BAUS LAUNCHES RECIPROCITY PROJECT
At the same time that the media has detached itself from the case of the American father whose son was stuck in Brazil after the death of his wife who kidnapped their son, another equally delicate case presents itself. Tatiana, 35, waits in prison in Elizabeth, New Jersey, for the order to be deported back to Brazil. Her crime? She is an illegal immigrant, or "undocumented," as the Americans say. The sad thing is that she will go back to Brazil without her three children: 13, 9, 8 of age, all of whom are American citizens. She will also leave behind her husband, 39, who is a naturalized citizen.
ABE, The Brazilian Alliance, headquartered in the city of Hartford, Connecticut, has encountered similar cases before and seeks to avoid the deportation of parents whose infants have American citizenship by way of being born there. The Brazilian Statute of Immigration, article 75, item II, letter b states that: "[the government] will not proceed with expulsion when the foreigner has a Brazilian child and there is proof that the child is under his guard and depends on him economically."
Should it not follow that the United States would reciprocate by providing the same right to Brazilian immigrants? With Barack Obama as President, The United States is in a new era of government that is more favorable to negotiation. We at ABE see this as the most opportune time for the Brazilian government to dedicate its efforts to secure an agreement of reciprocity with the United States so that cases such as Tatiana’s no longer occur. It is possible that in the future this sad case could come to represent a shift in the way people are treated in America. We remember Rosa Parks who on the 1st of December, 1955, refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama which represented the beginning of the fight against racial segregation in America and which has culminated, more than half a century later, with the election of the first black President of the United States.
I too, to borrow from Martin Luther King Jr., have a dream that in the name of the hundreds of thousands of Brazilians living in the United States, you, Mr. President of the Republic, will fight for their rights and take advantage of the opportunity to negotiate an agreement of reciprocity with the United States. You, who once was a migrant in search of a better life, climbed all the rungs of the political ladder to arrive at the Presidency of the Republic – you especially know and represent the struggle that has been overcome in our own country. Relying upon your indispensable support of the United States-Brazil Reciprocity Project, I say farewell, certain that the moment that we now experience will go down in history as a significant development in Human Rights between the two countries. Sincerely
Abigail Amorim
from left to right, Abigail Amorim, President of the Alliance United Brazil-States, Dr. Durval Noronha, Director of the Noronha Lawyers and Dr. Mei-Ling Sui-Caldera, Vice-President of ABE.
Estagiária da ABE , Assistente Social e Estudante de mestrado da UConn, Rachel Epstein relata sobre o fracasso do DREAM ACT na pauta de votações do Senado. Visit us at
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheBrazilianAlliance
http://www.myspace.com/abigailamorim
http://www.facebook.com/abigailamorim
http://abigailamorim.blogspot.com/
Please read the article above! It is an urgent matter! By doing this we will be able to help avoid that our friends and fellow citizens continue to go through this humiliation and lack of respect for their human and citizen's rights!
http://oglobo.globo.com/blogs/brasilcomz/
http://oglobo.globo.com/blogs/brasilcomz/
http://www.comunidadenews.com/imigracao/projeto-de-organizacao-de-connecticut-tem-brasileira-deportada-como-simbolo-4834
