LIVES FOR SALE

NEW INVESTIGATIVE DOCUMENTARY SPECIAL ON LATIN AMERICAN IMMIGRATION AND HUMAN TRAFFICKING, TO AIR ON PUBLIC TELEVISION IN JANUARY

Harrowing Film Goes Beyond the Rhetoric To Show Why Immigrants are Willing to Risk Everything for the American Dream

While politicians, activists and the media wrestle with the thorny issue of immigration, a new investigative documentary entitled LIVES FOR SALE exposes the painful, rarely seen human side of undocumented immigration -- including the growing black market trade in human beings. A co-production of Maryknoll Productions and Lightfoot Films, Inc., LIVES FOR SALE will air on public television stations in January, 2007 (check local listings.)

Each year more than one million people attempt to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, most of them from Mexico and Central America, desperately seeking the American Dream. Their journey is filled with dangers that prey on their hopes and exploit their inexperience. Some will give their life savings to coyotes, mercenary agents promising safe passage; others will unknowingly become one of the almost 20,000 victims of human trafficking that cross our borders each year, finding themselves sold as modern-day slaves. And as our government further militarizes our borders with Mexico, the result is that the journey towards the Dream becomes even more perilous.

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.