domestic workers do not have a much better fate. Domestic workers only earn $200 a month and are often subject to a lot of violence and hard labor since they are exempt from local labor laws. The most difficult part about helping trafficked women is that the perpetrators are usually part of a large powerful global organization. Human trafficking is the world’s third most common crime, behind drugs and weapon. Many of the trafficked women end up in Europe, USA, Gulf or Dubai and it’s really difficult to track down the perpetrators, Deeb said.

Deeb also works on larger legal issues that discriminate among all women, such as honor killings that condone murders committed in retaliation for bringing dishonor on one’s family. The United Nations estimates thousands of women are killed annually in the name of family honor. While these laws are much more difficult to change, Deeb has been seeing increasing activity among women and the youth to change these laws.

“It is difficult to change Sharia (Islamic Law) rules. The main challenge  is convincing policy makers to adopt moderate and non discriminatory interpretation of the Sharia. But I do not give up because I know that things will change. It’s just a matter of time,” she said.

Deeb grew up in Kuwait and has very fond memories of the country. Before images of war were associated with Kuwait in 1990’s, the country was a peaceful, vibrant, multi-ethnic place.

“Kuwait will always be my favorite place because it was such a welcoming country. I remember the healthcare and education systems were excellent and there were people from all over the world living peacefully together,” she said.

When Deeb entered college, the second Gulf War broke out in Kuwait. She could not bear to just sit in the classroom as a war was waging against her hometown. “I was always the first one to encourage other students to come and sit in the protest. I was attacked by men asking why I was not behaving like a woman. I just did what I believed was right,” she said.

Deeb credits her father for her sense of activism.

“My father would always let me join the men’s table during family gatherings. He even encouraged me to speak up about my opinions. My mom would be in the background trying to keep me quiet, but my father would always quietly approve,” she recalled.

Deeb came to the United States for the first time this past summer. She received a letter last year that congratulated her acceptance to PILnet, a fellowship program that accepted just nine lawyers from around the world who have committed themselves to public interest law. The program brings their fellows to the United States and Europe for training, internships, and conferences to deepen their skill sets and network.

Erin Carll, the Program Coordinator for the PILnet fellowship explains that this is the first year that the program has expanded to the Middle East.

“Having two fellows from the Middle East has provided a different voice and perspective to the group,” she said.

Deeb’s good friend from the program, Idayat Hassan from Nigeria, remarks that Deeb’s work has really inspired her.

“I thought that it was challenging to improve women’s rights in Nigeria. But when I learned about the strict Islamic laws, I realized that Deeb’s challenges are much more than mine and yet she has no intention of backing down,” Hassan said.

Deeb has two young sons and it was a difficult decision to leave her family and children in Jordan for a year. Her mood lightens as soon as she talks about her children. Deeb dreams that when they grow up, Arab countries will be a place without discrimination. She recalls a quote that she heard many years ago, “Even if the color of skin and eyes are different, our tears are the same color.”

By Marianna Nash

Inger Knudson and Philippa Judd knew their lives would change when they said their vows on Colorado’s Lookout Mountain a little over two years ago. The two women are raising – and until recently, were homeschooling – a daughter together, despite the fact that they have been separated by nearly 5,000 miles since Judd’s visa expired and she moved back to England.

Because gay marriages and partnerships are not recognized under federal law due to the Defense of Marriage Act, a 1996 law defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, Americans cannot sponsor their same-sex partners for citizenship. The Knudson-Judd family doesn’t know when they will be reunited. Knudson says the separation has taken an emotional toll on the entire family, including her daughter.

“We were out shopping and she said, y’know, I miss her,” said Knudson. “The scary part is that she’s getting used to it. She’s getting used to the upheaval, the back and forth. I guess it’s just a coping mechanism.”

A recent Williams Institute study found that there are an estimated 28,500 binational same-sex couples living in the United States. Thirty-five percent of male binational couples and 39 percent of female binational couples are raising more than 17,000 children in the United States, according to the study.

Among the legislation that might help families like the Knudson-Judds is the Respect for Marriage Act, which would repeal DOMA, allowing same-sex couples the same marriage rights as anyone else. The Uniting American Families Act would provide protections for permanent partners, regardless of their marital status.

Knudson and Judd met in 2008 through InkNation, a tattoo art website. They quickly formed a friendship – and when Judd’s mother died, Knudson was there to support her. It was Knudson’s own mother who encouraged Judd to visit the United States and stay with them. Shortly thereafter, the friendship developed into something more. It was on the anniversary of her mother’s passing that the couple held their Handfasting, a type of commitment ceremony, on Lookout Mountain.

Since then, the family has spent a total of eight months together — over a span of three and a half years. Judd’s longest stay in the United States lasted only 89 consecutive days.

But there is reason for families like theirs to be optimistic. Monica Alcota’s deportation proceedings were halted based partly on her marriage to American citizen Cristina Ojeda. The same sex couple is the first known to benefit from a new immigration policy of the Obama Administration to review pending deportation cases.

Not all couples have been so lucky. Brian Andersen, of Philadelphia, tried to sponsor his legal husband Anton Tanumihardja for a green card to no avail. Tanumihardja faces deportation to Indonesia, unless ICE or another agency intervenes.

If this seems to run contrary to the prosecutorial discretion guidelines that were issued over the summer, it’s only because those guidelines haven’t been applied yet, according to Mary Kenney, senior staff attorney at the American Immigration Council.

“This policy has not been fully implemented in the field in terms of training local immigration officers,” Kenney said. “That all still needs to happen, and until it does, there may still be some cases that you would expect to have been approved that will be denied.”

Attorney Lavi Soloway, who handled Alcota’s case, says the prosecutorial discretion guidelines are a stopgap. The legislature is too conservative, and the issue too polarizing, for a repeal to come soon — that’s why the guidelines are necessary.

“It’s a reaction to the paralysis in Congress for over a decade,” said Soloway. “No Republican is working with Democrats on this issue anymore.”

Knudson, who says she once called the White House every day for four months, says the best thing families in her situation can do is make noise – and network with each other via Facebook, as she did. It was after meeting other binational couples through the website that she began to feel emboldened. She also contacted politicians, activist organizations, lawyers and celebrities.

“I don’t want great big fanfare,” she said. “I just want a quiet little life with my girls around me.”

The family tries to talk most days, and have even had 10-hour conversations over Skype at times. They send texts throughout the day. Judd, who lives in England, talks to her daughter in Denver once a week. Usually those conversations may last anywhere from one to four hours at a time.

“Christmas will be spent via telephone and webcam, providing the technology works,” Judd said recently. “We send gifts and try and make the holiday as normal as we can for our little girl.”

By Cory Bennett and Rebecca Ellis

Birthdays are how Sanjana Hussain, 8, marks time. Her dad hasn’t been home in three birthdays: hers, her dad’s and her sister’s, Sebreena, 13.

The girls’ father, Taimur Hussain, has been held in immigration detention the last nine months, facing deportation for overstaying his visa after coming to the United States from Bangladesh 16 years ago.

“One day it was Fathers’ Day and I made stuff for him and was really sad I couldn’t give it to my dad,” Sanjana said.

Sanjana is among the more than 4 million U.S. citizen children who have at least one parent who is undocumented. Detention and deportation take an emotional toll on these mixed-status families.

In the last decade, the number of children with U.S. citizenship but undocumented parents has increased from 2.7 million in 2003 to over 4 million in 2008, according to a 2009 Pew Hispanic Center report. The increase in these types of families has highlighted the long-standing issue of whether undocumented parents should receive leniency because they have U.S. citizen children.

According to David Thronson, an immigration law professor at Michigan State who has published several articles on children and family rights in immigration law, the argument that a parent’s deportation will harm children and their U.S. citizenship is one of the most frequently used, and repeatedly dismissed, arguments in deportation hearings.

In an article for the Nevada Law Journal, Thronson pointed to multiple immigration cases in the United States Circuit courts where, “As a starting point, courts are quick to assert that ‘[c]itizen children have, of course, an absolute right to remain in the United States.’”

But lawyers and activists have argued that deporting the parents of citizen children impacts their rights as a U.S. citizen because the removal of their parents all but guarantees the child’s exit. Repeatedly, the courts have ruled against this notion.

“These claims have been rejected uniformly by courts in virtually every circuit,” Thronson wrote. “The court views the children’s possible removal from the United States not as a governmental decision but rather as a parental choice.”

There are two grounds on which a “mixed-status” parent can have a deportation order commuted.

The U.S. Attorney General is given the authority to cancel the removal of an individual if the person has been in the United States continuously for 10 years or more, has not been convicted of any crimes and can establish that the removal would create “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” for a spouse or child that is a U.S. citizen, according to the immigration reforms of 1996.

Repeated court decisions in deportation cases for “mixed-status” families have set a high standard to prove “hardship.” Arguing that an undocumented parent’s deportation will deprive citizen children of economic or educational advantages has not met the “hardship” standard in court.

Immigration officials can also defer an ultimate decision on a deportation based on new guidelines the Obama administration issued on June 17, 2011. The directives, outlined by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton, gave immigration judges the ability to use “prosecutorial discretion” to commute deportations when reviewing the current stack of 300,000 deportation cases.

If the potential deportee has lived in the United States since childhood, is a minor, seriously ill or pregnant, the case warrants “particular care and consideration” for deferred action on the decision to deport. Among the secondary issues to consider, the memo lists, “whether the person has a U.S. citizen or permanent resident spouse, child or parent.”

The Hussains could benefit from the second criteria, according to Naresh Gehi. His law firm is representing Hussain.

Additionally, a 2001 Supreme Court ruling, Zadvydas v. Davis, concluded that the government needed to justify detaining an immigrant for over six months by displaying an intent to deport in the near future or extraordinary circumstances.

“This is a textbook case of someone who should have been released by now,” Gehi said.

Meanwhile, the Hussain children live with day-to-day uncertainty of what will happen to their family.

Without their father’s income from his work as a chef, the family had to move out of their apartment in Astoria, Queens. The family is now staying with family friends.

Sebreena remembers how sad it made her dad when he couldn’t send a card to his youngest daughter on her birthday. Sanjana recalls the first time she visited her father in detention. She tried to take him home, not comprehending the nature of detention.

“I never saw my father cry like that,” Sebreena said. “I don’t like seeing him cry. It’s very emotional. He prays day and night to come home to our family.”

Seeing a parent emotionally hurt can significantly impact children, who often see their parents as their rock, according to Mary Alvord, a psychologist and adjunct associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

“When you see a parent as vulnerable, it’s initially a shock,” she said. “Your in this dream like cloudy state.”

Alvord has done extensive research on anxiety and resiliency in young children, adolescents and teenagers. She calls having a parent suddenly detained a traumatic event. There’s uncertainty, confusion and a lack of understanding about what and why things are happening.

“Children really have no concept of permanence,” Alvord said. “So if something suddenly happens, even death, they don’t understand that it’s a permanent concept. The older you are the more you are able to process this.”

Beyond the daily uncertainty and turmoil that Hussain’s detention has caused, Sabreena remains mostly concerned about the possibility that her entire family will be uprooted and moved to Bangladesh. Hussain’s deportation would not mandate deportation for the rest of the family, but Sabreena believes the family would likely have to follow Hussain.

Aarti Kohli, director of immigration policy at the Warren Institute of Law and Social Policy at the University of California, Berkeley Law School, recently completed research that looked at, in part, the effect that parental deportation has on the family structure.

While it is hard to put a percentage on the amount of children that do follow deported parents, Kohli’s found that if both parents are deported, the children follow if they are younger than teenagers. If one parent is deported, families frequently separate, with the non-deported parent staying with the children.

“I think there is no question this has a deep impact on these children,” Kohli said, adding that she often hears of immigrants seeking lawyers to help set up guardianship plans in the event they are deported. “That gives you a sense that this is a real fear hanging over these people.”

And it’s a fear hanging over the Hussain family. The parents originally came to the United States in 1995. The mother, Sabina, said the family feared political persecution in Bangladesh because Taimur was a member of the Jatiya party. According to the U.S. State Department, Bangladesh suffers serious political dysfunction and corruption, but has remained a parliamentary democracy since its 1971 independence from Pakistan.

1995 was a time of political turmoil in Bangladesh. Alleging that the ruling coalition had rigged an election, the opposition political parties, including Jatiya, resigned from parliament, demanding a neutral party caretaker government take over and supervise a new general election. It wasn’t until June of 1996 that a neutral body oversaw a general election, ending the political strife.

By then, Hussain had left for the United States and applied for political asylum, which was denied. Today, Jatiya holds a small, minority share of seats in parliament.

“Life is very harsh there,” Sabreena said, translating her mother’s Bangladeshi. “It’s not very safe there. They come after you. People die. Their treatment is not as good as here.”

Fourteen years and two children later, Hussain approached a lawyer about reopening the asylum case, which was again denied. After he filed for an appeal with the Board of Immigration Appeals, the highest administrative body for interpreting and applying immigration laws, his case was referred to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Originally granted a six-moth extension in November 2010 for his deportation hearing, Hussain was detained during his second hearing, March 10, 2011.

Sabreena remembers getting home from school around 4 p.m. that day and being curious why her father wasn’t home from his hearing yet. The next morning, the Hussain family found out their father was locked up in a detention center in Elizabeth, N.J.

And like that, Hussain’s children were without their father.

Sanjana was without her TV-watching partner, the man who joked with her while drinking tea, pretending a cat was a monkey. Sabreena was without her lunch partner.

“When my father was around, we used to hang out a lot,” she said, playing with a folder of cards she has written for her dad on various holidays. “I was able to tell him stuff. We would go out to lunch. Now we don’t really go outside places. It’s really sad. I don’t really do anything now.”

Sanjana smooths out a drawing she did at school. It reads “My Family” across the top. Under a blue sky, on the far right of the page is a skinny, boxy drawing of “Daddy.” Between him and his family is a drawing of a heart. Dark pencil lines depict tears running down the faces of “Mommy,” and his daughters.

The children get to see their father roughly once a week, whenever a family member or family friend is free to take them one-hour drive to New Jersey.

When the family can deposit money in an account for Hussain to make calls, his daughters will get to talk to him up to twice a day for as little as a minute.

They talk about daily life. Hussain gives Sanjana a hard time for running late to school. He asks what she is eating and when she is going to bed.

At home, the Hussain’s look forward to Christmas, which they usually celebrate with their neighbors and exchange small gifts.

Both Sabreena and Sanjana said they hope their father will return home soon. Sanjana mentioned the two dates she wants her father home.

January 1 is her mother’s birthday. Jan. 25 is her oldest sister’s birthday.

“I just want him to back home so we can celebrate,” Sanjana said.

“He looks okay,” Rosa, 77, said in Spanish before bursting into tears.

Video conferencing has allowed her to see her son Luis, 40, who has been living in the United States for the past eight years.

Through a big-screen TV, Rosa and her family, Luis’ wife, three kids and his new 8-month old grand son, saw him as he stood alone in an enclosed room at the office of Austro Financial Services in Jackson Heights.

The family made the half-hour trip from the rural town of Guapan, Ecuador, to Austro, where an Ecuadorian bank with branches in the United States, Italy and Spain offers video conferencing services.

Luis was happy to see his family. They had only spoke by telephone before. If he finds steady work, he will go back to the conferencing center at least once a month.

Like many immigrants, Luis is working in the United States to provide for his family back home. He cannot return to Ecuador for vacation, weddings or special holidays because he is undocumented and cannot easily come back to the United States if he leaves. Even for those who are documented, special days like Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day and Christmas are spent in Internet cafes, video teleconferencing centers or on their phones connecting with loved ones.

One out of four U.S. immigrants who own smart phones make use of PC or mobile video calling according to a study by Rebtel, a leading mobile company based in Sweden.  The company’s research has also found that smart phones are the primary source of Internet access in many immigrants’ home countries as fixed broadband Internet is not as readily accessible.

“Many immigrants, in particular international students, have adopted smartphones and video calling a lot quicker than many other groups,” Patric Blixt, chief marketing officer at Rebtel said. “The reason is, they have a generally greater need to communicate with their family back home in comparison to an average Westerner on a day-to-day basis.”

But not all immigrants own smart phones, or have Internet access at home. Less than half of Latino immigrants access the Internet using those mediums, a Pew Research Center study found. This is largely due to education levels and affordability.

In the largely immigrant community of Jackson Heights, Austro Financial Services has been receiving a steady flow of customers, about 20 to 30 people per week. Cell phone retailers say they have also noticed more and more interest in smart phones. Internet cafes that offer webcams are also popular, but café operators say the business has lost some of its appeal with customers in the last three years, largely due to lower prices of laptops and smartphones.

Many immigrants who come for videoconferencing services, have not seen their families in over five years, said Marcela Ordonez, assistant manager of Austro Financial Services. When they do, the reunion can become very emotional and staff at the facility sometimes have to intervene.

“I had to cut the video conference and say, ‘let’s go outside, ’” said Ordonez. She recalled a customer who saw his family for the first time in eight years and could not stop crying.

“My Ma looks old, but I missed it,” she remembered the customer saying while in tears.

The service costs $1.00 per minute for the person making the call in the United States and the relatives in Ecuador do not have to pay to receive the call.  Surprise gifts like a cake or flowers can also be paid for in advance at the U.S. center to be given to the relatives in Ecuador during the call.

This video conferencing center only caters to Ecuadorians because the banking center is located in that country. But Ordonez who also speaks to her mother every day in Ecuador via Skype, has had to turn people away from other countries like Mexico and Peru when they come in asking for the service.

Skype, a video conferencing software that can be accessed on smartphones and computers is also a favorite among immigrants. Forty-seven percent of persons surveyed in the Rebtel study, said that they use this program to connect with family and friends. Facetime and Yahoo messenger came in second and third respectively with 14 percent combined.

The popularity of Skype calls among immigrants may stem from fact that these calls are free according to Jennifer Myers a representative from Skype.

“Not only are Skype-to-Skype voice and video calls as well as instant messages free, but SkypeOut rates to landlines and mobiles are as low as 2.4 cents per minute,” Myers said.

Immigrants tend to be very “frugal,” according to the Rebtel executive.  Almost 80 percent of immigrants surveyed in his company’s study said they are unwilling to pay a monthly fee for these services.

For some immigrants, using smart phones is even cheaper than making phone calls.

Francesco Alvarez, 21, said four-years ago he used to spend over $40 per week on cards to call his parents in Guatemala. Now he says he pays just $65 a month on his cell phone plan and does not have to pay any additional fees for video conferencing.

“That’s the way they get closer to their families,” said Xavier Sarasti, retail store manager of T-Mobile, Jackson Heights, who says immigrants specifically ask for smart phones for themselves and for their relatives back home when they come into his store.

While working in his uncle’s cell phone and computer repair company, Alvarez also noticed that immigrants are requesting more and more smart phones as well as assistance downloading Skype and other video-chat software to their phones and computers.

This form of communication is also very personal for him. It is his way of connecting with his 7-year old brother who was born two-years after he left Guatemala.

“He shows me the things that I send him,” Alvarez said. “I sent him an iPod touch, toys and even clothes. He puts the clothes on and shows me.”

At least four times a week his parents can expect a call from him to talk about his day at work and even how cold it’s getting in New York. His call is illuminated on a big television screen in his parents’ house where cousins and other relatives can also come to speak with him. Sometimes the call can last as long as two hours.

Programs like Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Chat and Facebook Video Chat are also free and popular in Internet cafes.

“About 60 percent of the people who come here do video chat,” said Teresa Abrahamson, owner of Arroba Computers Internet café and repair shop who also speaks with her grandmother in Mexico via Skype four times a week.

The popularity of video chat in her store peaked in 2008, she said.

“People would come in and cry and fight. Some would even bring clothes and say to their family “do you think this will fit you?’ ” she said.

Since laptops and notebooks have become more affordable however, she said the customers are no longer as regular. Those who do, still make use of the video calls and chat services.

It was a warm, sunny day at the end of November in Manhattan. Camilo Godoy, 22, walked on 42^nd Street next to Gerardo Santana, 34. They wandered  through a crowd of tourists and businessmen,  passed by fancy movie theatres, giant black and white portraits of Marilyn Monroe and huge McDonald’s signs with flickering light bulbs.

“Capitalism at its best,” Godoy told Santana, slowing down a New Yorker’s walking pace that would otherwise be frenzied on a normal Sunday afternoon in Times Square.

But this was not a normal Sunday afternoon. Santana was granted asylum a couple of weeks before after spending eight months in prison in New Jersey. Godoy, a volunteer who has been visiting him in detention, wanted Santana to experience the world he had been secluded from for so long. This was the first time Santana saw Manhattan, and he saw it as a free man.

Although swamped by the upcoming deadlines of several school projects and the development of ongoing artwork, Godoy decided to dedicate his spare free time to the sturdy Cuban man who walked next to him in awe. He led the way through the bustling sidewalk, past the unlit New Year’s Eve’s ball, into the square. There, he took out his big camera and started snapping pictures of Santana, arms wide spread in front of the NYPD booth.

“It’s very nice,” Santana said.

While immigration laws all over the country are stalling, Godoy is trying to make a difference by helping one immigrant at a time. Originally from Colombia and now a naturalized U.S. citizen, Godoy is a passionate volunteer, an artist, a social activist, an idealist fighting for immigrant respect and speaking for the voiceless.

“Being an immigrant myself, being an immigrant of privilege, having a piece of paper and nine digits that so many people desire to be recognized as people who have rights in this country, forces me to really be a voice,” he said.

Godoy began his hardcore activism on Oct. 10, 2010. On a sunny Columbus Day, he joined a vigil in front of the detention center in Elizabeth, N.J., held by a non-profit called First Friends. This is an organization that provides visitors and non-legal assistance to detained immigrants and fights for improving their detention conditions.

That day, Godoy, a video camera in his hands, listened to speeches and people sing outside of the detention facility. He stopped a woman who had just visited her detained husband and asked her to share her experience with him in front of the camera. Godoy decided that the train ride from Jersey City to Newark, from Newark to Elizabeth, and then the 15-minute walk to the detention center was absolutely worth it.

Since then, he hasn’t missed many visits to the detention center, where volunteers go talk to the immigrant detainees to help them cope with their situation.

“He’s an ideal volunteer,” Sister Regina Holtz, former coordinator of the Visitors’ Program at First Friends, said of Godoy. “He has opened his heart to the problems of being an immigrant detainee.”

Unlike many other volunteers, Godoy has always been consistent and willing to “reach out further” by visiting at least two detainees per visit instead of just one, Sister Regina Holtz said. “He’s just been deeply involved, personally involved.”

Although now Godoy goes to the detention centers with another group of volunteers, called Sojourners, who provide transportation to the facilities and spare him the long train ride, this personal involvement has never faded. It is rooted in a very personal experience Godoy lived first hand about a year ago.

On February 16, 2010, the day before his 21^st birthday, Godoy prepared a welcome sign he hanged in the hall of his apartment and left to the JFK International Airport. His boyfriend Radek, then 31, was arriving from the Czech Republic with a British Airways London-New York flight at 10:40 p.m..

“He was super excited that day,” Godoy’s twin sister Tatiana, 22, said. “It was the best birthday present for him.”

Godoy met Radek’s best friend, Anne McDonald, in Brooklyn, then drove with her to the airport. When they arrived in JFK, Godoy got out of the car and reached the gate where Radek was supposed to arrive. It was already 11.30 p.m. and no one was around. Godoy kept waiting and finally approached a woman with a British Airways outfit coming out of the automatic doors opening up to America.

“Is everyone from London out?” he asked.

“Yeah, everyone should be except that man who’s not been let in,” she answered.

Godoy asked her what he looked like but her description didn’t match Radek in Godoy’s mind.

“I said to myself: ‘That’s not Radek,’” Godoy recalled.

After a few minutes, he received a phone call from McDonald, who had been waiting outside in the car.

“They’re not letting him in,” she said.

Radek, originally from the Czech Republic, had already lived in the United States for 8 years while working as a photographer for several modeling agencies. He was undocumented and arranged a fake marriage with a lesbian to be awarded citizenship. Radek paid her and lived with her for one year in Bushwick, Brooklyn. In 2008, a few weeks before the interview with the immigration officers, she panicked and disappeared. She left Radek with no other choice than skipping the appointment with the immigration authorities.

Radek and Godoy met in June 2009. After having overstayed his visa and having paid a penalty fee, Radek decided to go back to the Czech Republic. It was becoming hard for him to find a job in the United States and his father was not doing very well back home. To overcome the separation, Godoy visited him in Europe toward the end of 2009 and when he came back to New York in January 2010, Radek had decided to move back to the United States to live with his boyfriend.

His flight was booked for Feb. 16, 2010, just in time to celebrate Godoy’s birthday together. But the welcome he received at JFK Customs and Immigration was not the one he expected. His past visa violation surfaced from the past. Instead of being let in the country, he was brought into a room to be questioned.

“You have been found inadmissible under section 212 (a) (7) (A) (i) (I) of the INA in that you are an immigrant not in possession of a valid immigrant visa. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Is there anything else you would like to add to your statement?”

“Please don’t deport me,” were Radek’s last words.

A few walls away, Godoy was waiting for him at the JFK arrivals gate. He didn’t know Radek was on his way to the Elizabeth detention center, before being sent to the Czech Republic. Once Godoy received the phone call and was informed that Radek had been stopped, he and Radek’s friend McDonald couldn’t do anything else but switch on the car’s engine and leave.

“That will be a drive that I will never forget because I was leaving Radek,” Godoy said. “And that’s when I felt very helpless. I had never faced what we call the wall. La frontera. The border.”

McDonald dropped Godoy off in Dumbo, Brooklyn, where he could easily take the train to the World Trade Center and, from there, the PATH train back to New Jersey. But instead of jumping on a train, in the middle of the night, Godoy started walking around Dumbo, where he had spent a lot of time with Radek the previous summer.

“It was both peaceful and comforting. It was extremely sad, because Radek was here, in the country, and yet he was not being allowed in,” Godoy said.

The day after, on his 21^st birthday, Godoy went back to Dumbo and started taking pictures of the same places where he had shot portraits of his boyfriend the summer before. Finally, he received a phone call from Radek.

“I was in prison. And I haven’t slept and I’m going back,” he said.

Radek was just one of the 304,750 immigrants who were deported in 2010, according to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. His experience clicked something in Godoy’s life. This is when his interest in immigration detention and deportation began, Godoy said.

“It was through seeing a loved one being turned into a prisoner, in this so-called nation of immigrants,” he said.

Eight months after being separated from Radek, Godoy joined his first vigil in front of the detention center where his boyfriend had been detained. Then, on Nov. 4, 2010, he began his visitations, which he has continued every since. Today, he visits immigrant detainees in Delaney Hall, another immigration detention center in Newark, NJ, where people have been transferred to from Elizabeth.

It is in Delaney Hall that Godoy met Santana, a Cuban asylum seeker who was detained by the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement in March 2011. Godoy visited him in Delaney Hall every week. “Camilo is a great human being who didn’t only worry about me, but also about the other detainees,” Santana wrote in a text message in Spanish. “I have always wondered how he could dedicate his free time to others. Weeks seemed shorter when we were waiting for him. I love him as if he were the brother I have never had.”

But Radek’s detention and deportation also inspired his artwork and social activism. He is enrolled in his fourth year at a dual degree program in photography and education studies at Parsons and Eugene Lang, the Liberal Arts College of the New School. Godoy uses art as a tool for social change, according to his former photography professor Carlos Motta, 33, an artist and adjunct professor of photography at Parsons.

“Camilo is an artist and a social practitioner with a great deal of integrity,” Motta said.

As one of his recent assignments, Godoy approached 15 immigrants in New Bergen, N.J., and gave them a piece of paper on which he asked them to write their name, occupation, age and the reason why they came to the United States. He then shot a portrait of them, using a lower and transversal angle that is usually applied to photograph leaders, politicians and athletes.

“I was very interested in portraying immigrants as heroes,” Godoy said.

He then glued each photo and each piece of paper into separate beige paper folders. It resembled “the way the government documents people and archive stories,” Godoy explained. “I am interested in how people are categorized.”

Another piece of artwork dealt with immigration issues. But this time it was related to when Godoy lived when he himself migrated to the United States from Colombia, at the age of 10. He and his twin sister joined their mother, Marlene Betancourt, in North Bergen, N.J., where she had been living for two years and where she had married a naturalized U.S. citizen. In New Jersey, Godoy attended the Horace Mann Elementary School, where he had bilingual classes. Learning the new language was extremely difficult for Godoy. When doing the math homework, he always had to have an English-Spanish dictionary on the table to make sure he understood the instructions. His mother and sister didn’t do any better than him with the language and he often got frustrated.

In the school, the monolingual classes were commonly referred to as the “regular classes.” Godoy, then, grew up believing that the only way he could be accepted was to completely remove his native language and become a perfect English-speaker. No accent allowed. “I was always forcing myself to learn English and be the more American I could be,” he recalled.

“He always wanted to speak English to people,” his twin sister Tatiana Godoy said.

Today, Godoy sees that process of assimilation he went through as a form of violence put upon immigrants arriving in the United States. This is why he organized a live performance where members of the audience were asked to write the same word or letter over and over on a ruled piece of paper. When the exercise was over, they were asked to tape the pieces of paper on a blackboard, following the order Godoy had arranged.

Once aligned, all the words and letters formed a sentence that read: “Who is to say that robbing a people of its language is less violent than war?” Godoy chose this quote by Gloria Anzaldúa, a Chicana writer and activist, to express “both the way language is taught and the way language is forced upon people.”

Ultimately, “assimilation is violence,” he said.

Godoy works hard to live up to all the projects he is into and all the fights he has committed himself to. He also interns at Immigration Movement International, an immigrant-based organization started by artist Tania Bruguera.

“I’m very proud of him,” his twin sister said, adding that because of all the thing he is doing, Godoy is often stressed out and taking little care of himself. She worries about his health and nutrition. One day they were discussing it and “he said his well being was helping others,” she recalled.

Everything he does, everything he says and creates is directed towards collecting the unknown stories of the least privileged members of the American society, in order for the rest of society to know and never forget.

“I am interested in archiving this kind of reality and giving voice essentially to those who are silent in the immigration debate,” he said.

In every immigrant he sees in the street, Godoy sees himself struggling with English at the age of 10. In every immigrant detainee, he sees his boyfriend Radek, handcuffed, deprived of his belongings and detained in a jumpsuit before being deported from the United States.

“All the people that are in these detention facilities are no different than your neighbor, no different than your own family,” Godoy said. “All they want is the same thing we all want, which is be happy, and be able to move and live and work.”

By Yumna Mohamed and Lilian Tse

Fauzia Abdur-Rahman’s  food cart on 161^st Street and Sheridan Avenue in New York is fully equipped with a grill, electricity, and running water. She starts every morning at 9 a.m. by firing up the grill. Then she decides what she would like to cook for her customers that day.

“I don’t have printed menus because I decide what I am going to cook each morning,” she said. “I think food is exciting, so I enjoy changing the menu every day.”

The jovial 49-year-old’s mind rushes through her menu ideas, from her native Jamaica’s famous jerk chicken, to Mediterranean salads, to German chocolate cake, a favorite among her customers. By 11 a.m. her hand-written menu goes up on the front of her shining silver cart and customers start to trickle in.

Abdur-Rahman has been running this cart for 16 years. Six years ago, she decided to take out a loan to upgrade her cart but couldn’t find a bank that would provide her with a small loan. Eventually, she was able to secure a $16,000 loan from ACCION, a microlending institution.

Immigrant women like Abdur-Rahman are one of the fastest growing groups of entrepreneurs the United States, according to a 2007 report by Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Missouri. This group has been recognized by local and international microfinancing organizations that are increasingly choosing to invest their money in women.

The Kauffman Index of Entrepreneural Activity reported that immigrant women started businesses at a rate 57 percent higher than American-born women, and their likelihood to start their own businesses has led many organizations to lend their financial support.

While financing is a tough challenge for women entrepreneurs, immigrant women also face many additional family burdens.

Abdur-Rahman came to New York for summer vacation when she was 20-years-old. She knew then that she wanted to remain in the country and set about starting a life here. She admitted that while being her own boss has its perks, it also had its challenges in the beginning.

“For 10 years I would wake up at 6:30 a.m. to take care of my children, start cooking at 8:30 a.m., serve my food until well into the afternoon, and will not arrive home to sit down until late at night,” she said.

Navigating the U.S. credit system is not always logical for immigrants. Paul Quintero, CFO of ACCION USA, explains that ACCION is more than just a lending organization. The biggest cultural difference between most other countries and the United States is the emphasis in this country on credit.

“We try and help immigrant entrepreneurs establish a credit history and educate them on the credit process. Many immigrants come from a culture where borrowing is bad and this is the fundamental difference. Here, you need a credit history to show that you can borrow and that you can borrow responsibly,”  Quintero said.

ACCION starts off with small amount of credit so they can see the benefits and avoid the detriments. Once lenders have a good credit history, they begin to quality for loans in traditional banks and can benefit from lower interest rates. 

Gwendolyn Bonilla, the Intake officer at ACCION, explains that the organization provides term loans of up to $300,000 and start up loans for up to $100, 000.

“While our branch of ACCION does not specifically target immigrants, a large portion of their lenders are immigrants from Latin America,” said Bonilla.

To cater for the immigrant clients, ACCION has Spanish-speaking loan officers and only requires lenders to provide their Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN). IRS issues ITINs to individuals regardless of immigration status.

“We never ask our clients whether they have the documentation to be here or not. Anyone with a ITIN is eligible to apply,” Bonilla said.

Another popular microfinance organization is Grameen America. The Grameen Bank, a microfinance enterprise that provides small loans only to women, was founded by 2006 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Muhammad Yunus. They started in New York in 2008 and it was their first international operation outside of Bangladesh.

Many were skeptical about whether Grameen could apply a financial model from the Third World to the First World. But since 2008, the organization has disbursed over $16 million to more than 5,500 members living below the poverty line in the United States. Immigrants making up most of the borrowers at Grameen.

Grameen focuses on providing loans to very small businesses, such as women selling trinkets on the street or baked goods from their homes. This type of women-run businesses have the most difficult time securing loans, since they have no credit history, no savings and no business experience. The organization disburses small loans between $500 and $3,000.  First-time loans are a maximum of $1,500. Borrowers need not have collateral, a bank account or credit history, but must be living below the poverty line.

While the interest rate of about 15% of the microfinance loans may be high, microfinance firms do not require collateral and often provide support to empower women.

“Grameen’s model allows women to form support groups, so they are not alone. Every microfinance firm has a different approach, but everyone wants to make sure their borrowers are empowered,” said Noor Shams, a former employee of Grameen.

Grameen America has extended its reach to a number of locations in the United States since its establishment, including opening a branch in northern Manhattan on 2009. In 2010, the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation closed on a $500,000 loan and $125,000 grant to allow Grameen America to expand its platform in Harlem, Washington Heights and Inwood.

“For nearly 15  years, our organization has been lending much-needed financial and other assistance to new and existing small businesses in upper Manhattan which we believe are the backbone of our city’s neighborhoods,” said the group’s CEO, Kenneth J. Knuckles. “That’s why we were pleased to provide this funding to Grameen America which shares our goal of providing loans to those businesses which are too often considered ‘unbankable’ by many of the traditional commercial banks.”

This branch has grown to nearly 400 borrowers with a growth strategy to increase to over 4,000 borrowers over the next five years according to Knuckles. He added that most of the borrowers have used their loans to start food carts, hair salons, as well as home-based child care services and selling beauty products door-to-door.

Borrowers form a group of five people who go through a five-day business training program and open a savings account after which they can take out their loans. Once they start generating an income, they begin repaying loans and deposit savings. Once they have fully repaid their loans, they have the option to take out another.

Chan Xue Liu has lived in New York for 25 years. But the only English words she knows are “Hello,” “Goodbye,” “How much?” and a few basic numbers. Chan lives in Flushing and has insulated herself within the Chinese community.

Chan immigrated from Hong Kong with her two children and husband in the mid 1980’s. With only a high school degree, the only job she could find was in a textile factory. After a few years of living in Flushing, some of Chan’s best friends decided to venture into mid-town Manhattan during a Saturday afternoon. Chan visited a shopping mall for the first time. “I was browsing through the clothes, and I was shocked to see the clothes I helped to make were sold at more than $100 dollars each. I only got $2.25 for each piece of clothing I made. I knew I had to stop working at the factory,” she said.

Chan decided to make some Asian style clothing in her own home and sell them to local stores in Flushing. With barely any savings, she turned to her family to borrow money. She managed to borrow $1,000 from her family, but that was not even enough to buy a good sewing machine. Chan tried to apply for loans from a traditional bank.

“I got the application form and I couldn’t even understand the questions on the form. It was intimidating and I walked out of the bank within 5 minutes,” Chan said.

Chan pawned off some of her wedding gifts and also turned to local Chinese money-lenders to borrow money.

“The interest rate of these money lenders is really high, sometimes more than 100%. But I had no choice. I don’t speak any English, so I can only rely on the Chinese community,” she said.

Chan has never heard about microfinance, and doesn’t think that she would borrow from outside the Chinese community because she “just doesn’t know who to trust.”

While the microfinance movement has gained significant traction around the world, many immigrants still choose not to rely on microfinance firms. Jeffrey Ashe, the director of community finance at Oxfam America, explains that while the microfinance movement is growing, there are simply not enough microfinance firms to serve immigrants.

Also, many immigrants tend to just rely on their own communities for borrowing money for their businesses. This stems from immigrants’ lack of trust with organizations outside of their community, as well as being intimidated by the language and cultural barriers.

Rotating Savings and Credit Association (ROSCA) are a thriving way for immigrant communities to save and lend each other money, Ashe said. ROSCA is an informal program initiated by group of individuals who agree to meet for a few months in order to save and borrow together. Each member contributes the same amount at each weekly or monthly meeting, and the whole sum is lent to each member until all members have received the fund. At that point, the club is disbanded to minimize risk. The simplicity of the program makes it suitable for immigrants with low levels of literacy.

“ROSCAs are popular among all types of immigrant communities in the U.S. from Nepalis to Bolivians. They are informal devices that they bring back from their home countries to the US,” said Ashe.

ROSCAs were very popular in the Asian America community before World War II and have continued to flourish in the US among different ethnicities. This form of borrowing and saving money is mainly used for helping immigrants to start-up their funds, but can also be used for other large investment needs.

The movement for financing women immigrant businesses has not only been left to non-profits. Across the United States, various state governments have been launching loan programs for women immigrants as a critical tool to create jobs and stimulate the economy. The Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority has a loan subsidy program that is dedicated for minority women businesses. The Ohio Department of Development has targeted 50 percent of their Minority Direct Loan funds program exclusively for minorities and women.

Ashe is currently working on helping disadvantaged communities save, rather than provide loans.

“In the U.S., only 10 percent of people are self-employed. You can only reach a small group of disadvantaged by focusing on providing loans. By focusing on savings, you can reach everyone,” Ashe said.

Abdur-Rahman’s cart was nominated by New Yorkers for the Vendy Award, an award given to the best street vendors.  She was nominated for the Vendy Award because the food was “fresh” and “the healthiest thing ever eaten from a street cart.”

However, the long lines – even on rainy cold days – suggest that the food sets it apart from the rest.

One of the customers in the line during a cold December afternoon said, “I’d cry if she wasn’t out here.”

Gabriel is a 24-year-old New Yorker who has just recently made the transition from being an undocumented immigrant to applying for legal residency. Tune in to hear Gabriel’s story.

Every day, Gabriel, 24, is faced with the challenge of articulating his identity, guarding himself and carefully choosing to whom he reveals himself and when. To put it another way, he inhabits more than one closet.

For 17 years, Gabriel lived in the United States as an undocumented immigrant. He also is gay.

“My undocumented status had a large impact on my upbringing,” says Gabriel, who moved here from Quito, Ecuador with his parents when he was seven.

“Without my papers, I felt like I was trapped in a box. I could see everything outside of it and I wanted to access it but couldn’t and I just wanted to get out of it,” he says.

This year, his uncle was able to sponsor Gabriel and his family’s application for legal residency. As his mother’s brother, Gabriel’s uncle, who is a U.S. citizen, is able to sponsor his immediate relatives’ application for an “adjustment of status,” which will hopefully lead to permanent residency and eventual citizenship. In the meantime, Gabriel has finally been able to get a state ID, Social Security number and work permit.

The sense of legitimacy these documents have given him has motivated him to help others in the same situation. He has become a strong advocate for immigrant rights in the United States, working with organizations like the New York State Youth Leadership Council to push for equal access to education for undocumented immigrant youth and the passage of the DREAM Act.

About 765,000 students between 13 and 18 years old arrived in the United States illegally in their early teens, and 65,000 students without immigration status graduate from U.S. high schools every year, according to a 2007 study by the Migration Policy Institute.

Gabriel recalls how his status affected the way he interacted with his surroundings. He studied finance at an out of state school because he didn’t know about opportunities for undocumented students to study at colleges in New York City. To avoid other students missing this opportunity, Gabriel became involved with the immigrant youth group’s mentorship program.

A pilot project of the New York State Youth Leadership Council, the program uses mentors like Gabriel to help young illegal immigrants graduating from high school learn about their options to attend college in New York. They help them with applications and prepare them for college life.

Through the mentoring program, the group wants to push for the state and federal passage of the DREAM Act.  It would give legal to illegal immigrant youth who attend two years of college or complete two years of military service.

Gabriel is aware of the difference legal status can make.

“Now that I can work legally, it feels a lot better,” he says.

But in many ways, this sense of identity will never leave Gabriel. His feeling of “otherness” in the United States persists. He prefers to identify himself as Latino over everything else.

“If I were to go to Germany and I met someone who told me they were Turkish, what would I say to them?” he wonders. “I don’t see myself as American, but I see myself now as a visible thread of the American fabric and can remove myself from the margins of society.”

Now that he is approaching legal status, he sees himself overcoming limitations and barriers and enjoying a sense of continuation that citizens take for granted. At the same time, his old life comes back to him when he doesn’t expect it. He remembers saying goodbye to his little cousin at the airport in Quito, one of 30 cousins he hasn’t seen since he left. Now, that cousin is 18 years old and is visiting Gabriel’s family for the first time. This reminds Gabriel of the impact his family’s departure must have had on those they left behind.

“Wow, it’s been 17 years,” he reflects as he recounts his memories.

He can count the moments and people that have led him to the point he is at now: working as a recruiter at GMHC, a non-profit organization that aims to support and educate gay men and women about leading healthy lifestyles.

In his work, he comes across people with whom he can identify on many levels. They require coaxing to reveal their status, something Gabriel has grappled with his entire life. Living as an undocumented immigrant in the United States has caused him to guard himself carefully.

“Gabriel is reserved, which is important for the job he is doing,” says his roommate Veronika Gorkina, 27, who works in retail management.

“He can process information calmly and doesn’t get emotionally involved, which is good for his clients. They wouldn’t benefit from an emotional wreck,” she adds.

Gabriel’s work at GMHC requires him to seek out gay men who appear to be marginalized and at risk of having unsafe sexual habits, and teach them to communicate with their sexual partners, as well as disclose their sexual preferences and HIV status with friends and families.  He learns from other people’s experiences without internalizing them.

“You can’t be a superhero and be everything for everyone,” he says.

Maintaining this distance has not meant that he cannot identify with his clients. His own sexuality and immigration status have often left him feeling marginalized, especially when he was younger.

“I’ve learned from them how it is to deal with being HIV positive and their courage when it comes to disclosing their sexual orientation,” says Gabriel.

His enthusiasm for social activism is what landed him a job at GMHC in the first place, a far cry from his previous work in finance. His sense of social justice became clear to his supervisor Eric Arnold, a group facilitator at GMHC.

“I first got to know Gabriel over heady, abstract conversations about ‘isms’,” Arnold said, referring to debates he had with Gabriel over politics, race and culture.

“I asked myself, ‘Who is this young kid, talking about this stuff?’”

According to Arnold, it is Gabriel’s analytical side that has served him best in his work.

“The challenge is working with people who haven’t openly disclosed their status, and identifying those most in need,” he says. “Gabriel has approached that challenge and taken the initiative to surmount it, coming up with strategies we haven’t thought of before, like social networking.”

Gabriel identified a number of online dating sites that target gay men, and created profiles on these sites to approach and educate its users about disclosing their HIV status to their partners and practicing safe sex. While not HIV positive himself, Gabriel has found that it’s more beneficial to leave this disclosure up in the air.

“I prefer to leave it up to the client’s assumptions, as it affects the rapport I have with them,” he says. “They need to feel like they can identify with me.”

Many of the people he helps are homeless and unemployed, overlooked and neglected by society. This is something that rings true with Gabriel’s work with another underrepresented group, illegal immigrant youth. Like those he helps, it took him a long time to feel safe enough to speak about his immigration status.

“With time I was able to reveal this to those close to me, like my roommate, Eric and others whose perceptions I could change by revealing this part of my life,” he says. “I sometimes try to remove myself from the memory of my life in Ecuador.”

He realizes how far his family has come. They started off in one room in his uncle’s home in Connecticut, then moved to a condo and eventually bought their own home in 2003.

“I am very proud of my parents,” Gabriel says. “Growing up, we never went hungry but we never had luxuries either. But my younger siblings are growing up comfortably.”

His mother is equally proud of him. Unlike Gabriel, her emotions are very close to the surface. It doesn’t take long for Janet to tear up as she speaks of her oldest son’s accomplishments.

“He is not just a good student and good worker, he is a good son,” the mother of three says, her words punctuated by emotional moments of silence. “We were working and couldn’t afford to help him pay for university, and even though his roads were blocked, he still succeeded. He didn’t have help and now he does so much to help everyone.”

Despite his obvious affection for his parents, his relationship with them is tenuous, as the topic of disclosure once again rears its ubiquitous head. While he was able to reveal his sexuality to his friends with relative ease, he hasn’t broached the subject with his strongly Jehovah’s Witness parents.

“If I come out to my parents, I feel like they will reject me,” he says, adding that for now he would like to leave them in denial.

“Disclosure is a process that for me has had far-reaching implications in my life and is intertwined in my work, my sexuality and my immigration status,” he says.

Gabriel used to laugh at the clichéd phrase of “finding onseself”, but realized that he found himself in his interactions with others and learning from them.

“It’s interesting to me that I open up to people and I get something in return,” he reflects. “Those people, and I can name them, don’t know how they’ve affected my life but they’ve helped me see myself in the world and know what path I’m going to take and it’s a matter of just getting there.”

In October 2010, Angy Rivera, now 21, an undocumented student and core member of the New York State Youth Leadership Council (NYSLYC), began writing an online column named “Ask Angy,” a place for undocumented youth to share their experiences and ask for help.

“What is the point of me trying so hard to make it through college when my diploma is not even going to be worth it?” asked Cat, an undocumented college sophomore, after she had to reveal her illegal status to explain to her school why she couldn’t get a student loan.

Sam, another undocumented youth who had problems finding a stable job because of his status, asked Angy whether he should stay in the United States or leave the country to fulfill himself. “The recent failure to pass the federal DREAM Act has made me realize that even though I love the U.S. Maybe I am not destined to be here,” he wrote in September 2011.

The “Ask Angy” column is the virtual alter ego of who Rivera is in real life: a source of comfort and inspiration for undocumented youth who have fears or are confused about their opportunities and limits.

“I try to provide that support they need, because I was once in their shoes, feeling like I was alone and there was nobody out there,” she said.

Rivera is one of a growing number of undocumented students coming out and actively helping others to do the same. She came here illegally from Colombia when she was 3. As an activist in the NYSYLC, Rivera supports the passage of the New York Dream Act and helps others cope with the struggles of being undocumented.

Although she had always known she is undocumented, Rivera had to learn little by little to be comfortable with it. And it’s not always been easy.

During her senior year in high school, while scanning her various college opportunities, Rivera went to the John Jay College of Criminal Justice open house in midtown Manhattan. All the paperwork in her hands, Rivera made her way to the financial aid office.

After trying to convince the administrator that she qualified for financial aid, Rivera was told that if she didn’t have the cash to pay for school, she was wasting her time there.

“I didn’t really believe it,” she recalled. “I thought that if you were raised here and you had good grades, that’s all that mattered.”

But something else mattered – a nine-digit number. The Social Security number Rivera has always lacked.

Little by little, as she grew up alongside her high school friends, Rivera found out she couldn’t do all sorts of things her citizen classmates did: donate blood, travel to foreign countries, get a driver’s license, vote, open a bank account, have a credit card, save her dog.

Her husky Luna was hit by a car after getting loose from the leash. Her mom’s friend put down her own credit card to pay for the dog’s surgery.

Rivera didn’t realize right away how being undocumented was going to impact her.

“It isn’t until high school that you feel different from other citizens,” she said.

Missing the various rites of passage made her feel “behind” and “left out.” But not being able to go to college was the real downturn.

“I remember feeling really defeated and sad,” she said.

But being stonewalled by the John Jay financial aid office didn’t stop Rivera from pursuing her goals. Although going through a moment of depression, Rivera learned to become a stronger person.

“She’s very persistent and driven, she never gives up,” her best friend Janella Valencia, 19, said of her.

Rivera’s brother, Luis Diaz, 16, U.S.-born, used the same exact words to describe his sister: “She never gives up.”

Through the help of her counselor at Francis Lewis High School, in Queens, and the encouragement of her mother, who always pushed her “to go to school and become someone,” Rivera kept searching for solutions. That is how she found the New York State Youth Leadership Council.

She attended a workshop about Latino youth in America and stumbled upon the immigrant youth organization. For the first time in her life, Rivera heard about the DREAM Act and she decided to sign up for their email list. Soon after, she received an email about a scholarship and fellowship program they offered and she applied.

“There are only a few scholarships for undocumented youth,” explained Jacki Cinto, 25, youth service coordinator and co-founder of the NYSLYC. “So we decided to create like a small fund for scholarships in order to provide that small support for students.”

Started in 2007, the scholarship program awards around 10 scholarships a year to undocumented students. A form of “encouragement,” according to Cinto, to prove them that “they have the potential to continue their education.”

Rivera received the financial aid and was able to pay for her first semester at John Jay. She was also required by the NYSLYC to intern at their office in the summer of 2009.

“That’s when I got involved and I’ve been here ever since basically,” Rivera said.

Discovering the NYSLYC opened a new world for Rivera. Not only did it allow her to begin her college education, but it also helped her accept her situation.

“It was very shocking the first time that I got to the get-active training,” she said.

Unlike in her high school, where Rivera was surrounded by citizen students, she found herself surrounded by undocumented youth who were openly speaking about their status.

“We all connected even though we didn’t know each other because of our struggles and our stories,” Rivera recalled. “And I felt like there was support, a group that understood me and I didn’t have to explain… because they already knew and they already understood.”

“It was liberating,” Cinto said of the first training Rivera attended, adding that she did notice a change in Rivera’s attitude. “Now telling her story is something normal.”

Since her summer internship, Rivera has never left the NYSLYC. She is a core member now and she works in the media outreach and arts and expression committees. She coordinates the Support Group and she keeps the “Ask Angy” column online, described as a “huge hit” by Norma Juarez, 22, NYSLYC core member and Support Group co-coordinator.

“She’s very active and she’s done an amazing work,” Juarez said of Rivera. Her caring and inspiring personality has helped her build relationships with other undocumented students who seek help, Juarez said.

Rivera’s contribution to the NYSLYC is best summarized by her online bio, where she is described as “a part time super hero trying to inspire and make a difference in someone’s life.” And this “someone” can be strangers reaching out to her on the web, via email or Twitter, or her own siblings.

Rivera has two younger brothers and one sister, all born in the United States and all citizens.

“They look up to her a lot,” said her best friend Valencia, adding that thanks to Rivera, her siblings “have a different mindset,” appreciating more what they have.

They also feel somewhat privileged, especially Rivera’s 16-year-old brother. “She deserves the papers more than me,” Diaz said of his sister. Like through the “Ask Angy” column, Rivera tries to inspire Diaz, pushing him to study for his driver’s license and think about college and scholarships.

But living a “normal” family life is sometimes hard, as the danger of deportation is always in the back of their minds.

“If something was to ever happen to me and my mom we could be deported. And then, what would happen to them? Who would take care of them?” Rivera said, adding that she fears especially for her mom. Rivera said  she is somewhat protected by public sympathy for the so-called “Dreamers,” but the parents are usually blamed as criminals.

Her mother Maria Yolanda Rivera, 41, said she was more scared a few years ago, but now she is OK.

“I’m prepared if the government sends me to my country,” she said. “I believe in God and I trust Him, no matter what. If they send me to my country, I go to my country. He’s with me.”

At the same time, she feels a sense of powerlessness. “How can you fight with the United States?” she asked. “The United States is a giant.”

Rivera said she feels overwhelmed sometimes.

She works part time at a publishing company to pay for her tuition. Every semester at John Jay, she wonders whether she will be able to take other classes or she will have to take another semester off to gain some more money. Her mother is currently unemployed and cannot help her with the expenses.

“Sometimes I felt like giving up, I felt like just tired and overwhelmed, depressed listening to everything that was going on and not being able to do enough,” Rivera said. “I feel like sometimes I just want to make everything better and I can’t.”

By Cristabelle Tumola

If you met Micheal Castaldo you wouldn’t think he was an immigrant. But he isn’t American—he grew up in Canada. It’s easy to mistake a Canadian for an American, but Micheal actually isn’t a native Canadian either—he is, as his name suggests, Italian.

This two-time immigrant left Southern Italy’s Calabria region when he was three years old. He grew up in Toronto Canada, and as an adult came to America to study music, later falling in love with New York and staying for good.

It was in the United States that Micheal, 49, started his career as an Italian ambassador, but not in the literal sense.

For the past 10 years, Micheal has been exploring his Italian culture through his music, olive oil business and his restored family villa that he rents out to tourists in Calabria.

“I feel blessed that I’m able to go back to my roots and tell my story because everybody has their own story to tell and put it out there and see who likes it and who doesn’t,” he says.

With his signature pinstriped hat, suit with a pocket square but no tie and powerful voice, it’s no surprise that Micheal is a performer.

When he was a young boy growing up in Toronto, he fell in love with music. He got his start singing in the church choir when he was 10 years old. When he was in high school, a teacher suggested he apply to the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He got a scholarship to the school and that’s how he came to America.

Eight years ago, a friend in Canada, also with Italian roots, wanted to honor his father through the gift of music, so he asked Micheal to send him a CD with some Italian songs. Everyone loved the music so much that he recorded his first Italian CD, Villa, and released it in the U.S. in 2004. Since then he has released several other CDS and singles in Italian, including a recently released Christmas album.

Music not only helped Micheal connect to his native roots, but it also inspired him to set up new roots in America.

After her graduated from Berklee he carefully considered all the places he wanted to live, from Los Angeles to Nashville to Toronto. But a visiting artist and teacher he met at Berklee convinced him to settle in New York City.

He moved to New York July Fourth weekend of 1986. “As I was arriving into New York I saw fireworks and I saw that as a beautiful welcome, New York welcomed me with fireworks. And I’ve been here ever since. I’ve made New York my home,” he says.

It was in his new American hometown that Micheal started his olive oil co-op. Whenever he would visit Italy, his relatives would give him olive oil from the family farm. He would give some of it to friends and many asked him where he got the oil. That’s how the New York City Olive Oil Coop came to be.

“It worked out really nice that now what started off as 25 of my closest friends is now in excess of 600 olive oil connoisseur members throughout the US and Canada,” he says.

His third Italian pursuit took him back to his birthplace, Calabria. Back in the area for a wedding, he decided to restore the family villa, the place where he grew up. “All my relatives thought I was nuts to do this because Calabria is not on many people’s radars in terms of tourism,” he says.

Three years later, he completed the project. A couple years after it was finished, he was able to rent it for 48 out of 52 weeks of the year, and he proved to his relatives that he wasn’t a “crazy American.”

Even with frequent visits back to Italy, Micheal may not have the passion for Italian culture he has today if it wasn’t for the strong Italian culture of the city in which he grew up.

His father, Pasquale, a barrel maker turned construction worker, thought he could find better pay and working conditions in Canada. After spending some time in the western part of that country, he found his “paesanos,” as Micheal puts it, in Toronto. He loved the city so much that he told his family to come join him.

His family and him came to Canada in the mid-60s, when many Italians immigrated to that country. Today, Toronto has the largest Italian-speaking population outside of Italy.

Micheal’s parents also helped him retain his native culture. “We spoke Italian home even the Calabrian dialect. We were listening to Italian radio stations; we were listening to Italian TV stations. My dad would get the Italian newspaper. We lived in an Italian neighborhood,” he says.

Today Micheal shares his home with his wife, Bozena, who is also an immigrant, from Poland. The two share their cultures with each other, which many would be surprised to learn have a strong connection.

One of the best architects who built Warsaw was Italian. History, architecture, painting and music cross over all the time, Bozena says. “I knew a lot about Italy before I met him,” she adds.

Micheal notes another link between the two countries.

“In the Polish national anthem the word Italian exists because it was the Poles’ army that helped defend or topple the German stronghold on Monte Cassino just outside of Naples,” he says. The anthem references “our Polish brothers in Italy” who helped fight and overtake Monte Cassino, he further explains.

Micheal doesn’t reserve spreading his Italian culture to his wife.

“He puts a lot of time and energy into the Italian community, says Charlotte Petzold Jayne, Micheal’s friend and the president of his fan club. “Everything he does is sort of Italian,” she says.