The American Dream

The following link will take you to the Posada Project website. There you can click on the movie trailer, to get a sneak peak of the this powerful documentary. Posada tells the tale of three immigrant youth as they travel to the U.S. The youth are arrested by immigration and battle to stay in America.

Migrant Films : Posadas Project

Each year tens of thousands of youth attempt to cross the U.S.-Mexico boarder and each year tens of thousands are detained and deported. Many youth are subjected to various forms of abuse along their passafe. One woman reported that the girls she traveled with were given injections of birth control.

Overall, it is estimated atleast 5 in 10 women are raped. And what makes this even worse, there is nothing they can do. They risk their life for "a better life" and "to live the American dream." Yet once in America they live in fear of being deported. If they get raped, who are they going to tell? Often these women and girls get raped numerous times along their journey.

What happens if these women and girls get pregnant? As undocumented immigrants they don't have health insurance. Any contact with a health care worker is considered a great risk. Many of these women go without prenatal care and arrive only at the hospital to give birth. This is a huge concern. By not receiving prenatal care, these women are now at a high risk for complications -- complications which could be fatal.

I keep reading arguments that "illegal" immigrants are a financial burden on the U.S taxpayers, due to "their use" of emergency medicine. Statistically speaking, Latino immigrants are overall healthier than Americans. Hmm... why could that be? I found it interesting to note, that foreign-born immigrant women were not only healthier, but they had healthier pregnancies with fewer complications than their American-born counterparts. Is it possible, that if these "immigrants" had access to healthcare, that their use of emergency services would decrease? On many occasions the thousands of dollars, which are accrued by emergency procedures, could be prevented by one or two health care visits adding up to only a fraction of the cost.

And what happens to the pregnant women who are sent to detention centers? The amount of time spent in a detention center varies, from days to months, and sometimes years. For a pregnant women, this is catastrophic. Often times, undocumented women do not receive adequate prenatal or gynecological healthcare. Sometimes these women are completely denied prenatal care.



What if these women have other children? What happens to the children?



And again, check out my reddit profile, to find a list of other resources and related topics: http://www.reddit.com/user/Adria_12/