On Tuesday, WHYY television station will air a series of documentaries that reveal the blood, sweat and tears required to immigrate into the United States from various countries.
The New Americans: The Flores Family documents one Mexican family's challenge to immigrate to the United States and acclimate themselves to their new surroundings.
The family is made up of Pedro Flores, his wife and their six children. Initially, Pedro works as a meat packer in Garden City, Kan., while the rest of his family remains in Guanajuato, Mexico. If he is lucky, he returns to Mexico twice a year to see his family.
The Flores family decides to move to the United States in the hope of finding job opportunities and a better quality of life.
But obtaining visas is physically and emotionally demanding. The family must find eight American sponsors -- U.S. citizens willing to attest that each family member is fit to live in the United States.
In addition to its strict legal processes, the United States' domination over Mexico complicates life for its neighbor.
At a drying river near the border, Pedro says, "The river belongs to Mexico, but the water belongs to the United States. If the farmers could use the water here for our farms, we wouldn't have to come to the United States."
Unhappy in Kansas, the family moves to California, where they stay with seven other people in a trailer park. Pedro and his eldest daughter spend long days picking strawberries and are forced to wear handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths to help them withstand the pesticides.
The film was followed by discussion about the Mexican community in Philadelphia and the current proposal by President George W. Bush to overhaul the status of illegal workers.
One of the complaints about the film was its portrayal of immigrant families.
"The Flores family came in legally, not illegally," said second-year graduate student Carlos Valdovinos, whose parents immigrated to the United States. "It is kind of a simplification" of what so many of these immigrant families go through.
Others addressed concerns of illegal immigrants in Philadelphia.
"People don't realize that they have certain rights," Valdovinos said. "Calling yourself 'illegal' gets internalized to the point where you feel it is not OK to even open your mouth."
In Philadelphia, there are limited resources for undocumented immigrants, despite a growing number of people immigrating to the city.
"There's really no one in Philly that's working with undocumented immigrants," said College senior Peter Bloom, who works with the Mexican community in South Philadelphia.
Even for those -- like the Flores family -- who have proper documentation, the jobs available are limited, and their quality of life is little improved.
"What's interesting is that we think of them as being undocumented [and therefore having low-level jobs], but the Flores family is documented and they still end up as migrant workers," said Maria M”eller, project assistant for the New Immigrants Initiative in Philadelphia, a project headed by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
The New Americans: The Flores Family is one of six documentaries that feature the immigration process of families from different cultures.
