Friday, April 17, 2009 UConn School of Social Work

The New World of Social Work: Global Issues and Local Social Work Practice

Meeting Presentation: This program for field instructors will address the impact of international issues and trends on local social work practice and the corresponding challenges and opportunities facing today's social workers. Four aspects internationalization will be covered:

1) client/case issues with transnational dimensions
2) new developments in ethics and standards for social work at the global level
3) adaptation of practice innovations from other countries to local agencies
4) brief exploration of the emergence of international social work as a new area of social work practice.

The major emphasis will be on the new and very international diversity that is changing the client population in Connecticut and Massachusetts.  Practice and ethical principles for working with international populations will be addresses as part of this workshop.

Presenter:  Dr. Lynne Healy,Professor and Director of the School of Social Work's Center for International Social Work Studies

Social Work in Schools - Amanda Mihaly, MSW - Social Worker at the Hartford High

Immigration Issues -The Reciprocity Project - Abigail Amorim, MSW - Founder and Director of The Brazilian Alliance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbtAv_ByyPM

Read the reciprocity project and Tatiana is arrested in front of 3 american children
http://oglobo.globo.com/blogs/brasilcomz/
http://www.aliancabrasileira.org/en/news/latest-news/45-abe-lanca-reciprocidade-project

O Lançamento do Projeto Reciprocidade, em solenidade realizada dia cinco de março na sede da ABE, Aliança Brasil Estados-Unidos, Hartford, capital do Estado de Connecticut. O objetivo do encontro foi o de acionar os governos do Brasil e dos Estados Unidos com vistas à adoção de um critério uniforme sempre que estiver em jogo a estabilidade econômica e emocional de uma criança. Os inúmeros casos de expulsão de pais e mães brasileiros com filhos menores nascidos nos Estados Unidos, sendo, portanto, cidadãos norte-americanos, tem provocado um clima de grande apreensão entre a comunidade brasileira radicada no país. O Brasil já estabelece, no seu Estatuto dos Estrangeiros: 
"Art. 75. Não se procederá à expulsão:
I - se implicar extradição inadmitida pela lei brasileira;
II - quando o estrangeiro tiver:
a) Cônjuge brasileiro do qual não esteja divorciado ou separado, de fato ou de direito, e desde que o casamento tenha sido celebrado há mais de 5 (cinco) anos; ou 
b) filho brasileiro que, comprovadamente, esteja sob sua guarda e dele dependa economicamente. 
A Presidente da Aliança, Abigail Amorim, pretende com essa iniciativa é que o governo norte-americano passe a adotar o mesmo procedimento legal que já vigora para os estrangeiros com filhos nascidos no Brasil. A presença de uma das mais ilustres figuras do mundo jurídico brasileiro e internacional, Dr. Durval de Noronha Goyos Junior no lançamento do Projeto Recipocidade representa um importante apoio ao esforço desenvolvido pela Diretoria da ABE, que já enviou cartas para o Presidente da República, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, assim como os Ministros de Relações Exteriores, Celso Amorim e da Justiça, Tarso Genro, solicitando a mobilização do governo brasileiro em prol dessa justa medida.  Na outra, o impacto provocado pelo lançamento do projeto, que desencadeou uma salutar sessão de perguntas e respostas entre a platéia, formada por brasileiros e americanos e os palestrantes. Anexo, o texto integral da carta entregue ao Dr. Noronha.
Texto escrito por Dr. Nelson Menda

March 1, 2009

Exmo.  Mr. Luiz Inácio, President

Federalist Republic of Brazil

Brasilia, Federal District

Esteemed Mister,

At the same time that the media has detached itself from the case of the American father whose son was stuck in Brazil after the death of his wife who kidnapped their son, another equally delicate case presents itself. Tatiana, 35, waits in prison in Elizabeth, New Jersey, for the order to be deported back to Brazil.  Her crime?  She is an illegal immigrant, or "undocumented," as the Americans say.  The sad thing is that she will go back to Brazil without her three children: 13, 9,  8, all of whom are American citizens. She will also leave behind her husband, 39, who is a naturalized citizen.

ABE, The Brazilian Alliance, headquartered in the city of Hartford, Connecticut, has encountered similar cases before and seeks to avoid the deportation of parents whose infants have American citizenship by way of being born there.  The Brazilian Statute of Immigration, article 75, item II, letter b states that:  "[the government] will not proceed with expulsion when the foreigner has a Brazilian child and there is proof that the child is under his guard and depends on him economically."  Should it not follow that the United States would reciprocate by providing the same right to Brazilian immigrants?

With Barack Obama as President, The United States is in a new era of government that is more favorable to negotiation. We at ABE see this as the most opportune time for the Brazilian government to dedicate its efforts to secure an agreement of reciprocity with the United States so that cases such asTatiana’s no longer occur.

It is possible that in the future this sad case could come to represent a shift in the way people are treated in America. We remember Rosa Parks who on the 1^st of December, 1955, refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama which represented the beginning of the fight against racial segregation in America and which has culminated, more than half a century later, with the election of the first black President of the United States. I too, to borrow from Martin Luther King Jr., have a dream that in the name of the hundreds of thousands of Brazilians living in the United States, you, Mr. President of the Republic, will fight for their rights and take advantage of the opportunity to negotiate an agreement of reciprocity with the United States. You, who once was a migrant in search of a better life, climbed all the rungs of the political ladder to arrive at the Presidency of the Republic – you especially know and represent the struggle that has been overcome in our own country.

Relying upon your indispensable support of the United States-Brazil Reciprocity Project, I say farewell, certain that the moment that we now experience will go down in history as a significant development in Human Rights between the two countries.