America has seen many waves of immigration since the country's founding-some came to escape political or religious persecution, others to seek their riches in a new land, some came as privileged merchants, and countless others with little more than the clothes on their backs. Their stories are as diverse and varied as the countries which they left behind. Yet despite the fact that most Americans have personal or family stories of immigration to the United States, the country is currently experiencing a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment-feelings that have ebbed and flowed throughout our nation's history. The Independent Television Service (ITVS) presents Kartemquin Films' THE NEW AMERICANS, a seven-hour, three-part documentary miniseries that follows four years in the lives of a diverse group of contemporary immigrants and refugees as they make the age-old journey from around the globe to start new lives in America. The series premieres as a part of the critically acclaimed Independent Lens series on PBS stations nationwide beginning Monday, March 29, 2004, and was executive produced by Steve James (director of HOOP DREAMS and the recent critical hit STEVIE) and long-time award-winning filmmaker Gordon Quinn, with Gita Saedi serving as series producer. The five stories were directed by award-winning filmmakers Renee Tajima-Pena (Mexican), Indu Krishnan (Indian), Steve James (Nigerian), Jerry Blumenthal and Gordon Quinn (Palestinian), and Susana Aikin and Carlos Aparicio(Dominican Republic). In the style of Kartemquin's classic HOOP DREAMS, this series intimately connects viewers to its subjects starting in a refugee camp or homeland, long before they wear that defining label of "immigrant," then following them from their emotional departures abroad, through their first pivotal years in America. The immigrants featured are: * Ogoni refugees from Nigeria are English-speaking and well-educated, yet they work as maids, janitors and kitchen help, struggling to make ends meet in Chicago. Barine is the mother of four and the proud sister of slain Ogoni activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, whose execution by the Nigerian government led to the Ogoni's refugee plight. Another refugee, Israel, was trained as a chemical engineer but was arrested and tortured when he became an environmental activist back home. Though they did not willingly choose to leave their homeland, Israel and his wife Ngozi, are determined to succeed and provide for their children despite the obstacles they face here in America. * Dominicans Ricardo and Jose are highly prized baseball prospects in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization. The series follows them from the Dodgers training camp in the Dominican Republic to spring training in Florida and through their first years in America, as they chase their baseball dream, in such unlikely places as Great Falls, Montana, and Albany, Georgia. Will they become the next Pedro Martinez or Sammy Sosa, or be forced to return to the barrios of Santo Domingo? * Naima is a young Palestinian woman who falls in love with and marries Hatem, a first-generation Palestinian-American from Chicago. With one brother dead and another imprisoned during the first Intifada, Naima is determined to leave the West Bank and start anew, far from the war-torn region. As she begins her new life in Chicago, viewers see her cope with homesickness, the demands of a new husband and career, as well as the profound affects of the second Intifada and the aftermath of September 11th. * Pedro Flores is a Mexican immigrant who works as a meatpacker in rural Kansas in order to support his wife and six children back in Guanajuato, Mexico. This story dramatizes one of the profound changes afoot in the nation's heartland- the huge influx of poor immigrants from developing countries into the South and Midwest, drawn by work in some of the United States' most debilitating industries. The Flores story is also one of a strong family's tireless and tumultuous efforts to legally end their long separation and live together as a family in the "promised land." * Anjan is a computer programmer from Bangalore (the Silicon Valley of India) who marries Harshini and migrates to the San Francisco Bay Area to pursue an Internet fortune and "explore the world beyond India." Through Anjan, viewers meet some of the more than 60,000 other Indian immigrants who have come to chase this high-tech version of the "American Dream." He and his wife arrive during the dot.com boom, but soon find themselves coping with a dot.com bust that inordinately impacts the lives of many high tech immigrants.
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