Text & photos by Karl-Erik Stromsta

Helen Brady and Bielcka Ramirez live just a few miles apart – practically neighbors by L.A. standards. Yet the two teenagers have never met, and they likely never will. Helen lives on the Arizona border, in Naco; Bielcka lives on the other side, in Mexico.

For most Americans, “the border” is an abstraction. For Helen and Bielcka it is painfully real: The horizon-riding corrugated steel barrier – rusted in spots, barbed in others – separating their two nations.

Helen is training with the Border Patrol. Bielcka lives in fear of the corrupt Mexican police. Being a teenager is difficult enough. Being a teenager on the edge of a nation is downright bewildering.

Click to read the full story, as it appeared in L.A. Weekly.

By William Etling, Christina Wu & Diana Day

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By Eric Berkowitz

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — In the harsh morning glare, a woman in red slippers shuffled unsteadily across the Sandman Motel’s parking lot. Carrying a fifth of something in a black plastic bag, she followed a familiar path from the nearby liquor store, climbed the motel’s stairs with effort, and disappeared into the $49 per night desolation of her room.

Here, at the edge of South Central Los Angeles, there is no shortage of despair. An indoor gun firing range abuts a windowless pornography shop, which sits hard by another liquor store. But the business done in those establishments is matched — if not dwarfed — by the area’s underground economy. The people on the street do their own cash-based commerce, selling either themselves or substances that make their customers feel like someone else.

And here, in a motel populated with drunks, drug dealers, and acne-faced prostitutes, a few of the nation’s 12 million illegal immigration problems are being played out in real time. The Sandman’s owners use the cheapest, most plentiful and vulnerable labor available — undocumented Latino women. (more…)

The legacy of the bracero program, which brought 4.6 million Mexicans to the United States beginning in the 1940s, serves as a grim reminder of the potential for guest-worker exploitation and second-class treatment.
(more…)

The USA Patriot Act’s provisions barring entry into the United States of terrorism supporters are keeping out thousands of legitimate refugees. Eric Berkowitz reports that the resettlements of refugees from Burma, Columbia, Liberia and elsewhere are now on hold due to their “support” for rebel groups in thier native countries — support that was as minimal as a glass of water and was often given at the barrel of a gun.