“One year I don’t see my mother. I’m an only child, she doesn’t have anyone else. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to think.” – Josette Sherin Innis came to the United States in 2003 with her husband, Vernon, and two children. The New York City Department of Education recruited Vernon […]
Sherin Innis: Opportunity Marred By Loss
Sherin Innis – Guyana from Distant Relatives Project on Vimeo. By Jose Bayona and Jonathan Camhi Sherin Innis’ family was broken apart by the stress of the immigration process. Her husband, Vernon Innis, died from a stress-related brain aneurism in 2008. Doctors told her it was stress-related. She is convinced the stress came from her […]
Victor Peñafiel: Uncertainty Comes Every Thursday
Victor Peñafiel – Ecuador from Distant Relatives Project on Vimeo. By Jose Bayona and Jonathan Camhi Every Thursday afternoon Victor Peñafiel has an appointment at the Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) office in downtown Manhattan. Peñafiel, who is an undocumented immigrant, has an active deportation order from ICE, but he hasn’t been told to leave […]
Nube Shirley Pullola: Raising Three Children By Herself
Nube Shirley Pullola – Ecuador from Distant Relatives Project on Vimeo. By Jose Bayona and Jonathan Camhi Nube Shirley Pullola dreams of going to college one day and getting a degree in education. As an undocumented immigrant, she wants to do it for herself and her four children of 8, 6, 4 and 2 years […]
Josette: A Family in Limbo
Josette is a Haitian immigrant who asked that her face not be shown. Her tourist visa expires this month. By Jonathan Vit Josette was lying in bed, sick with malaria, when the ground began to shake. She recalls watching the walls of her Port-au-Prince home shudder in the quake, swaying dangerously close to collapse. “We […]