Reality and perspectives on immigration in America
How immigration will play a role in America s economic recovery.
Gerry O’Shea Comments
Joseph J. Salvo, the son of Italian immigrants from the Bronx, retired recently as the chief demographer for the City of New York. His work focused on providing analysis of the city’s changing population.
Asked in an interview in The New York Times about the prospects for economic recovery after last year s crisis, he said that he was optimistic because of the city’s continuing draw of new immigrants.
He pointed out that the population of New York City is 37 percent foreign-born and if you add the first generation, the figure exceeds half of all New Yorkers.
Scores of mobile phones were found in the lorry belonging to the people who died.
They had used their phones to see in the darkness and to try to message loved ones, in vain, as they slipped away. One of the phones belonged to 26 year old Pham Thi Tra My.
It is over a year since her parents found out about their daughter s death. On the living room wall of their house, in the Can Loc District of Vietnam s central Ha Tinh Province, there is a shrine to Tra My. The flowers on the shelf around her photograph are freshly cut.
“I love you so much. I’m dying because I can’t breathe. I am sorry Mum” – a message sent by a 26-year-old woman called Pham Thi Tra My as she died inside a lorry container en route to Britain last year.
She was one of 39 Vietnamese people who were found dead in the back of the container in Essex.
Today two men: Eamonn Harrison and Gheorghe Nica were found guilty of multiple counts of manslaughter.
Along with two other men, they were also found guilty of their involvement in a people smuggling ring.
Earlier this year, the leader of the ring and another lorry driver admitted their involvement.
During the cross-Channel trip on board the Clementine, the group had desperately tried to raise the alarm, even calling the Vietnamese emergency number, as they ran out of air.
When they found there was no mobile phone signal in the trailer, some recorded goodbye messages to their families.
Nguyen Tho Tuan, 25, told his family: I am sorry. I cannot take care of you. I am sorry. I am sorry. I cannot breathe. I want to come back to my family. Have a good life.
A metal pole had been used to try to punch through the roof of the refrigerated container, but only managed to dent the interior.
Tra My s family
Her other two passions were travel and fashion. On her Facebook page there’s a video of her on a visit to the Bana Hills Golden Bridge in Central Vietnam. She’s videoing herself. The wind is blowing her hair into her face. She swings the camera phone around, over her shoulder you can see a newly married couple having wedding photos taken. Tra My smiles.
According to her father, everything about his daughter was completely authentic. But like many millennials, there was a disconnect between the life she projected online and the one she actually lived. The family is not particularly poor by the standards of their home town, but a couple of years ago they ended up in serious debt.