TIGRA Newsletter
TIGRA Yania Marcelino was a six-year-old girl in the Dominican Republic when her mother left their family to find work in another country. She went first to Puerto Rico, then later to New York City to work as a seamstress and began sending money back to Marcelino and her three siblings and four cousins. They often had to travel 15 or 20 kilometers to get to the wire transfer agency, and sometimes the money sent was lost.
 
TIGRA Brochure
TIGRA is a movement center for transnational organizing that promotes financial justice through the economic power of immigrants — those who send billions of dollars to fami- lies they’ve left behind. TIGRA considers the system of remittances as the next frontier of economic justice work that links domestic and global issues.In order to leverage the economic power of this emerging global constituency, TIGRA will support the formation of a Community Reinvestment Fund (“The Fund”) that will function as an alter- native economic resource that can strike at the TIGRA works to consolidate a network of organizations around the world that are linked by the common practice of sending and receiving money.
 
Money Down the Wire
In 2005, $170 billion USD will be sent by family members working and living in the North to their loved ones in the global South. Most will use the money transfer services of a financial institution headquartered in the United States, and will lose $25-30 billion USD in the process.

Corporate-driven globalization has forced expressions of love for family and community through the wires. And for a hefty fee. But if turned into an organizing opportunity...

 
What Can Foreign Embassies Do for Immigrants?
In the wake of the domestic crackdown on their communities, immigrants have begun to turn to their home-country governments for support. "We have no other place to go," says Hector Archangel, a 75 year-old Filipino who worked as a screener at the Oakland International Airport." 9/11 took away the little rights we had, and politicians are not willing to take risks on us in this environment." ...
 
A Journey Home
In 1974, a Filipina immigrant left her family to work in the U.S as a nurse’s aide. Francis Calpotura looks back on his mother’s journey and the significance of remittances.
 
Movement Formations: Bi-National Research Project on Social Change Initiatives in the Philippines and the United States
The Movement Formations Project was a year-long bi-national research project of social change groups in the United Statesand the Philippines to comparatively study their emergence, evolution and current strategies. The main objective of the project was to help inform strategic choices of movement organizations in the United States by learning from the framework and practices of social change organizations in the Philippines.
 
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