In this documentary, SEAHEC Executive Director, Gail Emrick, gives her personal testimony on the root causes of migration and provides insight into what Americans can do about it. Through telling her personal experience, Ms. Emrick hopes to reveal “the true complexity of the immigration story,” and the historic, economic, political and social factors “that allow our interconnected worlds to function in a very unjust and untold manner.”

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Ms. Emrick began her career in Public Health when she “left the comfort of home,” at 16 to become a front-line public health worker in Nicaragua where she worked alongside Nicaraguan ministry of public health staff helping vaccinate rural Nicaraguans against diptheria, pertussis, tetanus and polio .

There is too little understanding of the reasons that compel a person to migrate: to pick up their lives and their belongings in pursuit of a more dignified, prosperous or safer life, ” she says in the video.

“And so I share my story as a glimpse into the many factors that have propelled greater numbers of people into migration.”