What kind of American Dream awaits immigrants in the US?

Since Katrina, thousands of Latin Americans have moved to Louisiana to work on reconstruction efforts. Many have stayed, and many more have followed over the years, fleeing gang war, violence and poverty back home.

In November 2014, President Obama introduced legislation to protect up to 5 million people from deportation. Protection extends to those who arrived in the U.S. before 2010 and whose kids are American citizens or hold a green card – but does not address the flow of people arriving daily. Today millions of people remain untouched by the new measure, living in the shadows, and illegal in the eyes of the law.

In this episode of Huck Across America – our ongoing exploration of the state of the American Dream – we enter the lives of people who have braved borders in search of a better life, and get a feel for the obstacles and challenges that meet them once they settle on the other side.

We meet Omar, a cook from Mexico who struggles to make ends meet, his Guatemalan housemate Javier, who’s studying for a degree, and Isabel, who saw her husband killed by drug lords back in Honduras and fled with her two young children, leaving her teenage boy behind.

And then there’s Julia, who has had an ankle monitor on for four months. Her crime: crossing the southern border into the US to escape gang war in Honduras.

Another Home: Life Beyond The Border looks at the many lives of immigrants to the US, and at the stigmatising language that permeates most conversations on the issue.

Watch Episode One: The Town That Hippies Built.

Directed by Smriti Keshari, edited by Isabel Freeman.

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