Only In America With Ali Noorani

Ali talks to Sonia Nazario, award-winning journalist and the author of Enrique’s Journey, a story about a 17-year-old boy from Honduras who travels a dangerous road to the U.S. looking for his mother. She has received multiple awards for her recent humanitarian efforts to get lawyers for unaccompanied migrant children. Sonia talks to Ali about hardships that Hondurans who are fleeing violence face and the factors pushing them to make the difficult decision to leave their homes in search of safety.

  Rose Previte is an award-winning restaurateur based in Washington, D.C., and the owner of Compass Rose and Maydan. Ali joined her in Compass Rose’s Bedouin tent to discuss family, travel and using food to make cultural connections.

Ali talks to Steve Kuhn, who spent his career at some of the top financial firms and worked as a hedge fund manager, retired, and dedicated his efforts toward philanthropy and immigration. Steve founded IDEAL Immigration, an organization that advocates for the economic and social benefits of immigration to the U.S. And Ali takes a look at the role of immigration in the 2020 election cycle, including policy proposals in the Democratic presidential debates and how Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) will be a driving issue of the election.

This week, on the 150th anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, Ali remembers the sacrifice of thousands of immigrant laborers from China through the work of a California artist. Jason Ma created the musical "Gold Mountain" based on the lives of those who struggled to complete the project, which shortened a perilous months-long journey to less than week, and transformed the American economy. Jason talks about his life, work and family, and how the musical has revived the memory of the enormous sacrifice made by the Chinese workers.     

    This week, Ali goes back to school, and joins an English language class of immigrant Whole Foods employees. It's part of the National Immigration Forum's program "Skills and Opportunity for the New American Workforce."  As Ali discovered, it's not simply enabling them to better engage with the customers – it's transforming their lives.

This week we meet Daniel Garza, who started life picking crops with his Mexican American family, and rose to be a senior advisor in the George W. Bush Administration. Now he's a leading advocate for Hispanic immigrants. He leads the Libre Initiative, a grassroots non-profit which works to empower the Hispanic communities of America. It advocates for free enterprise, and aims to equip Hispanics with the tools they need to be prosperous.    Later in the show, we celebrate Immigrant Heritage Month with some of America's industry pioneers, at the Nasdaq Stock Exchange. Rosanna Durruthy, the head of Global Diversity at LinkedIn spoke to the contributions that immigrants, Dreamers and TPS recipients make to our diverse workforce. 

This week, Ali talks to Pati Jinich, host of the popular James Beard Award-winning and Emmy-nominated PBS series Pati's Mexican Table. Pati taught Ali how to prepare nopales, or cactus paddles, as the two discussed Pati’s love for food, her family’s history of migration, and the dish she’d serve lawmakers to convince them to pass immigration reform. 

Sherif Almiggabber is an officer within the Community Engagement Unit at the Montgomery County Police Department, where he has worked for 13 years. Montgomery County, Maryland — right outside of Washington, D.C. — is one of the most diverse counties in America. Hear his conversation with Ali about how, as an immigrant from Egypt and as a Muslim, he gets to know the people in his county’s Muslim communities and how cultural awareness builds trust, in turn keeping all of us safer.

Marty Rosenbluth is the only immigration attorney in Lumpkin, Georgia, near the Stewart Detention Center, where detainees face a tough legal process and often lack representation. He and Ali talk about how he helps immigrants navigate the complex legal web and the lack of due process in our immigration court system.

Chuck Staben is president of the University of Idaho. He has been named the “Amigo del Año” (Friend of the Year) by the Idaho Commission on Hispanic Affairs for his work on the Caminos al Futuro program and College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP) initiative, both of which provide academic support immigrant students. Chuck spoke to Ali about how to serve the state’s growing LatinX community, what sparked his interest in research, and Idaho dairy.

  Susan West is director of the Conversational English Ministry for the Montgomery Baptist Association in Montgomery, Alabama.  A retired teacher, she previously taught English to the families of foreign officers receiving officer training at Maxwell Air Force Base. She highly recommends the children’s book “The Hundred Dresses” by Evelyn Estes.

  Belinda Bauman is a writer, teacher and advocate living in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She is the author of “Brave Souls: Experiencing the Audacious Power of Empathy.” Belinda is also the founder of the One Million Thumbprints, which advocates for women in the most dangerous conflict zones in the world. Her work has also appeared in HuffPost and The Daily Beast.

     Ali chats this week with police chiefs Andy Harvey of Palestine, Texas; Dwight Henninger of Vail, Colorado, and Steve Stahl of Maricopa, Arizona.  They spoke about how they each connect with their immigrant communities, the importance of trust and keeping communities safe. Chief Harvey spoke about relational policing, Chief Henninger recalled borrowing a model program from another county to successfully engage immigrants in Vail, and Chief Stahl talked about building bridges with trust.

  Ali’s guest this week is Beth Cossin, a network pastor with the Heritage Church in the Quad Cities in Iowa and Illinois. She is also site director for the Esperanza Legal Assistance Center in Moline, Illinois. Beth recently visited the southern border with fellow pastors from the Wesleyan Church. She talks with Ali about bearing witness on the delegation trip to El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, the importance of sharing the stories of migrants and serving the underserved in her community.

Ali speaks this week with Amanda Ripley, a contributing writer to The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Emerson Collective. She is the author  of “The Smartest Kids in the World – and How They Got That Way” and “The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes and Why.” Amanda recently profiled Watertown, New York, “The Least Politically Prejudiced Place in America.” She talked to Ali about her start in journalism, the importance of traditional institutions in civil life and meeting two lifelong friends named Ann in Watertown who are political opposites.

Kurt Ver Beek is co-founder and president of the Association For A More Just Society, a Christian organization dedicated to achieving justice in Honduras through the implementation of reforms that would end corruption, violence and injustice. He is also on the faculty of Calvin College. Kurt spoke with Ali about the battle to end corruption and violence in Honduras, how the country has (and hasn’t) changed, and the hope he finds in the Honduran people.  

     William R. Kerr is the D’Arbeloff Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School & co-director of Harvard’s Managing the Future of Work initiative. His latest book is “The Gift of Global Talent: How Migration Shapes Business, Economy and Society.” Molika Gupta holds two masters degrees & is a patent licensing professional based in the Detroit area. She has an H-4 visa & advocates for other H-4 visa holders. Molika founded the Facebook group Immigrant Spouses ReWrite Your Story & the advocacy group Save H4EAD. Ali spoke to Bill & Molika about high-skilled migration, the Trump administration’s impact on visas, and H-4 advocacy.

  Derek Miller is the president and CEO of the Salt Lake Chamber in Salt Lake City, Utah. Earlier in his career, he worked as legal counsel on Capitol Hill and more recently as president of World Trade Center Utah. Derek and Ali discussed the reasons behind the signing of the Utah Compact, a declaration of five principles that guide Utah’s immigration discussion. The Compact ended up reverberating through the national immigration discussion. The pair also discuss the beauty of Utah, its rural areas and the struggle within the Salt Lake region to fill jobs in all industries.

  Brett Hunt is the executive director of the Public Service Academy at Arizona State University. Previously, he served as a U.S. Army captain and Foreign Service officer . Sara Nieves Pereia is a student and communications lead at the academy. Originally from the Azores islands, she recently became a U.S. citizen. Sara and her American husband moved to his home state of Arizona in 2011. Ali spoke to Brett and Sara about the values the academy instills in students, the traumatic transition of immigration to the US, and what public service means to them.

Lalo Alcaraz is a nationally-syndicated cartoonist, writer and producer based in Los Angeles.  He is the creator of the first politically-themed Latino comic, “La Cucaracha,” the founder of Pocho.com and was a writer and producer for the 2016 Fox series Border Town. He was also a cultural consultant for the Disney Pixar feature Coco.  He is currently a consulting producer and writer for The Casagrandes, which will premiere this fall on Nickelodeon. Lalo talks to Ali about his parents’ journey from Mexico to Southern California, how their struggle informs his work today and how he foresees the country’s future.