A Schoolteacher with a Story

Take a glimpse at the desk of Rosanna Castellanos, a bilingual special education teacher at Goudy Elementary School in Chicago, and you may be surprised by what you see. In addition to pencils, pens, textbooks and...

The doll that brings back Bogota

Jacqueline sits on the bed, staring up blankly with heavy blue eye shadow surrounding her painted eyes. Twenty-two year old Laura Mesa picks her up, pushing down some of her wiry red hair, and explains that...

Immigrant Sponsorship

Sponsorship is tricky term, much like green cards which are no longer green. Immigrant sponsorship is often used to refer to the process an immigrant must go through to come to the United States. While most...

Indian return to Uganda

BY MRINALINI REDDY, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE 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...

Marrying Into Citizenship – What’s It Involve?

Mia wanted to live in Chicago with her boyfriend, but she was British, self-employed, and had no intention of going to an American university.  In short, according to the United States government, she had no reason...

To the Canary Islands and back: Going nowhere in Senegal...Yet

BY MAKIKO KITAMURA [This story was published originally on Immigration Here & There, a project of the Medill School of Journalism] Momar Ba is back where he began, with little more than a harrowing story to...

Nana's Stories

Every other Sunday for as long as I can remember, my brother and I would go over to Nana and Papa’s for dinner. The food was always the same: chicken and noodles, followed by fruit and, only once we had finished our fruit, a little cup of chocolate chips. Either before or...

Lost in translation: children interpret for immigrant parents

BY KIRA LERNER [this story was written originally for a course, Enterprise Reporting in Diverse Communities, at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism] Gustavo Montes, a 13-year-old Edgewater resident, plays a crucial role in his parents’ lives. Not only is...

A mission shared, a flock divided

"Detentions at McHenry County Correctional Facility"Over half of the inmates at the McHenry County Correctional Facility, in Woodstock, are immigrant detainees. Jail officials, activists and clergy are working together to meet their spiritual needs as they are locked away...

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