west

The Family Reunions Project goes beyond seeing photos on Facebook or calling relatives over Skype. But the project’s creators were not prepared for how people would react when they put on goggles and “visited” home.

While their parents fight deportation, these siblings in San Diego have turned to social media to raise money to help shoulder the costs of running the household.

“The handwriting is already up and down the wall that we’ll never have the labor force that we had before,” says one farm owner from a part of California where some farms are using robots to help work the crops.

“They make me bleed inside every time I talk to them,” says Saber Askar, a US citizen from Yemen, with family still in the war-torn country. “I don’t know what to do. Every time I call, I’m afraid they’re not going to answer anymore.”

At the University of California, Davis, law students take on immigrant cases, with guidance, and double as cultural navigators too.