Help ensure that Congress hears about American families divided and exiled by U.S. immigration law. Send a copy of our new book, Amor and Exile, to Washington with our Indiegogo campaign.
We’re rewriting part of Amor and Exile‘s conclusion and epilogue this week to reflect the rapid movement on immigration reform so far this year. “Finishing” is tough, especially since things are developing so fast. Our book is one of multiple narratives—many stories. Nathaniel and I have kept that structure intentionally, and we happen to like [...]
For the last few months, I have been involved in the surge of political activity surrounding the ongoing debate about immigration law. I’ve been very grateful for the support of my fellow American women in exile or separated from their spouses in our Action for Family Unity working group. In further virtual “travels” through the [...]
Our stories just keep coming out, and out, and out. The farther we come out, the more scary it feels, but it also feels so wonderful to read and hear the words of our supporters as they join the call to legislators to help bring us home. These past two weeks have been really amazing. [...]
People have been asking me if I saw Obama’s inaugural speech. I probably should, just to be “informed.” My not having seen it has less to do with me being a cynic than my not wanting to be let down again. Ever since his victory speech in 2008, I’ve been riding a hot air balloon [...]
I wish it was still her saying goodbye to me and not the other way around. The first time I told our story in mixed company—which is still a rare occasion—was in early 2006, to a group of high school students. My group co-leader and I were both teachers at the Catholic, all-girls Notre Dame High [...]
Six years ago, ten years felt like an eternity. Our waiting period. Ten years, and then a request for a “pardon” and a shot at a visa application for my husband. Every year I returned to the States, alone, every time, feeling so sad about having to leave my husband in Mexico. Our hopes are [...]
It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but it’s not for lack of interest…this past month I’ve been writing my last chapter furiously in the hopes of completing my part of the manuscript by the end of the month—a paragraph here, a paragraph there, an edit for Nate here and there, squeezed in during my [...]
Nathaniel and I have been away for a few months hunkering down on our next chapters in the book. But I’ve come up for air for the few days before we enter collaborative editing mode again (hooray!) this Thursday, when we’ll swap chapters and then tear them to pieces. It was a new thing for [...]
Mitt Romney’s Jan. 23 Florida debate response that “the answer is self-deportation” is confusing on several fronts. What he really means is that he wants undocumented people to depart the country on their own. But anti-immigrant groups have adopted the term “self-deportation” in recent years to mean a sort of war of attrition on the [...]
Now that all the hype has died down from the proposed changes to immigration rules by the Obama administration, immigration has returned to its normal back burner location in the media. And those of us in exile, whose lives aren’t yet affected (or won’t ever be) by these small, potential policy alterations, simply go on [...]
Gavin Dahl with KYRS Thin Air Community Radio in Spokane interviews Nathaniel Hoffman of Amor and Exile on proposed changes to the immigrant hardship waiver program. Play audio below: Jan. 12, 2012 Interview on KYRS
The Obama Administration announcement last week that it wants to allow some mixed immigration status families to remain together in the United States while they apply for hardship waivers was briefly turned into media debate fodder and then, apparently dropped because it is just too difficult to explain. But the few conservatives who cried foul, [...]
After a year or more of quiet planning, the Obama Administration will announce today that it intends to process immigrant hardship waivers within the U.S., allowing many more undocumented immigrants with U.S. citizen spouses and parents to apply without risking the immigration bars that have plagued hundreds of thousands of families since 1997. Julia Preston [...]
2011 brought a higher profile to the plight of mixed immigration status couples in the form of news articles and public campaigns, but there is still much work to be done to educate the public about the impact of immigration bars, detention and deportations on tens of thousands of American families. U.S. Rep Luis Gutierrez, [...]
Epigraph, via Prof. Leopoldo Santos Ramírez in Matrimonios de anglos y mexicanos en la frontera, which is now overdue at the Boise Public Library: So he told her the story of his family The trouble that brought the barbed wire And of all the things he couldn’t change And then he told her that he [...]
If you enjoyed the post, make sure you subscribe to the RSS feed.
© 2013 | Site Disclaimer
Powered by WordPress. Design by 