LatinaLista — Sunday, March 8, is International Women’s Day. It is a day in which the United Nations has declared the theme of the day is “Men and Women Unite Against the Violence of Women and Girls.”
Some of the most vulnerable victims of gender violence are immigrant women and girls. In the United States, it’s the undocumented women and girls. On Sunday, at 7 in the morning on the Hallmark Channel, a special film entitled, Lives for Sale, will be shown highlighting the “human side of illegal immigration.”
Lives for Sale is a production of Odyssey Networks, “the nation’s largest coalition of Christian, Jewish and Muslim faith groups dedicated to media production, distribution and promotion.” The one-hour documentary, part of a series dealing with social justice issues, will focus on immigration and human trafficking.
In LIVES FOR SALE, we meet many of those willing to leave behind all they know to escape devastating poverty in search of a better life, including Yanori Ramirez, an immigrant from Honduras, where 79% of people live in poverty. Like many making the arduous trek to the States, she travels from southern Mexico by freight train to the U.S. border. The journey takes three days and nights; some will be robbed or killed or raped or injured in falls from the train. It’s a price these immigrants are willing to pay.
Because hardly anyone is up at 7 a.m., the film will be available online starting Monday, March 9.
Though more and more films have been made about illegal immigration and the toll it takes on the people who are willing to risk their lives at a shot of finding prosperity, every film is unique because, while the reasons for crossing the border illegally may not be new, every person’s story is and deserves to be heard.
