'Immigrant Magazine' Gives Voice To A Range Of Communities

Copyright © 2014 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

ARUN RATH, HOST:

When Pamela Anchang came to United States from Cameroon 20 years ago, she had a problem. Like a lot of immigrants, she felt that she didn’t see herself in the media.

PAMELA ANCHANG: I just felt like there was a void. Yes, there are tons and tons of magazines out there, but most of these magazine and newspapers target themselves. So, say, you read India West or Africa Times. What are the chances that someone non-African or non-Indian would pick that up? So essentially you’re preaching to your own choir.

RATH: Ten years ago, she started the Immigrant Magazine to provide a bridge to those different communities with stories from a wide range of perspectives.

ANCHANG: Immigrant stories are not just about a crisis situation. Immigrants don’t always want to see themselves as victims.

RATH: Right now, on the site, there’s a story about palliative care in the Chinese-American community, a Korean TV show that tackles mental illness and a new album from a Guinean musician. Pamela Anchang’s own immigrant story started in 1994, when she left Cameroon. After a spring of multiparty politics took off in the country, her cousin was one of the opposition leaders who challenged the president, and her family felt unsafe.

ANCHANG: We were politically targeted. Socially, I felt – in the university – harassed. So I left Cameroon under those conditions, you know, thinking, you know what? Let me go to a place where I can be myself, where I can thrive.

RATH: When she came to the U.S., she started working as a teacher and a computer engineer. But Anchang dreamed of being a journalist as a child, so she started writing articles about Africa and her life back home.

ANCHANG: It turns out I had no place to publish them. There was nowhere to share my experiences.

RATH: Living in Los Angeles, she met immigrants from all over the world and started hearing remarkable studies. She found out that she wasn’t the only one who didn’t feel she had a voice.

ANCHANG: And so I decided – I said, you know what? If we don’t have a place to tell our stories, I’m going to create mine.

RATH: She founded the Immigrant Magazine as a print magazine in 2004. Now it’s a website and online newsletter. One of the stories that’s meant the most to her over the years was an interview with a Filipina immigrant.

ANCHANG: Virgelia Villegas is her name, and I was doing this interview with her. And in the middle of the story, she said, Pam, I came to the United States because my mother paired me up with her business partner. I was only 16. And I moved out here, married to this guy. I had two children. And a few years later, I became a widow.

She told me, I only have a high school diploma. And so she turns around now, and she’s giving back. She has built a compelling enterprise of cultural pageants. Now, she doesn’t call them beauty pageants because she’s really about forming young women in the Latino community and the Asian community.

RATH: Stories like this, about success and triumph, are the ones that Anchang wants to get out, to uplift immigrants and their commute. Most of the contributors to the magazine are freelancers, and she’s not able to pay them yet, but hopes to in the future. Money for the magazine comes from advertising and sponsorship. She has a lot of goals for keeping this going and growing. They’re adding video components and working to produce pilot shows that can be sold or syndicated.

Though the site is mostly features and Q and As and isn’t overtly political in nature, immigration is, of course, a heated political issue. I asked Pamela Anchang if, as the editor of a magazine like hers, it’s hard to cover a community without also becoming an advocate.

ANCHANG: You know, as I’m editing articles, I get all kinds of articles, and I try to be as, you know, fair as possible. I like to present both sides. However, my side is a humanitarian stance, so my political stance is purely advocacy. I also work with organizations who actually are grooming immigrants for leadership so they can turn and run for office, so that maybe the more of us are in office.

We can begin to maybe really then pass that message across because if we don’t have any representation, politically speaking, how are we going to change any laws or make the laws to adapt to our interests? So we – yes, I do have interest in political…

(LAUGHTER)

ANCHANG: Yes, I do. It takes politics to make changes, so that’s something that I do not neglect.

RATH: That’s Pamela Anchang, the editor and founder of the Immigrant Magazine.

Copyright © 2014 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR’s prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio.

Source Article from http://www.npr.org/2014/11/02/360957597/immigrant-magazine-gives-a-voice-migrant-communities?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=media
'Immigrant Magazine' Gives Voice To A Range Of Communities
http://www.npr.org/2014/11/02/360957597/immigrant-magazine-gives-a-voice-migrant-communities?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=media
http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?p=immigrant
immigrant – Yahoo News Search Results
immigrant – Yahoo News Search Results

'Immigrant Magazine' Gives Voice To A Range Of Communities

Copyright © 2014 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

ARUN RATH, HOST:

When Pamela Anchang came to United States from Cameroon 20 years ago, she had a problem. Like a lot of immigrants, she felt that she didn’t see herself in the media.

PAMELA ANCHANG: I just felt like there was a void. Yes, there are tons and tons of magazines out there, but most of these magazine and newspapers target themselves. So, say, you read India West or Africa Times. What are the chances that someone non-African or non-Indian would pick that up? So essentially you’re preaching to your own choir.

RATH: Ten years ago, she started the Immigrant Magazine to provide a bridge to those different communities with stories from a wide range of perspectives.

ANCHANG: Immigrant stories are not just about a crisis situation. Immigrants don’t always want to see themselves as victims.

RATH: Right now, on the site, there’s a story about palliative care in the Chinese-American community, a Korean TV show that tackles mental illness and a new album from a Guinean musician. Pamela Anchang’s own immigrant story started in 1994, when she left Cameroon. After a spring of multiparty politics took off in the country, her cousin was one of the opposition leaders who challenged the president, and her family felt unsafe.

ANCHANG: We were politically targeted. Socially, I felt – in the university – harassed. So I left Cameroon under those conditions, you know, thinking, you know what? Let me go to a place where I can be myself, where I can thrive.

RATH: When she came to the U.S., she started working as a teacher and a computer engineer. But Anchang dreamed of being a journalist as a child, so she started writing articles about Africa and her life back home.

ANCHANG: It turns out I had no place to publish them. There was nowhere to share my experiences.

RATH: Living in Los Angeles, she met immigrants from all over the world and started hearing remarkable studies. She found out that she wasn’t the only one who didn’t feel she had a voice.

ANCHANG: And so I decided – I said, you know what? If we don’t have a place to tell our stories, I’m going to create mine.

RATH: She founded the Immigrant Magazine as a print magazine in 2004. Now it’s a website and online newsletter. One of the stories that’s meant the most to her over the years was an interview with a Filipina immigrant.

ANCHANG: Virgelia Villegas is her name, and I was doing this interview with her. And in the middle of the story, she said, Pam, I came to the United States because my mother paired me up with her business partner. I was only 16. And I moved out here, married to this guy. I had two children. And a few years later, I became a widow.

She told me, I only have a high school diploma. And so she turns around now, and she’s giving back. She has built a compelling enterprise of cultural pageants. Now, she doesn’t call them beauty pageants because she’s really about forming young women in the Latino community and the Asian community.

RATH: Stories like this, about success and triumph, are the ones that Anchang wants to get out, to uplift immigrants and their commute. Most of the contributors to the magazine are freelancers, and she’s not able to pay them yet, but hopes to in the future. Money for the magazine comes from advertising and sponsorship. She has a lot of goals for keeping this going and growing. They’re adding video components and working to produce pilot shows that can be sold or syndicated.

Though the site is mostly features and Q and As and isn’t overtly political in nature, immigration is, of course, a heated political issue. I asked Pamela Anchang if, as the editor of a magazine like hers, it’s hard to cover a community without also becoming an advocate.

ANCHANG: You know, as I’m editing articles, I get all kinds of articles, and I try to be as, you know, fair as possible. I like to present both sides. However, my side is a humanitarian stance, so my political stance is purely advocacy. I also work with organizations who actually are grooming immigrants for leadership so they can turn and run for office, so that maybe the more of us are in office.

We can begin to maybe really then pass that message across because if we don’t have any representation, politically speaking, how are we going to change any laws or make the laws to adapt to our interests? So we – yes, I do have interest in political…

(LAUGHTER)

ANCHANG: Yes, I do. It takes politics to make changes, so that’s something that I do not neglect.

RATH: That’s Pamela Anchang, the editor and founder of the Immigrant Magazine.

Copyright © 2014 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR’s prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio.

Source Article from http://www.npr.org/2014/11/02/360957597/immigrant-magazine-gives-a-voice-migrant-communities?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=media
'Immigrant Magazine' Gives Voice To A Range Of Communities
http://www.npr.org/2014/11/02/360957597/immigrant-magazine-gives-a-voice-migrant-communities?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=media
http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?p=immigrant
immigrant – Yahoo News Search Results
immigrant – Yahoo News Search Results

'Immigrant Magazine' Gives Voice To A Range Of Communities

Copyright © 2014 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

ARUN RATH, HOST:

When Pamela Anchang came to United States from Cameroon 20 years ago, she had a problem. Like a lot of immigrants, she felt that she didn’t see herself in the media.

PAMELA ANCHANG: I just felt like there was a void. Yes, there are tons and tons of magazines out there, but most of these magazine and newspapers target themselves. So, say, you read India West or Africa Times. What are the chances that someone non-African or non-Indian would pick that up? So essentially you’re preaching to your own choir.

RATH: Ten years ago, she started the Immigrant Magazine to provide a bridge to those different communities with stories from a wide range of perspectives.

ANCHANG: Immigrant stories are not just about a crisis situation. Immigrants don’t always want to see themselves as victims.

RATH: Right now, on the site, there’s a story about palliative care in the Chinese-American community, a Korean TV show that tackles mental illness and a new album from a Guinean musician. Pamela Anchang’s own immigrant story started in 1994, when she left Cameroon. After a spring of multiparty politics took off in the country, her cousin was one of the opposition leaders who challenged the president, and her family felt unsafe.

ANCHANG: We were politically targeted. Socially, I felt – in the university – harassed. So I left Cameroon under those conditions, you know, thinking, you know what? Let me go to a place where I can be myself, where I can thrive.

RATH: When she came to the U.S., she started working as a teacher and a computer engineer. But Anchang dreamed of being a journalist as a child, so she started writing articles about Africa and her life back home.

ANCHANG: It turns out I had no place to publish them. There was nowhere to share my experiences.

RATH: Living in Los Angeles, she met immigrants from all over the world and started hearing remarkable studies. She found out that she wasn’t the only one who didn’t feel she had a voice.

ANCHANG: And so I decided – I said, you know what? If we don’t have a place to tell our stories, I’m going to create mine.

RATH: She founded the Immigrant Magazine as a print magazine in 2004. Now it’s a website and online newsletter. One of the stories that’s meant the most to her over the years was an interview with a Filipina immigrant.

ANCHANG: Virgelia Villegas is her name, and I was doing this interview with her. And in the middle of the story, she said, Pam, I came to the United States because my mother paired me up with her business partner. I was only 16. And I moved out here, married to this guy. I had two children. And a few years later, I became a widow.

She told me, I only have a high school diploma. And so she turns around now, and she’s giving back. She has built a compelling enterprise of cultural pageants. Now, she doesn’t call them beauty pageants because she’s really about forming young women in the Latino community and the Asian community.

RATH: Stories like this, about success and triumph, are the ones that Anchang wants to get out, to uplift immigrants and their commute. Most of the contributors to the magazine are freelancers, and she’s not able to pay them yet, but hopes to in the future. Money for the magazine comes from advertising and sponsorship. She has a lot of goals for keeping this going and growing. They’re adding video components and working to produce pilot shows that can be sold or syndicated.

Though the site is mostly features and Q and As and isn’t overtly political in nature, immigration is, of course, a heated political issue. I asked Pamela Anchang if, as the editor of a magazine like hers, it’s hard to cover a community without also becoming an advocate.

ANCHANG: You know, as I’m editing articles, I get all kinds of articles, and I try to be as, you know, fair as possible. I like to present both sides. However, my side is a humanitarian stance, so my political stance is purely advocacy. I also work with organizations who actually are grooming immigrants for leadership so they can turn and run for office, so that maybe the more of us are in office.

We can begin to maybe really then pass that message across because if we don’t have any representation, politically speaking, how are we going to change any laws or make the laws to adapt to our interests? So we – yes, I do have interest in political…

(LAUGHTER)

ANCHANG: Yes, I do. It takes politics to make changes, so that’s something that I do not neglect.

RATH: That’s Pamela Anchang, the editor and founder of the Immigrant Magazine.

Copyright © 2014 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR’s prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio.

Source Article from http://www.npr.org/2014/11/02/360957597/immigrant-magazine-gives-a-voice-migrant-communities?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=media
'Immigrant Magazine' Gives Voice To A Range Of Communities
http://www.npr.org/2014/11/02/360957597/immigrant-magazine-gives-a-voice-migrant-communities?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=media
http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?p=immigrant
immigrant – Yahoo News Search Results
immigrant – Yahoo News Search Results

'Immigrant Magazine' Gives Voice To A Range Of Communities

Copyright © 2014 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

ARUN RATH, HOST:

When Pamela Anchang came to United States from Cameroon 20 years ago, she had a problem. Like a lot of immigrants, she felt that she didn’t see herself in the media.

PAMELA ANCHANG: I just felt like there was a void. Yes, there are tons and tons of magazines out there, but most of these magazine and newspapers target themselves. So, say, you read India West or Africa Times. What are the chances that someone non-African or non-Indian would pick that up? So essentially you’re preaching to your own choir.

RATH: Ten years ago, she started the Immigrant Magazine to provide a bridge to those different communities with stories from a wide range of perspectives.

ANCHANG: Immigrant stories are not just about a crisis situation. Immigrants don’t always want to see themselves as victims.

RATH: Right now, on the site, there’s a story about palliative care in the Chinese-American community, a Korean TV show that tackles mental illness and a new album from a Guinean musician. Pamela Anchang’s own immigrant story started in 1994, when she left Cameroon. After a spring of multiparty politics took off in the country, her cousin was one of the opposition leaders who challenged the president, and her family felt unsafe.

ANCHANG: We were politically targeted. Socially, I felt – in the university – harassed. So I left Cameroon under those conditions, you know, thinking, you know what? Let me go to a place where I can be myself, where I can thrive.

RATH: When she came to the U.S., she started working as a teacher and a computer engineer. But Anchang dreamed of being a journalist as a child, so she started writing articles about Africa and her life back home.

ANCHANG: It turns out I had no place to publish them. There was nowhere to share my experiences.

RATH: Living in Los Angeles, she met immigrants from all over the world and started hearing remarkable studies. She found out that she wasn’t the only one who didn’t feel she had a voice.

ANCHANG: And so I decided – I said, you know what? If we don’t have a place to tell our stories, I’m going to create mine.

RATH: She founded the Immigrant Magazine as a print magazine in 2004. Now it’s a website and online newsletter. One of the stories that’s meant the most to her over the years was an interview with a Filipina immigrant.

ANCHANG: Virgelia Villegas is her name, and I was doing this interview with her. And in the middle of the story, she said, Pam, I came to the United States because my mother paired me up with her business partner. I was only 16. And I moved out here, married to this guy. I had two children. And a few years later, I became a widow.

She told me, I only have a high school diploma. And so she turns around now, and she’s giving back. She has built a compelling enterprise of cultural pageants. Now, she doesn’t call them beauty pageants because she’s really about forming young women in the Latino community and the Asian community.

RATH: Stories like this, about success and triumph, are the ones that Anchang wants to get out, to uplift immigrants and their commute. Most of the contributors to the magazine are freelancers, and she’s not able to pay them yet, but hopes to in the future. Money for the magazine comes from advertising and sponsorship. She has a lot of goals for keeping this going and growing. They’re adding video components and working to produce pilot shows that can be sold or syndicated.

Though the site is mostly features and Q and As and isn’t overtly political in nature, immigration is, of course, a heated political issue. I asked Pamela Anchang if, as the editor of a magazine like hers, it’s hard to cover a community without also becoming an advocate.

ANCHANG: You know, as I’m editing articles, I get all kinds of articles, and I try to be as, you know, fair as possible. I like to present both sides. However, my side is a humanitarian stance, so my political stance is purely advocacy. I also work with organizations who actually are grooming immigrants for leadership so they can turn and run for office, so that maybe the more of us are in office.

We can begin to maybe really then pass that message across because if we don’t have any representation, politically speaking, how are we going to change any laws or make the laws to adapt to our interests? So we – yes, I do have interest in political…

(LAUGHTER)

ANCHANG: Yes, I do. It takes politics to make changes, so that’s something that I do not neglect.

RATH: That’s Pamela Anchang, the editor and founder of the Immigrant Magazine.

Copyright © 2014 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR’s prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio.

Source Article from http://www.npr.org/2014/11/02/360957597/immigrant-magazine-gives-a-voice-migrant-communities?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=media
'Immigrant Magazine' Gives Voice To A Range Of Communities
http://www.npr.org/2014/11/02/360957597/immigrant-magazine-gives-a-voice-migrant-communities?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=media
http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?p=immigrant
immigrant – Yahoo News Search Results
immigrant – Yahoo News Search Results

'Immigrant Magazine' Gives Voice To A Range Of Communities

Copyright © 2014 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

ARUN RATH, HOST:

When Pamela Anchang came to United States from Cameroon 20 years ago, she had a problem. Like a lot of immigrants, she felt that she didn’t see herself in the media.

PAMELA ANCHANG: I just felt like there was a void. Yes, there are tons and tons of magazines out there, but most of these magazine and newspapers target themselves. So, say, you read India West or Africa Times. What are the chances that someone non-African or non-Indian would pick that up? So essentially you’re preaching to your own choir.

RATH: Ten years ago, she started the Immigrant Magazine to provide a bridge to those different communities with stories from a wide range of perspectives.

ANCHANG: Immigrant stories are not just about a crisis situation. Immigrants don’t always want to see themselves as victims.

RATH: Right now, on the site, there’s a story about palliative care in the Chinese-American community, a Korean TV show that tackles mental illness and a new album from a Guinean musician. Pamela Anchang’s own immigrant story started in 1994, when she left Cameroon. After a spring of multiparty politics took off in the country, her cousin was one of the opposition leaders who challenged the president, and her family felt unsafe.

ANCHANG: We were politically targeted. Socially, I felt – in the university – harassed. So I left Cameroon under those conditions, you know, thinking, you know what? Let me go to a place where I can be myself, where I can thrive.

RATH: When she came to the U.S., she started working as a teacher and a computer engineer. But Anchang dreamed of being a journalist as a child, so she started writing articles about Africa and her life back home.

ANCHANG: It turns out I had no place to publish them. There was nowhere to share my experiences.

RATH: Living in Los Angeles, she met immigrants from all over the world and started hearing remarkable studies. She found out that she wasn’t the only one who didn’t feel she had a voice.

ANCHANG: And so I decided – I said, you know what? If we don’t have a place to tell our stories, I’m going to create mine.

RATH: She founded the Immigrant Magazine as a print magazine in 2004. Now it’s a website and online newsletter. One of the stories that’s meant the most to her over the years was an interview with a Filipina immigrant.

ANCHANG: Virgelia Villegas is her name, and I was doing this interview with her. And in the middle of the story, she said, Pam, I came to the United States because my mother paired me up with her business partner. I was only 16. And I moved out here, married to this guy. I had two children. And a few years later, I became a widow.

She told me, I only have a high school diploma. And so she turns around now, and she’s giving back. She has built a compelling enterprise of cultural pageants. Now, she doesn’t call them beauty pageants because she’s really about forming young women in the Latino community and the Asian community.

RATH: Stories like this, about success and triumph, are the ones that Anchang wants to get out, to uplift immigrants and their commute. Most of the contributors to the magazine are freelancers, and she’s not able to pay them yet, but hopes to in the future. Money for the magazine comes from advertising and sponsorship. She has a lot of goals for keeping this going and growing. They’re adding video components and working to produce pilot shows that can be sold or syndicated.

Though the site is mostly features and Q and As and isn’t overtly political in nature, immigration is, of course, a heated political issue. I asked Pamela Anchang if, as the editor of a magazine like hers, it’s hard to cover a community without also becoming an advocate.

ANCHANG: You know, as I’m editing articles, I get all kinds of articles, and I try to be as, you know, fair as possible. I like to present both sides. However, my side is a humanitarian stance, so my political stance is purely advocacy. I also work with organizations who actually are grooming immigrants for leadership so they can turn and run for office, so that maybe the more of us are in office.

We can begin to maybe really then pass that message across because if we don’t have any representation, politically speaking, how are we going to change any laws or make the laws to adapt to our interests? So we – yes, I do have interest in political…

(LAUGHTER)

ANCHANG: Yes, I do. It takes politics to make changes, so that’s something that I do not neglect.

RATH: That’s Pamela Anchang, the editor and founder of the Immigrant Magazine.

Copyright © 2014 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR’s prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio.

Source Article from http://www.npr.org/2014/11/02/360957597/immigrant-magazine-gives-a-voice-migrant-communities?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=media
'Immigrant Magazine' Gives Voice To A Range Of Communities
http://www.npr.org/2014/11/02/360957597/immigrant-magazine-gives-a-voice-migrant-communities?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=media
http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/rss?p=immigrant
immigrant – Yahoo News Search Results
immigrant – Yahoo News Search Results

'Immigrant Magazine' Gives Voice To A Range Of Communities

Copyright © 2014 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

ARUN RATH, HOST:

When Pamela Anchang came to United States from Cameroon 20 years ago, she had a problem. Like a lot of immigrants, she felt that she didn’t see herself in the media.

PAMELA ANCHANG: I just felt like there was a void. Yes, there are tons and tons of magazines out there, but most of these magazine and newspapers target themselves. So, say, you read India West or Africa Times. What are the chances that someone non-African or non-Indian would pick that up? So essentially you’re preaching to your own choir.

RATH: Ten years ago, she started the Immigrant Magazine to provide a bridge to those different communities with stories from a wide range of perspectives.

ANCHANG: Immigrant stories are not just about a crisis situation. Immigrants don’t always want to see themselves as victims.

RATH: Right now, on the site, there’s a story about palliative care in the Chinese-American community, a Korean TV show that tackles mental illness and a new album from a Guinean musician. Pamela Anchang’s own immigrant story started in 1994, when she left Cameroon. After a spring of multiparty politics took off in the country, her cousin was one of the opposition leaders who challenged the president, and her family felt unsafe.

ANCHANG: We were politically targeted. Socially, I felt – in the university – harassed. So I left Cameroon under those conditions, you know, thinking, you know what? Let me go to a place where I can be myself, where I can thrive.

RATH: When she came to the U.S., she started working as a teacher and a computer engineer. But Anchang dreamed of being a journalist as a child, so she started writing articles about Africa and her life back home.

ANCHANG: It turns out I had no place to publish them. There was nowhere to share my experiences.

RATH: Living in Los Angeles, she met immigrants from all over the world and started hearing remarkable studies. She found out that she wasn’t the only one who didn’t feel she had a voice.

ANCHANG: And so I decided – I said, you know what? If we don’t have a place to tell our stories, I’m going to create mine.

RATH: She founded the Immigrant Magazine as a print magazine in 2004. Now it’s a website and online newsletter. One of the stories that’s meant the most to her over the years was an interview with a Filipina immigrant.

ANCHANG: Virgelia Villegas is her name, and I was doing this interview with her. And in the middle of the story, she said, Pam, I came to the United States because my mother paired me up with her business partner. I was only 16. And I moved out here, married to this guy. I had two children. And a few years later, I became a widow.

She told me, I only have a high school diploma. And so she turns around now, and she’s giving back. She has built a compelling enterprise of cultural pageants. Now, she doesn’t call them beauty pageants because she’s really about forming young women in the Latino community and the Asian community.

RATH: Stories like this, about success and triumph, are the ones that Anchang wants to get out, to uplift immigrants and their commute. Most of the contributors to the magazine are freelancers, and she’s not able to pay them yet, but hopes to in the future. Money for the magazine comes from advertising and sponsorship. She has a lot of goals for keeping this going and growing. They’re adding video components and working to produce pilot shows that can be sold or syndicated.

Though the site is mostly features and Q and As and isn’t overtly political in nature, immigration is, of course, a heated political issue. I asked Pamela Anchang if, as the editor of a magazine like hers, it’s hard to cover a community without also becoming an advocate.

ANCHANG: You know, as I’m editing articles, I get all kinds of articles, and I try to be as, you know, fair as possible. I like to present both sides. However, my side is a humanitarian stance, so my political stance is purely advocacy. I also work with organizations who actually are grooming immigrants for leadership so they can turn and run for office, so that maybe the more of us are in office.

We can begin to maybe really then pass that message across because if we don’t have any representation, politically speaking, how are we going to change any laws or make the laws to adapt to our interests? So we – yes, I do have interest in political…

(LAUGHTER)

ANCHANG: Yes, I do. It takes politics to make changes, so that’s something that I do not neglect.

RATH: That’s Pamela Anchang, the editor and founder of the Immigrant Magazine.

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'Immigrant Magazine' Gives Voice To A Range Of Communities
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Immigrant politicians fight for votes in the heart of Orange County

Walking door to door in suburban Los Alamitos, Janet Nguyen lets her 3-year-old son soften up the voters.

“Please vote for my mom,” says Tommy, who hops off his bike to ring the doorbells.

A couple of towns over, Jose Solorio works the crowds at a candlelight vigil in Little Saigon, where activists gathered in solidarity with pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.

As election day nears, a pair of immigrant politicians — one a refugee from Vietnam, the other the son of a migrant farmer from Mexico — are fighting for votes in barrios, temples and marketplaces in the heart of Orange County.

Though the state Senate contest figures prominently in the push by Democrats to regain a supermajority in the legislature, it also speaks to the changed landscape in a county that once was reliably conservative and white.

The Senate district sprawls across the center core of the county — predominantly Latino in cities such as Santa Ana, heavily Asian in towns such as Westminster and Garden Grove. For years, it’s been safe turf for Democrats.

In past elections, experts say voters here tended to vote along ethnic lines. Nguyen, for instance, was a political unknown in 2007 when she beat her far-better-known competitors in a race for county supervisor, an outcome driven largely by the strong turnout in Little Saigon. Nguyen and a second Vietnamese American candidate earned more votes than all the other eight candidates combined.

But that ethnic solidarity may be changing.

“In the past, it was a relative novelty to get ethnic politicians on the ballot. But candidates and voters have matured,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, professor of public policy and political science at UC Riverside. “Where they once voted along ethnic lines, they now look for more qualifications.”

Both Nguyen and Solorio — she the Republican, he the Democrat — have been aggressive in reaching outside their ethnic comfort zone in search of votes. Nguyen, now in her second term as county supervisor, is running ads aimed at Latino voters. Solorio, who once represented the district in the state Assembly, is courting Vietnamese Americans.

When Nguyen arranged a series of free flu shot clinics, she staged the first one at the Delhi Center, a refuge in a densely populated Latino neighborhood in Santa Ana. The next one was at a county service center in Westminster, drawing a large Asian crowd.

“If I have to explain the same issue three times, in three communities, that’s what I do,” Nguyen, 38, said.

Solorio, 44, a former Santa Ana councilman, marvels at the diversity of the Senate district, which includes nearly a dozen cities and roughly 1 million people.

“If I don’t speak their language, I find someone who speaks their language,” he says.

Both candidates deliver online and printed materials in Spanish, Vietnamese and English. Solorio has run spots on popular Vietnamese radio programs; Nguyen has taken out ads in Spanish-language newspapers. Both lean heavily on their status as immigrants to win votes.

Solorio was born in Michoacan and came to the U.S. when he was 8 months old. His father worked the fields in the Central Valley, and Solorio and his siblings spent summers boxing almonds, picking fruit and weeding the fields.

He went on to UC Irvine and then Harvard, where he earned a master’s degree in public policy. First elected to the Santa Ana City Council, Solorio served two terms in the Assembly.

“I feel right at home in the immigrant community because it’s my community,” said Solorio, whose wife is Chinese American — a fact he points out to voters.

Nguyen grew in Saigon and left Vietnam at age 5, fleeing on a boat with her family. She grew up in Garden Grove, her family struggling on welfare and food stamps, and she also attended UC Irvine. She intended to go to medical school, but she changed her career path after taking a political science course taught by then-county Supervisor Bill Steiner.

She’d never held public office when she burst on the scene in 2007, one of 10 candidates running for supervisor. When she won, political observers — who’d put their stock in veteran candidates like state Assemblyman Tom Umberg — were stunned. Nguyen was the nation’s first Vietnamese American county supervisor.

“I want to be at the table when law is created for or against someone like me — whether that be a mom, a business owner, a minority or a young professional, like me,” she said. “This is addictive. It’s a passion.”

Solorio sees a broader message in the race.

“For both Democrat and Republican parties, 10 years ago, if you had asked who the contestants would be in a race like this, they might not have pictured two individuals from immigrant backgrounds,” he said.

“But we’re both here, and the younger people see us as role models.”

anh.do@latimes.com

Twitter: @newsterrier

Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times

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GOP probes activities for for illegal immigrant kids

Illegal immigrant children are getting guitar lessons, an organic vegetable farm, electronic gadgets and a petting farm at a housing facility funded by taxpayers.

The federal government is supplying these amenities to thousands of unaccompanied minors who crossed the border from Mexico, a senator’s inquiry has found.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has written to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell seeking an explanation for her decision to award a contract to Southwest Key Programs, a non-profit that has received $368 million from Washington in the past six years. Of this, $122 million came from the Health and Human Services Department for services that include housing immigrant children who arrived without parents.

Grassley wants details about a federal grant that funnels $316 a day to Southwest Key Programs for each unaccompanied minor at a housing facility in El Cajon, Calif., near San Diego. The overall cost of the El Cajon facility was not disclosed.

Read more on WashingtonExaminer.com

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GOP probes guitar lessons for illegal immigrant kids

Illegal immigrant children are getting guitar lessons, an organic vegetable farm, electronic gadgets and a petting farm at a housing facility funded by taxpayers.

The federal government is supplying these amenities to thousands of unaccompanied minors who crossed the border from Mexico, a senator’s inquiry has found.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has written to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell seeking an explanation for her decision to award a contract to Southwest Key Programs, a non-profit that has received $368 million from Washington in the past six years. Of this, $122 million came from the Health and Human Services Department for services that include housing immigrant children who arrived without parents.

Grassley wants details about a federal grant that funnels $316 a day to Southwest Key Programs for each unaccompanied minor at a housing facility in El Cajon, Calif., near San Diego. The overall cost of the El Cajon facility was not disclosed.

Read more on WashingtonExaminer.com

Source Article from http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/10/30/gop-probes-guitar-lessons-petting-farm-for-illegal-immigrant-kids/
GOP probes guitar lessons for illegal immigrant kids
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Illegal immigrant children get tilapia farm, guitar lessons, miniature ponies

One of the contractors housing some of the surge of illegal immigrant children from this summer offers them a petting zoo with miniature ponies, a tilapia fish farm operation and guitar lessons, according to documents releasedThursday by a senator who questioned whether the plush accommodations were a good use of taxpayers’ money.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, said it seemed excessive to pay the $329 that Southwest Key Programs, the contractor, charged per child per day at one of its California facilities in Lemon Grove, California. Another facility in El Cajon cost taxpayers $316 per child per day.

Mr. Grassley said it was particularly questionable to pay those high rates even as the White House came to Congress asking for more money to handle the surge of children earlier this year.


SEE ALSO: Obama’s immigration plan would hurt black workers: Civil-rights commissioner


“It is disturbing that HHS is funding such expensive facilities despite claiming to be unable to meet basic needs for UACs,” Mr. Grassley said in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell, using the acronym for Unaccompanied Alien Children, which is the term the government has given to the illegal immigrant youths who jump the border without their parents.

An HHS spokesman didn’t return a message seeking comment on Thursday.

A spokeswoman for Southwest Key said they were just seeing the letter and would try to respond on Friday.

The Washington Times has previously reported on some of the conditions for facilities housing the children elsewhere, including culturally sensitive music piped in to their rooms, meals tailored for lactose-intolerant stomachs and guaranteed phone privileges to be able to call their family either back home in Central America or in the U.S., where many of the children’s parents are already living illegally.

In the documents Mr. Grassley revealed Thursday, Southwest Key says it has a fish farm where they cultivate more than 1,000 tilapia. It also says it has an organic orchard with lemon, orange and grapefruit trees and an organic garden that provides vegetables for their kitchen.

The children are paid $1 a day in allowance, according to the documents.

HHS has kept many of the details of the children’s care from the public, with officials saying they believed Congress had instructed them to protect the children’s privacy, which includes the locations and conditions of their housing.

The Times made an open-records request for details of an HHS contract with Southwest Key in early July, and has yet to receive a response. The law gives agencies a month to respond.

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