Sharmila Chaudhari feeds her daughter Sanjana, 19 months, at the Nutrition Rehabilitation Home in Dhangadhi, Nepal, on Sunday, April 29, 2012. This Nutrition Rehabilitation Home in the western part of the country is run by RUWDUC (Rural Women’s Development Unity Corporation), a Nepali NGO. Forty-one percent of Nepali children under age 5 are short for their age (stunted), according to the preliminary 2011 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey. Stunting is a sure indicator of malnourishment.

Santiago Cruz is a farmer in San Miguel Huatla, Oaxaca, Mexico, who worked in Canadian agricultural fields to help support his family. He is now back at home and able to support his family with the help of CEDICAM, an organization that teaches sustainable agriculture and health and nutrition to its members.

Children play outside Al-Shafa General Hospital in Bhairab, Bangladesh. (Al-Shafa means recovery in Arabic).

Mothers laugh during a nutrition education seminar hosted by Care Development Organization, a Nepali NGO that receives support from Maryknollers, in Bandarkharka, Nepal, on Friday, April 27, 2012. About 30 women plus their kids and grandkids attended the seminar.

Jane Sebbi, 40, is a farmer with 12 acres of land in Kamuli, Uganda. Jane grows corn, bananas, coffee, amarinth, potatoes, soy beans, common beans and sweet potatoes. She learned to grow more nutritious foods to keep her seven children healthy. The oldest is a daughter, 22, currently studying business at college, and the youngest is 7.

Neelum Chand carries her son, Shuvam, 1, through the Nutrition Rehabilitation Home (NRH) in Dhangadhi, Nepal, after lunch on Sunday, April 29, 2012. The NRH, a project of the Rural Women’s Development and Unity Centre, a Nepali NGO, works to restore malnourished children to health.

Tohomina Akter bathes her daughter Adia, 17 months, at the neighborhood well in Char Baria, Barisal, Bangladesh, on Thursday, April 19, 2012.

Tohomina Akter washes herself at the neighborhood well in Char Baria, Barisal, Bangladesh, on Thursday, April 19, 2012.

Tohomina Akter lives with her daughter Adia, 17 months; husband Alamin; and in-laws in Char Baria village, Barisal, Bangladesh, on Thursday, April 19, 2012. Tohomina grows amarinth, spinach, peppers and other vegetables as part of a Helen Keller International program meant to improve nutrition for young children. Tohomina spends most of the morning and early afternoon cooking these vegetables plus rice for her family’s meals, as well as cleaning the house and looking after her daughter.

Demographic shifts in Mexico mean that over the long-term fewer young people – like these high schoolers in San Miguel Huautla, Oaxaca – are entering the workforce. This also means that fewer young Mexicans who can’t find jobs will choose to go to the United States.

A migrant worker harvests tomatoes on David Mann’s farm in Blackmore, Virginia, on Sunday, July 24, 2011. Without migrant labor – and unauthorized migrant labor, specifically – many fruit and vegetable farms in the United States would suffer from labor shortages. A 2012 USDA report said that a “decrease in the supply of unauthorized labor leads to a longrun relative decrease in production, not just in agriculture but in all sectors of the economy.”

A community meal in San Miguel Huatla, Oaxaca, Mexico, on Saturday, December 11, 2010.

Women who are part of the jjajja (grannies) group at St. Francis Healthcare Services in Njeru, Uganda, rest after a morning of planting matoke trees. Many grandmothers in Uganda raise their grandchildren since their own children died of AIDS. Teaching the grandmothers to grow their own food is one way for the women to remain self-sufficient.

A lab technician interning at St. Francis Helathcare Services in Jinja, Uganda, tests for diseases on May 24, 2011.

Sandesh Rai (leaning forward), 5, and his mom Sapana Rai (in yellow) wait for a health worker from Care Development Organization to conduct a nutrition education seminar in Bandarkharka, Nepal, on Friday, April 27, 2012.

Mai Lee lightly wraps her fingers around the computer mouse as if she’s holding an egg that’s about to break. She wiggles the mouse and laughs. The cursor on the screen seems to have a mind of its own. A teacher comes over to help.

It is the 13-year-old’s first try at using a computer and she couldn’t be more thrilled. After waiting over an hour for a turn at one of her school’s 11 computers, she pulled a wooden chair up to a computer station and began working. Cows mooed outside the open windows as Mai put a clip art rabbit into a word processing document.

“I’m just trying to type, to see if I can type,” said Mai, an eighth grader at Phonsavad Secondary School in Phonsavad, a Hmong village located on a small island a few hours north of Vientiane, the capital of Laos. “I feel very glad because I touched the computer today and I really want to learn more.”

For Mai and the hundreds living in this agricultural village, the computer lab is a source of community pride and hope made possible through World Links, a non-profit organization that provides teachers and students with computer hardware, software and training.

“I’m happy the children are learning about modern tools,” said Sangchanh Phomsavath, a shop owner and mother of six, including two who attend Phonsavad. “I went to look at the lab through the door, but I was afraid to go inside – maybe it was dangerous or I didn’t have the authority to go in.”

The trepidation toward technology is understandable given that Phonsavad doesn’t have running water or electricity. This is ironic given electricity is one of Laos’ top exports and a hydroelectric dam is less than 50 miles from the village. Indeed, many of the islands near Phonsavad were created because of the dam.

Nevertheless, the school’s computers run off 12 solar-powered batteries, which take two days to charge if it is sunny and last for two days before recharging is necessary. In the field behind the computer lab, a broken wood fence keeps nearby cows from trampling the solar cell and a Lao Telecom satellite dish.

A community affair

Over 50 people from the community gathered to watch the satellite dish arrive one hot afternoon in January. The small tower traveled from Vientiane for three hours by truck, three hours by boat and then a couple kilometers by truck up a dirt path. The mood was festive as Lao Telecom workers set about hooking up the dish.

“I was very happy and proud. This was the first time I saw a satellite dish,” said Lylae Syyiaxang, Phonsavad Secondary School’s vice principal. “I thought, ‘Wow, we are the first school to have this satellite and this technology. My village will be famous and my school, too.’”

But all was not going as planned. The satellite would not work. After some discussion, Syyiaxang and other villagers pinpointed the problem: the gods in the area were not happy. They had not been asked for permission to install a satellite dish.

So they sent a teacher to buy a gift that would please the gods.

Beer.

They poured six bottles around the base of the satellite dish and prayed: “This satellite is not just for us, it is for everyone in the community. Please help us.”

Confidence was low as the Lao Telecom workers tried the dish again. And then…cheers from the crowd as the satellite signal came through. The Internet connection is slow by any standard but this does not concern many people.

“We didn’t have technology at all at this school. I wanted students and teachers to have e-mail, especially, for communicating to anywhere in the world,” said Syyiaxang. Once he figures it out, Syyiaxang plans to e-mail his son, a university student in the north studying computer science, as well as a fellow teacher in the province.

–Laura Elizabeth Pohl for World Links

Helen, 12, looks out the window of her shared bedroom at Omoana House, a facility providing intensive rehabilitative care to sick and malnourished children. Helen (last name withheld) came to Omoana almost two months ago. Children with one or two parents who have died of AIDS make up the majority of kids living at Omoana. Across Uganda, about 1.2 million children have been orphaned by AIDS, according to UNAIDS data from 2009. These children may live with social stigma and be neglected by relatives and neighbors.

Helen helps Desire, one of the youngest children at Omoana House, put on her shoes. The older kids pitch in with caring for the younger kids, often treating them like siblings.

Helen (far left) eats lunch with some of the younger children at Omoana House. Without proper nutrition, not only does a child’s health suffer but a young child’s development can be delayed. In Uganda, 38% of children under age five are stunted (low height for age), according to UNICEF in 2009.

Helen eats yams and beans for lunch. An Omoana House staff nutritionist ensures children receive proper vitamins, minerals and nutrients in their meals.

Helen washes the dishes after lunch. As long as they are feeling well, children at Omoana House do chores just like in a regular home.

Helen makes her bed in the room she shares with three other girls. Children come to Omoana with ailments ranging from malnutrition to HIV/AIDS. Omoana can care for up to 25 children at one time and up to 30 children in one year.

Helen smiles after one of her roommates lets Helen play with a pink teddy bear. “Life is good, everything is good here,” said Helen.

Helen waits for Adrien Genoud, Omoana’s founder and projects coordinator, to walk her to school for her first day. “We treat the children like any other children,” said Genoud. “We talk to them about the fact that one day they will have to work for themselves, participate in the development of their country.”

A teacher leads Helen from the principal’s office to a classroom for her first day at the school near Omoana House.

Matt Beck worked a lot of jobs while his kids were growing up, but his heart was always on the river. After five years of training, he now moves barges full of soybeans, wheat, coal and gasoline along the Ohio as a proud tugboat pilot.

The hoe falls in a rhythmic “thud, thud, thud” as Jane Sabbi and her sister-in-law hack at the undergrowth on Sabbi’s shaded, fertile vegetable farm. The sun is still rising in Kamuli, Uganda, and Sabbi has already cooked breakfast, washed the dishes, cleaned the goat and pig pens, and laid out several pounds of beans to dry. Still ahead: pounding amaranth, harvesting bananas, shelling beans, feeding the animals, and cooking lunch for her husband and seven children.

“I want to work hard, get enough money to educate the children to the university level and attain degrees,” said Sabbi. “That’s my hope and desire in life.”

Back in 2004, Sabbi was like many other farmers in Uganda: working hard, subsisting on her harvests, and generating a small income. Then she joined Volunteer Efforts for Development Concerns (VEDCO), a Ugandan civil society group. She learned updated farming methods and began planting more nutritious crops, such as beans.

In a country where, according to USAID, one in five people is undernourished and two in five children are malnourished, helping farmers like Sabbi improve food and nutrition security is crucial to a healthy future. That’s why, at about the same time Sabbi joined, VEDCO began a partnership with Makerere University—Uganda’s top college—and Iowa State University. VEDCO benefits from research and development, as well as on-the-ground training, conducted by the two universities. In turn, the universities benefit from VEDCO’s cadre of members willing and eager to improve their agricultural practices and to test different approaches to sustainable development.

“If you say, ‘We’re going to dictate the terms of this,’ then that doesn’t work,” said Professor Robert Mazur, associate director of Iowa State’s Center for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods. “But if you’re learning together and raising questions together, I think you not only have a better chance of being able to introduce change but to make change.”

Although women do the majority of the agricultural work in many countries, they often face higher rates of malnutrition than men, due partly to their lower social status. So in 2008, VEDCO, Makerere, and Iowa State launched a four-year nutrition project focused on helping women grow high-quality beans for both consumption and sale.

So far, the project has field-tested various beans to determine which are hardiest, improved market access for the bean growers, and developed fast-cooking bean flour.

Jane Sabbi used to grow beans only for cooking as a sauce and mixing with other foods. Now she harvests high-quality beans for the market. She earns 2,500 shillings (about $1) per kilo for her improved beans, versus 800 shillings per kilo for regular beans.

“Sometimes I go to the farms and I ask about the production system, ‘Who clears the land?’ ‘The women.’ ‘Who plants the seeds?’ ‘The women.’ ‘Who does the weeding?’ ‘The women.’ ‘Who does the harvesting?’ ‘The women,’” said Dr. Dorothy Nakimbugwe, a food technology and nutrition professor at Makerere who develops bean-related food products. “So, women actually do the majority of the work of farm production and ensure food security for their families.”

- By Laura Elizabeth Pohl/Bread for the World

This is not how Chet Nath, 34, imagined he would spend his summer. Back in May, he and hundreds of other Bhutanese who have been living in refugee camps in eastern Nepal for as long as 17 years, tried to walk the 70 miles from Nepal through India to Bhutan. Indian police blocked them and ended up killing two people and injuring dozens. Chet Nath, a teacher and self-taught journalist, was one of those injured. Though he usually lives in the small Nepalese town of Birtamod, just east of a cluster of refugee camps, he moved himself, his wife Uma Devi, and his son Kushal into his parents’ camp hut so that his parents could care for him while his wife works during the day.

Chet Nath’s actions and injury reflect the intensity of an issue that has polarized the 106,000 Bhutanese refugees of ethnic Nepali descent: whether they should hold on to hopes of repatriation to Bhutan or accept resettlement offers from third countries, including the United States and Canada. The United States says it will take at least 60,000 people starting this year. The first groups of resettled refugees have already left Nepal.

Holding on means continued limbo. Bhutan refuses to repatriate what it calls voluntary migrants to Nepal; Bhutan’s March 24 election of its first democratic government is unlikely to change this view. However, most media reports and firsthand accounts say the Bhutanese government forced the ethnic Nepalis into leaving Bhutan because of their growing numbers and influence on society.

Refugees say that accepting resettlement means giving up on the hope that Bhutan will be held responsible for its actions and the chance they will ever return to their home country. But staying in Nepal is no option either: the Nepalese government won’t allow the Bhutanese to integrate into the country.

For several months in late 2007, the situation in the refugee camps was so tense that the United Nations and other aid groups would not discuss the resettlement issue in the camps. Refugee camp leaders, who built their political power base on hopes of returning to Bhutan, intimidated other Bhutanese to the point of violence and even death, said Father Varkey Perekkatt, field director for Caritas Nepal, a Catholic non-governmental organization that oversees the refugee camps’ education system. One refugee who publicly spoke in favor of resettlement had his hut burned and his family chased out of the camps last May.

“Some groups are putting a cloud over the refugees’ decision through intimidation,” said Father Perekkatt. “There needs to be an atmosphere where refugees are free to make their choice.”

For 15 years, Chet Nath postponed major life decisions until the day he would be living back in his homeland. He put off marriage. He put off children.

“Then one day I realized I had passed half my life here in the refugee camp. I realized I couldn’t keep delaying. That is why I married late and had a child late,” said Chet Nath as he played on the bed with his three-year-old son Kushal. “I had never expected it would take so long to get back. I am still hopeful we’ll be back.”
—-
Bhutan is best known in the west – if it’s known at all – as a small Asian country that measures its prosperity in terms of Gross National Happiness instead of Gross National Income.

Ethnic Nepalis began settling in Bhutan in the 19th century. Many became eligible for citizenship via the 1958 Nationality Law, but by the 1970s the government saw the growing group as a threat to the country’s cultural identity. Starting in 1977, Bhutan enacted laws – sometimes retroactively – that tightened citizenship requirements. A 1988 census found that 100,000 people were illegal migrants. And most, if not all, of those people were ethnic Nepalis. According to Kinga Singye, minister counsellor at Bhutan’s mission to the United Nations in New York, this was no coincidence. He said that many ethnic Nepalis illegally entered the country in the early 20th century, took advantage of the Bhutanese government’s weak administrative structure of that period and were able to obtain citizenship papers.

By 1989, the Bhutanese government struck Nepali language classes out of schools and required everyone to observe traditional Bhutanese dress and customs. Resistance led to job losses, school closures and house raids in the south, where most ethnic Nepalis lived.

First-hand accounts and news reports from the time show that by late 1990, Bhutan began intimidating ethnic Nepalis into signing “voluntary migration” forms. The trickle of refugees transiting west through India to Nepal turned into a torrent. The Indian government began driving and leaving refugees at Nepal’s eastern border, where a refugee camp was set up. Despite their role in the situation, India says it is not a player in the Bhutanese refugee issue.

“We’ve always maintained this issue is between Nepal and Bhutan and needs to be solved between the two,” said Gopal Baglay, spokesperson for the Indian embassy in Kathmandu. “In addition, it’s a humanitarian issue that needs to be solved quickly.”

At the height of the exodus in 1992, the camp swelled with 10,000 new arrivals a month. The United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHCR) stepped in at Kathmandu’s request. Eventually, a total of seven camps were built in two of Nepal’s eastern-most districts.

Bhutan has been mum on the refugee and repatriation issue since 2003, when bilateral talks with Nepal broke down. But all along, Bhutan has insisted that ethnic Nepalis left Bhutan of their own accord.

“When the (refugee) camps started, they [ethnic Nepalis in Bhutan] heard about free food, housing, healthcare and education and people said, ‘Why don’t you come to the camps?’ So people went,” said Singye of Bhutan’s mission to the United Nations in New York. “Our king even went down and explained to them that they should not leave, but they did not listen. People who are Bhutanese and were forced out – it’s a very small percentage.”
—-
The bumpy dirt road to the Beldangi complex of camps is lined with Bhutanese refugees walking and bicycling to Damak, a small town a few miles from the camps. Tucked away behind trees and ignored by the world, Beldangi I, Beldangi II and Beldangi Extension camps overflow into each other, housing nearly half the Bhutanese refugee population. People have languished here for 17 years, living a life dependent on UNHCR and other aid organizations for food and fuel rations. They lack electricity and running water. Old newspapers double as wallpaper inside rows of bamboo huts, which stand just a few feet apart. People bathe, dress and socialize in the open.

To be sure, the conditions are far better than in other refugee camps around the world, according to aid workers. In addition, there are plenty of schools in the camps and an education system that rivals the Nepali system, according to both refugees and aid workers. But the Bhutanese are not legally allowed to hold jobs outside the camps and have no legal means of becoming permanent Nepali residents; a sense of despair and a lack of purpose hang in the air.

“Presently children are not that interested in their studies,” said Jamuna Karki, principal of Tri Ratna Secondary School. She was once a student here herself, and returned – despite the paltry salary – to give back to the community that brought her up. “They see their elder brothers and sisters are so qualified but they are without jobs. In the camps there are so many unfulfilled desires.”

Chet Nath’s first weeks in this new environment were a surprising contrast to Bhutan. He was 19 when his family left their five-acre farm in Bhutan. He still remembers his last days there.

Months of police intimidation and government pressure convinced Chet Nath’s parents that the family had to leave Bhutan. They sold their cows, sheep and goats at 10% of their value and sold their land to the government at less than 10% its private market value; Chet Nath’s parents reasoned that when they returned to Bhutan, it would be easier to reclaim their land from the government than from a private owner.

“I saw the field ready for paddy plantation. My father plowed until the day we left,” Chet Nath said of the last time he saw his village in July 1992. “I saw many crops growing and not harvested. I wondered if we could come back next month or the month after that and work in the fields. I wondered what would happen to our house. Would thieves take everything? After I left my village I couldn’t control my tears.”

As Chet Nath and his eight brothers and sisters walked out of Bhutan, he thought back on the years they all lived in Bhutan. He thought about how Bhutanese he was – how he spoke the language, wore the clothes and observed the customs, and then he felt sorry for himself. He and his family walked across the Bhutan-India border in July 1992 and were then driven west and deposited at the Nepal-India border.

Upon arriving at the Goldhap refugee camp in Nepal, Chet Nath and his family encountered thousands of exiled Bhutanese and could not receive an authorized site for building a bamboo hut, something they had never done anyway. They managed to build one, living there for five months before authorities assigned them a hut number at the new Beldangi Extension camp. The family prepared themselves for several months in the camp.

While still at Goldhap, Chet Nath volunteered to be a teacher. He strongly felt children’s education should not suffer because of grown-ups’ circumstances. On the first morning, he was heartened and overwhelmed to see hundreds of children sitting in an open field dotted with trees. He approached the person in charge.

“There under that far away tree over there are two classes without teachers,” Chet Nath recalled the headmaster saying. “Pick one.”

Chet Nath walked toward a group of upper kindergarten students and imagined the children would cheerfully greet him with shouts of “Teacher! Hello!” but no one said a word. He asked questions to gauge their level of learning. Some students did not know their ABCs while others knew all their multiplication tables. Chet Nath divided the students into three groups and walked from group to group, thus starting a teaching career that led him to his current position as a part-time accounting and business teacher at a college in Birtamod. (Though it is illegal for Bhutanese refugees to work outside of the camps in Nepal, many work under-the-table as teachers).

He grew to love his profession and his students but he still hoped to return to Bhutan. Last May, when he heard that hundreds of Bhutanese refugees would stage a “Long March” to Bhutan from the Nepalese border town of Kakharbitta, he decided to go as a reporter for the Bhutan Press Union, a group of Bhutanese refugee journalists. He saw hundreds of men lined up at the Mechi Bridge, eager to cross into India and walk to Bhutan.

“On the bridge, at the beginning I was so nervous,” said Chet Nath. “I had gone to the long march only to report the news and the Indian police beat and broke my right knee after snatching the press card I showed to them.”

Uma Devi, his wife of five years, was working at her accounting job at a Bhutanese refugee non-governmental organization (NGO) when she got the call her husband had been injured on Mechi Bridge. She was shocked because “in the morning I told him not to go, not to participate in this, but he ignored my voice,” she said.

After months of recuperation and rehabilitation, Chet Nath can walk again with a bit of pain in his right knee. The medical expense strained his family’s finances but he has returned to his under-the-table teaching job. Since the Mechi Bridge incident, one of Chet Nath’s sisters has decided to join her Bhutanese refugee husband in the Netherlands, where he unexpectedly sought asylum during a business trip. In a recent e-mail, Chet Nath wrote he is still waiting for signs that Bhutan will repatriate refugees. “Otherwise, as my wife tells, ‘We have to look for the future of the son,’ we might decide for resettlement as well.”

-Laura Elizabeth Pohl, excerpted in Foreign Policy in Focus

The American food system doesn’t make it easy for small farmers to get their healthy food to your home, but meet two farmers who are trying: Ricky Horton and Sherilyn Shepard. They’re siblings who grow tomatoes, cucumbers, and other vegetables in southwestern Virginia. Their livelihood is filled with uncertainties ranging from unpredictable weather to changing immigration laws. Here’s their story.

At the end of a red dirt road, near the source of the Nile River is St. Francis Health Care Services, an HIV/AIDS clinic serving some of the poorest people in Jinja District, Uganda. The power is out at the clinic, but no one is fazed.

The pharmacists continue to dispense medicine to their patients out of their small office, as sunlight streams through windows despite the drawn curtains. The medical assistants continue to diagnose patients, who wait their turn while sitting in blue plastic chairs in the hallway. And Faustine Ngarambe — founder and executive director of St. Francis Health Care Services — continues to work on plans to expand the clinic’s programs, which serve about 600 people per week.

“HIV is not only a health issue; it’s economical, it is psychological, it is even a cultural taboo — all of those things,” said Ngarambe. He doesn’t have a medical background, but in 2009, he won the Parliamentary HIV/AIDS Leadership Award from Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.

St. Francis offers its patients services that heal not only the body, but the mind as well: counseling, nutrition and agriculture education, financial assistance, support groups for young people and grandmothers, and more. It’s this kind of holistic approach to HIV/AIDS care that has made Uganda an oft-cited role model for decreasing HIV/AIDS rates. HIV prevalence in Uganda is currently at 6 to 7 percent, according to a UNAIDS report released yesterday, down from about 14 percent in 1990, according to this UNAIDS study from 2010.

Ngarambe became interested in HIV/AIDS care in 1989 while working as a missionary in Kenya. A Ugandan friend was HIV positive, but wouldn’t disclose his diagnosis; the stigma was too great.

“He was dying silently within himself,” said Ngarambe. “And when he was brought back to Uganda for burial, even his parents did not even view the body.”

When Ngarambe returned Uganda, he and four colleagues started St. Francis Health Care Services. The clinic has grown from just five staff members and no permanent facilities in 1998, to 37 staff members, 100 community volunteers, and two permanent treatment facilities in 2011.

In a grassy field near St. Francis’s main building sits Ngarambe’s latest project: A maternity ward — half-finished and in need of more funding — that will specialize in prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmision. The ward is a result of the United Nations designation of Uganda as one of 22 priority countries for eliminating mother-to-child transmission.

St. Francis receives financial support from local and international sources, including the Stephen Lewis Foundation and Nile Breweries, but finances — as well as a lack of enough equipment, space, and staff — are always a concern. In addition, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria said last week it will cut funding to several countries, including Uganda. This could hurt the nationwide effort to fight AIDS.

Still, Ngarambe presses forward.

“The thing that motivates me very much,” he said, “is because I’ve touched peoples’ lives and restored — as our slogan — restoring hope and dignity of the people who have been devastated by the HIV/AIDS epidemic.”

–Laura Elizabeth Pohl/Bread for the World

Jose likes soccer. He likes his car. And he loves his family, which is why he left Mexico for the United States when he was 17, started working, and now sends home about 20 percent of his pay to support them. Like many of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, Jose came here for opportunities that don’t exist at home.

“We’re not criminals,” said Jose (not his real name). “We just come here to seek a better life.”

Indeed, economic necessity is the reason people risk their lives to work in the United States. And contrary to rhetoric that immigrants steal American jobs and drive down wages, immigrant labor is essential to the U.S. economy, as research shows:

• The Arizona economy would shrink by $48.8 billion, or 20 percent, if all undocumented workers left the state, according to an Immigration Policy Center study out last week.

• Immigration improves employment, productivity, and income but needs adjustments that respond to the economic cycle, states a 2010 Migration Policy Institute study.

• Hispanic immigrants contributed $9.2 billion to the North Carolina economy in 2006 and created 89,000 spinoff jobs, according to research by Dr. James Johnson, professor at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Kenan Flagler Business School.

Jose is one Hispanic immigrant contributing to North Carolina’s economy. He moved there five years ago, found a job, and joined a church. My Bread for the World colleagues Ivone Guillen, Molly Marsh, and I first met Jose at his church this past January, and we found him to be very kind, polite, and open to talking with us. We could tell he missed his family. He showed us pictures. He shared stories of life back home.

Listening to Jose speak and watching him live his limited life in North Carolina (we spent five days with him), you just think to yourself, “You don’t leave people you love unless you must, because economic and social circumstances force you to go.”

- Laura Elizabeth Pohl/Bread for the World