Global Perspective - Six National & International Radio Broadcasters let migrants tell their Stories by Radio Netherlands 2:06pm 9th Mar, 2003   Global Perspective is the name of a series that brings together the work of six national and international broadcasters. The series looks at how people adapt to new global forces. This year immigration policies have come under fire in developed countries around the world. For this reason we decided give migrants a chance to tell their side of the immigration story.    Global Perspective. See your world through different eyes.    28 Days by Radio Netherlands' Michele Ernsting    Last year 6000 unaccompanied minor refugees requested asylum in Holland. In the past, most of these children were allowed to stay and were given citizenship. Now, under a strict new policy, 80 to 90 per cent will be deported. On their 18th birthday they have 28 days to leave the Netherlands. In the meantime they wait out their time in asylum centres where they are discouraged from taking part in Dutch society. In 28 Days we look at the stories of two Rwandan girls. The pair were best friends in their home country. They both came from wealthy families, and both say they lost everyone and everything in the genocide.    Last year, by pure coincidence they were reunited in the Netherlands. One of the girls, Diana, arrived three years ago. She was granted refugee status and is planning her future with optimism. Her friend, Louise, arrived last year. She falls under the new policy and her situation is one of despair and depression. Her case is a catalogue of neglect and bureaucratic blundering. And last month she was told her 28 days were up.    Challenging the stereotypes by the BBC´s Esther Armah    The city of Hull sits on the north east coast, on the very edge of England. Once famous as a major fishing town, supplying fish to the rest of Britain, now that industry has died out and the newest and biggest employers are the factories.    As Esther Armah found when she went there at the end of last year, there are very few non-white faces in Hull, so there was a good deal of suspicion when, a couple of years ago, the local council agreed to take on around 250 Iraqi Kurds under the British government's dispersal programme. The suspicion erupted into sporadic violence and racial abuse when between 1,500 and 3000 (mainly young men) descended on the city, after private landlords negotiated a deal with one of the agencies in order to fill accommodation left vacant when a university relocated.    Johanna and Loida go to Flin Flon by the CBC´s Karin Wells    Flin Flon, in Manitoba, Canada, is said to be the only city in the world named after a character in a science fiction story. In 1915, gold prospectors stumbled across a dime store novel abanadoned under a tree. They read a chapter or two, and discovered Flintabatty Flonatin, a man who found an underground city of gold in his submarine. They called their new town Flin Flon. A decade later, the Canadan National Railway came to town, bringing with it miners from all over the world. Flin Flon flourished. That was the first and last wave of immigration to Flin Flon.    85 years later, in a decidedly more prosaic world, the mine has mechanized and a statue of Flintabatty Flonatin stands across the street from the brand new Walmart store. The wave of immigrants has been replaced by the arrival of the occasional foreigner. Often as not these days, Flin Flon's immigrants are people the town desperately needs: doctors from South Africa, an accountant from Pakistan. Two young women arrived in Flin Flon in the last year. Johanna Pedilla and Loida Agpalza are nurses from the Philippines.    Web audio follows on 16 March    Dream Deferred by Soundprint    Jimmy and Juan Pablo were smuggled in to the US, arrested at the border and locked up for months while waiting for asylum. At 14, Jimmy -who is from Punjab, India - escaped a stepmother who beat him and a father who stood by silently. He dreamed of a loving family. Here he has one, for now - his asylum case remains undecided. Juan Pablo, now 18, left a life of manual labor that began at age 6 in his native Honduras. He dreamed of an education. Now he's going to school in Washington DC and hoping to become an airplane mechanic or FBI agent. His case also is undecided.    Web audio follows on 23 March    Dream Deferred was produced by Soundprint Staff with reporter Gillian Karp, field producer Anu Yadav and Audio Engineer Jared Weissbrot. It was narrated by Barbara Bogaev.    The place you cannot imagine by the ABC    Gyzele Osmani is an Albanian woman who fled East Kosovo in 1999 with her husband and five children to find refuge in Australia. When the Australian Government decided that Kosovo was safe, they refused to go back. The family reasoned that nowhere could be worse than their village, which was still without the protection of the United Nations. They were arrested and taken into the infamous and isolated Port Hedland Detention Centre. Gyzele and her family spent seven months there.    Gyzele's story is contextualised by Marion Le, a migration agent and human rights spokesperson, who intervened to have the family released from detention, and by Melanie Poole, an 18-year-old school student who interviewed Gyzele and wrote a prize-winning account of her story.    Web audio follows on 1 April    Moon and Sun by RTHK´s Hugh Chiverton    For nearly 200 years, the British army has been recruiting its legendary Gurkha soldiers from the mountain villages of Nepal. Now the sons and daughters of those soldiers are trying to make a new life in Hong Kong, where many were born under British rule. Most grew up in Nepal, a desperately poor country, and have to make the transition to a rich, developed, highly urbanized environment. The difference is, as one Nepali says, 'like moon and sun'.    Drawn by job prospects, they find themselves at the bottom of the social scale and few speak the local language. Drug abuse and crime are growing problems. This programme is the story of young Nepalese in Hong Kong - their education, employment and the discrimination many face. It is produced and presented by Hugh Chiverton of RTHK Radio 3.    Web audio follows on 8 April Visit the related web page
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