Browse Items (54 total)

Soraya Valdez Place is a Spanish Professor at Lenoir Rhyne University and the Community Outreach Specialist for the Catawba County Library system in Hickory, North Carolina. She is originally from San Salvador, El Salvador and first moved to the United States in 2004. Soraya tells the story of her life and explains what growing up was like for her…

Isaías García García is a barber and local business owner of Barbería García, in Boone, North Carolina. He is originally from Totonicapán, Honduras and emigrated to the United States alone at the age of 16. Garcia, the youngest of nine siblings, explains what life was like for him growing up in Guatemala with his family. He shares the story of his…

Jorge Gutiérrez was born in Mexico City and moved to North Carolina in 2005 with his family. At the time of the interview, he worked as the Coordinator of the Building Integrated Communities Initiative. In this interview, he describes the work of Building Integrated Communities – an initiative of the Latino Migration Project in the Institute for…

Alba Sánchez is the Immigrant Welcome Center Manager at the Latin American Coalition in Charlotte, North Carolina. She is originally from Costa Rica from a small town called San Rafael in the province of Heredia. She emigrated to the United States when she was twenty-six years old. In this interview, Sánchez explains what San Rafael was like,…

Major Jamie Thomas is a member of the Sanford Police Department. Specifically, he is in charge of the U-Visa applications that this police department receives. The U visa is a United States visa for victims of crimes (and their immediate family members) who have suffered substantial mental or physical abuse and are willing to assist law enforcement…

Jose Luis Arzola discusses his experience as a migrant in the United States, and his active effort to advocate for and address struggles that the migrant community faces in North Carolina. Arzola reflects how he dreamed of living in the United States ever since he was a child and how he left his life behind in Mexico in order to chase this dream…

Laura discusses how she decided to become a professor of sociology and a family therapist. She explains how she became involved in the topic of migration and started to do research on the interviews collected in the New Roots Oral History collection. Laura discusses another project in which she provided therapy to migrants who were victims of…

Keith Powell is a Captain for the Smithfield Police Department, serving as the Department’s Administrative Commander. Powell was raised on a farm in North Carolina, and he has been a police officer for twenty-two years. Powell explains that he works off-duty at the Brightleaf Flea Market, and that the flea market hires him mainly to help control…

Vianey Lemus Martinez is a fourth year undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill studying Spanish. She grew up in Tulancingo, Hidalgo in Mexico until age nine when she and her family moved to Durham, North Carolina where they have lived ever since. Lemus Martinez was hesitant to apply for a legal status under the Deferred…

Daniel Correa is a junior transfer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill studying Journalism. He immigrated to the United States with his parents and younger sister from Bogotá, Colombia in 2001, seeking political asylum. Correa moved to Miami at the age of eight and then to Cornelius, North Carolina when he was thirteen to finish…