The New Americans Part 5, 6 & 7

From 1997, different film crews followed the lives of new, non-European immigrants to the United States over several years. They started filming in the countries of origin – Palestine, the Dominican Republic, India, Mexico and a Nigerian refugee camp in Benin – thus showing the great individual differences between immigrants. A modern Palestinian woman who wants to get ahead, two Dominican baseball talents who have been discovered, a refugee who cannot go back home. But the similarities remain nonetheless: the tears on departure, the oversimplified dreams of freedom, wealth and happiness, the pressure from relatives to send them money and the disappointing reality after arriving. Above all, the documentary gives all these aspects of immigration a human face. The seven-hour THE NEW AMERICANS works somewhat like a soap series, in which the viewer gradually gets to know the leading characters better through the numerous highs and lows that come by. For example, the ever-optimistic Nigerian refugee loses heart ever further in the course of time, while the sister of murdered Nigerian opposition leader Ken Saro-Wiwa has to learn to live with her inconspicuous position in the United States. In the background, secondary characters are also developed: the wife who feels bored at home, the children who find it not at all hard to Americanise and Americans of various ethnicities who, with a remarkable degree of warmth and dedication, receive, accommodate and educate the immigrants – next to the discrimination that also exists. In interviews, the immigrants talk about their expectations, their relationships, their families, but usually the crew is discreetly present at the greater and smaller events. A birth, a baptism, a relocation, looking for a job – but also on Black Monday, when the stock exchange crashes, and at the attacks on the World Trade Center, after which the office of the Arab-American organisation where one of the immigrants works goes up in flames. In part three, the Indian computer programmer Anjan Bacchu travels to Silicon Valley – before the crash; Naima and her husband notice the effects of 11 September; Pedro Flores’s wife is pining away; Israel gets a son but loses his brother in Nigeria; one of the two baseball talents makes his debut in the major league.