Community of Strangers

Throughout our lives we create memories that will help to shape our future, and when we look back to our childhood it seems as though those days were better. We long for the past, and wish that things would go back to the way they used to be. As children we are idealist and think that our parents and grandparents will be with us forever. We think that bad things only happen to other people, not to us. However, as we grow older we begin to realize that our invincible parents are in fact vulnerable. They always were, but we only come to this realization as we grow older. In this episode I tell you about how my perception of invincible parents and grandparents started to change with time. We can't stay in the past nor can we try to go back to the past, we need to look forward, embrace our reality and work to make it better. Our new reality includes COVID-19, we need to move on and press forward, not backwards. The old normal is gone, and we need to embrace our current situation and then work to make it better. 

What America means to you may be completely different than what it means to other people, especially people from Latin America. In the USA America is a country, but it wasn't always like that. The founding fathers usually referred to the former British colonies as the United States or The Union, not America. In the 19th century, the USA had a nickname, which was Columbia. However, that nickname was eventually abandoned. Then in the early 20th century we started to see how the term America was beginning to be used to refer to the United States. Join me in this episode as I explore the origins of the word America, and how its meaning changed over time. 

My parents and your ancestors came to America hoping for a better future, whereas the African people were brought here to start a life of slavery that would leave them with physical and psychological scars. The death of George Floyd has sparked a new wave of peaceful and violent protests throughout the USA, and it might be a turning point in American history. On this episode I recount our African American fellow citizens' struggles for equal rights and equal protection under the law. 

I learned the F-word in the first month after I started the 11th grade in high school. Little did I know that the lesson I got on the F-word would eventually come handy when I had a couple of not so pleasant experiences in which race was an issue. In this episode I also tell you about the only time I had a mild negative experience with the police.

The Italian immigrants endured discrimination as well as substandard housing and working conditions in an attempt to achieve the American dream. Their efforts paved the way for the new generations to achieve things that their parents and grandparents could only dream of. Today Americans of Italian descent have not only melt into the mainstream American culture, but they have influenced and helped redefine what it means to be an American. Join me as I talk about a few Americans who can trace their roots back to Italy.

Italy and Mexico do not only have a similar flag and speak a romance language, but they're also mostly Catholic and very family oriented. However, the most striking similarity is the story of their immigrants to the United States. During the late 19th century and early 20th century, Italians immigrants started arriving in the USA by the thousands and by 1920 they represented more than 10 percent of the foreign-born population. Join me as I review the Italian immigration to the USA.

May is Jewish American heritage month. Jewish Americans have contributed in many ways to America's culture and character. Join me in this episode as I briefly review the history of Jewish immigration to America and tell you the story of some Jewish refugees who attempted to flee Nazi Germany before the start of World War II aboard the MS St. Louis. I tell you about their ordeal and their fate after they weren't allowed to disembark in the United States. 

The US congress passed the CARES act with overwhelming bipartisan support and was signed into law on March 27, 2020. This bill is supposed to provide financial relief for US families who have been affected by the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. However, there's a group of US citizens who are being left out; US citizens in mixed-status families. Join me in this episode to learn more about them. 

Ken Cuccinelli is the acting Deputy Secretary for the department of Homeland Security. He previously served as the acting director for the United States Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) and became the public face for the Trump administration's immigration policies. He's a Catholic, a conservative and an immigration hardliner, who once proposed to make it illegal for employees to speak Spanish at the workplace. He descends from Italian immigrants on his father's side, and from Irish immigrants on his mother's side. On this episode I talk about his views on immigration and the anti-immigrant sentiment that his Italian great grandfather encountered when he arrived in the United States in the late 1800's.

Migration is a phenomenon that has been happening for as long as there have been humans on the earth. Migrants are often times not welcome and are at times despised by the local population. In this episode, we explore the main reasons why people migrate. We look at some figures reported by the UN about international migration and where most migrants tend to go to look for a better life.