Soap opera lures Brazilians to United States

Reuters:

Brazilians are illegally entering the United States in record numbers in hopes of finding jobs and better lives -- just like characters in a wildly popular Brazilian soap opera "America."

The number of undocumented Brazilians caught on U.S. soil is set to rise over four fold this year from 2004 -- a much bigger increase than for illegal immigrants from other Latin American countries, according to U.S. officials.

As authorities search for factors spurring the exodus, they have begun to look at the passion of Brazil's poor for "America," a soap opera that debuted in early March and shows illegal immigrants risking their lives to enter the United States to find jobs and romance amid the hardship.

"Any publicity raises the idea in people's minds they can make it," said one U.S. diplomat who did not want to be identified.

Like half of all Brazilian TV viewers, Tarcila Madureira Silva tuned in each night to the Globo network soap opera. She watched heroine Sol make it as a dancer in Miami and send money home to help her family, in between passionate scenes with her American lover.

Silva, 20, had already watched her neighbors build homes with money they earned from illegal work in the United States.

"I decided to seek a better life for my family," says Silva, who in July left behind her mother and two young brothers in the farming town of Gonzaga, Minas Gerais to make the 5,000 mile journey to the U.S.-Mexican border.

Like one in four illegal immigrants, she was picked up by U.S. authorities shortly after crossing. Though many get out on bail and get away, Silva was deported.

"The soap opera is true; here in Brazil poor people have no chance," said Silva, as her mother fretted over how they will buy food and pay the $65 monthly rent for their crumbling, mud-brick home.

Brazilians in the past few months have become the second-largest group of illegal immigrants detained in the United States after Mexicans -- overtaking Hondurans -- as up to a third of residents in some poor Brazilian towns seek work abroad. Teen-agers as young as 15 are making the trip.

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