By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor

Angélica Blandón and Aldemar Correa star in Paraíso Travel.

Tired of waiting for advances on immigration reform to occur? Want to take the pressure off from considering the pros and cons of e-Verify, 287 (g), the border fence, Real ID, and legalization of the undocumented?

If you’re in New York, Los Angeles and a limited number of other cities, you can head to the movies this weekend to distract your mind –well, not really– for a couple of hours with a tale of undocumented immigrants who reach the U.S. in a harrowing trip through Central America and then get separated after arriving in Queens.

Telling the story of Marlon and Reina, a Colombian couple who migrate together to New York, Paraíso Travel was a huge hit in Colombia last year. The film won praise and awards at festivals in the U.S. and Europe.

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By Jelena Kopanja, FI2W contributor – First of two installments.

NEW YORK – When Mary Sherhart first sang the traditional Bosnian songs known as sevdalinkas at a concert in 2004, a woman stood up and started weeping. Her bare arms, emblazoned with scars from the war that ravaged Bosnia in the early nineties, rose toward the ceiling.

Sevdalinka is “a bridge to home,” says singer Mary Sherhart. (Photo: www.marysherhart.com)

At that moment, Sherhart knew that to be a “responsible artist” she would need to learn more about this song and its people, as the music extracted from her audiences the most private of emotions.

The emotion was evident on the faces of those who came to listen to Sherhart and Sakib Jakupovic, a Bosnian musician, this past April in Queens, NY at the tenth-anniversary celebration of the Bosnian-American Association. At midnight, grateful guests lined up to personally thank Sherhart for coming. Many of them were older Bosnian men and women, self-conscious about their broken English, but nevertheless eager to express their gratitude.

Sevdalinka is a song of love in all its manifestations, but for Bosnians living outside their country, one feeling predominates — nostalgia.

“Sevdah takes a new meaning in the diaspora,” said Sherhart, who is the president of Sevdah North America, an organization dedicated to the preservation and study of this music. “It is a bridge to the time when they were happier, a bridge to home, a bridge to their children for whom those ties are not as strong.”

Listen to “Snijeg Pade na Behar na Voce” (Snow has fallen on blossoms, on fruit) by Mary Sherhart and Omer Pobric:

[audio:http://www.jocelyngonzales.net/FI2W/08_Snijeg.mp3]

From the CD Srce Puno Bosne, Amerika i sevdah, Mary i Omer

(2005, Institut Sevdaha)

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Javier Cuenca (in red) and another activist during preparations for today’s May Day immigration rally. (Photos: Maibe Gonzalez)

About a dozen documented and undocumented immigrants showed up yesterday at the Queens, NY office of community organization Make The Road New York, where they painted signs, packed food and coordinated transportation. Some also prepped to speak at one of today’s May Day rallies in Manhattan.

A prominent immigrant advocacy organization, Make the Road is one of about 60 community, faith and labor groups that are expected to participate in two major demonstrations for immigration reform this afternoon, as part of a national action day that includes demonstrations in a number of cities. (Feet in Two Worlds will have reports on rallies throughout the day.)

One of the volunteers was Javier Oscar Cuenca, a 33-year-old, football-player type Argentinean who recently moved from New Jersey to Queens.

Cuenca has been in the United States for eight years after overstaying a tourist visa and has sustained himself by painting houses. He’s been unemployed for the last four months, but is hopeful that under President Barack Obama reforms will be enacted that help him obtain legal status, work, and attend college. Despite being undocumented, Cuenca said he didn’t mind being identified in this story.

“I’m doing this because I have faith the reform will pass,” Cuenca said. “I’m 80 percent confident it will pass.”

Speaking of immigration reform at his White House news conference on Wednesday, President Obama reiterated his desire to “move this process.” But the president also indicated that strengthening the U.S.-Mexico border is a pre-condition.

If the American people don’t feel like you can secure the borders, then it’s hard to strike a deal that would get people out of the shadows and on a pathway to citizenship who are already here, because the attitude of the average American is going to be, well, you’re just going to have hundreds of thousands of more coming in each year.

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By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor

In this year of political firsts, Malcolm Smith has secured his chance to become the first-ever African American politician to preside over the New York State Senate (he’s also the first Democrat in four decades).

But for this Smith had to earn the support of two Latino senators from The Bronx who seem to have strong-armed fellow Democrats into granting one of them, Pedro Espada Jr., the position of majority leader, before they would support Smith. (This is an unprecedented split, since tradition holds that the Senate president also serves as majority leader.)

“Latino Punch”: Espada on El Diario/La Prensa

The New York Times, which reported on the new power distribution, said the deal makes Espada, who has just returned to the State Senate, “arguably the most influential Hispanic elected official in New York.”

“It’s a moment of great pride for our community,” Espada told El Diario/La Prensa newspaper. “It’s the first time in this state that we celebrate a power sharing agreement. Smith will occupy the first position and I, the second, in legislative and state affairs.”

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Election Day, November 4, 2008. (Photo: FlickrCC/Sergiocapitano)

On Election Day, the Feet In 2 Worlds team spread out to polling places in immigrant and ethnic neighborhoods across the U.S. to report on how foreign-born voters experienced this historic day.

Our contributors covered voting in battleground states Florida and New Hampshire, as well as Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and New York:

• Macollvie Jean-Francois reported on Haitian-Americans and other voters in South Florida. She talked to those who voted before Tuesday and then covered polling sites in the morning and in the afternoon.
• Aswini Anburajan went to Harlem in the morning: she met a man in his fifties voting for the first time, a woman who marched in Selma and a Senegalese immigrant, a Puerto Rican couple, and a Trinidadian immigrant. She then went by Union Square to record the palpable excitement in lower Manhattan, before heading to Jackson Heights, Queens. There she found a Babel tower of electoral interest, complaints of election law violations, and had an extraordinary sidewalk conversation with two Bangladeshis and an Argentinean outside the polls. She also went on the air on PRI’s The World and sent us audio interviews with voters.
• Eduardo A. de Oliveira reported from New Hampshire, where he talked to a Vietnamese voter, and also found time to interview Brazilians in Massachusetts. He also appeared on WNYC, New York Public Radio.
• Martina Guzman talked to Latino families who came out to vote in Southwest Detroit, met an African American man who had tried to vote for the first time in Louisiana in 1955, and in the evening she marveled at the predominantly black city’s raucous celebration of Barack Obama’s victory.
• Suman Raghunathan reported on immigrants having trouble voting in Astoria, Queens, and then met Filipino, Egyptian and Indian voters at a firehouse in Jersey City, New Jersey.
• Yan Tai reported on high levels of turnout among first-time and immigrant voters in Chinatown and on an Asian American group’s complaints about barriers to immigrant voting.
• Pilar Marrero reported from Latino neighborhoods in Chicago, where residents were excited with the possibility of a fellow Chicagoan being elected president.
• Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska talked to Polish voters in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, who also came out in big numbers.
• John Rudolph wrapped it all up with news analysis of Obama’s place in history.

NEW YORK – Yan Tai, World Journal reporter

As Election Day drew to an end, an Asian American watchdog group said there were more problems among Asian American voters than people thought.

The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, a civil rights organization based in New York, said Tuesday that for many Asian American voters things did not go that smoothly. The group sent 1,400 attorneys, law students and community volunteers to cover 130 polling sites in eleven states with large Asian American populations which have seen election day glitches for Asian American voters in the past.

Problems cited by the group included long lines, delays, and poll-worker confusion over ID requirements, as well as anecdotes of voting rights violations. These problems were also experienced by other voters, but the group argues that the problems hit Asian American voters harder because of language barriers.

The group received hundreds of complaints via its Election Day hot line, said Margaret Fung, AALDEF’s executive director.

The problems reported included:

— Voters who could not find their names on the voter rolls. For instance, at P.S. 250 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, several voters claimed they had voted in previous elections but their names were not on the voter rolls.

— Improper requests for voter ID. At P.S. 94 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, one voter was told to go home to get an ID in order to vote. No interpreters were available to explain why this was needed.

— Racial remarks used against immigrant voters. At P.S. 94 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, two Arab American voters asked a few questions, and after they walked out, AALDEF volunteers heard a poll worker say, “They look like terrorists to me.”

— Violation of voters’ civil rights. In Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, a Chinese American grandmother needed assistance voting and asked her granddaughter to help her cast her ballot. A poll worker prevented her from bringing her family member into the voting booth, in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act.

— Inadequate assistance in Asian languages.

— Broken voting machines.

— Delays and long lines and scarcity of poll workers. In New Orleans, some Vietnamese American voters had to wait two hours to vote at Sarah T. Reed High School in Orleans Parish, while at Mary Queens of Viet Nam Church, voters had to wait almost three hours to vote.

JACKSON HEIGHTS, NY – Aswini Anburajan, FI2W reporter

Only in New York City, and especially only in Queens, would this reporter find herself surrounded by three loqacious voters of such different origins — two Bangladeshi men and one Argentinean woman — all eager to break down the reasons why they were voting for Barack Obama.

Mohammed Rahamatullah and Khandkar Haque are good friends and six-year residents of Jackson Heights. They list healthcare and changing world opinion about the U.S. as their top reasons to vote. Haque says that this is his first presidential election. He’s been a U.S. citizen for less than a year.

Rahamatullah joked that the world cares so much about this election that his brother called him from Bangladesh last night to remind him to go to the polls.

Sandra Hidalgo, originally from Argentina, is a 35-year resident of Jackson Heights. She calls McCain “ugly,” says she’s sick of the Republican Party and declares that Obama is the best choice for Latinos. She raised the issue of immigration and questioned –like a Polish voter in Harlem did earlier today– why some people who had been in the country for years couldn’t apply for legal residency.

All three voters talked with passion about the Democratic presidential candidate, declaring adamantly that voting for a Republican would just continue the current administration’s policies.

They also spoke with first hand knowledge of the recent economic crisis, saying that friends’ businesses had suffered tremendously.

Stores have closed in Jackson Heights and the ethnic restaurants that made the area famous in New York have seen their customer-flow dwindle to a trickle. Undocumented immigrants are the first to be hit, said Hidalgo, and she argued that problems in the economy ripple upward.

Polls are open for a few more hours in New York, and the lines are long and getting longer. Though the election hasn’t come to an end, and the votes haven’t been counted, at least in this part of New York people already seem to be celebrating.

JACKSON HEIGHTS, NY – Aswini Anburajan, FI2W reporter

Coming from Manhattan, you can feel the difference as you step off the subway platform at 72nd St. and Broadway in Queens.

A primarily ethnic community, Jackson Heights is home to, among many others, Colombian, Asian and South Asian immigrants.

Outside the polling place at P.S. 69, Spanish-language TV stations are interviewing voters. There are signs posted everywhere to let voters know interpreters are available, and the soundtrack of the street is a mix of languages.

Voters stream in and out of the polling site, pausing to talk to neighbors and the occasional reporter. Some people are just hanging out by parked cars, immigrants who can’t vote but are fascinated by the unfolding process of American democracy.