As part of National Hispanic Heritage Month, WCPN is launching an occasional series of stories exploring the diversity of people and issues affecting our communities and country.
One perennial issue affecting our country is that of immigration, but the talk most recently has been about Central and South American children and mothers coming north to claim asylum. Akron attorney Alvaro DeCola recently traveled to Artesia, New Mexico, to offer pro-bono legal aid to refugees held there for processing. You can hear DeCola talk about the legal situation of these refugees here. In this piece, DeCola tells more of the human side of his visit, to ideastream's Tony Ganzer.
DeCola was an immigrant, not a refugee, from Uruguay. Spanish was his first language, putting him in a unique position to hear refugee claims. But he said after days and hours of hearing statements, when he met with a mother and her daughter...the situation got to him.
