September 2, 1996 - Leif Enger presents Mainstreet Radio report on efforts by filmmaker John Hansen to translate Ole Edvart Rølvaag’s novel Giants in the Earth onto the big screen. It is a task that has been attempted in the past, but never realized.
September 11, 1996 - In connection with a local visit of the King and Queen of Sweden, Midday features a program about Sweden and Swedish immigrants to Minnesota. Studio guest is Mariann Tiblin, of the University of Minnesota; and phone guest is professor Byron Nordstrom of Gustavus Adolphus College. Tiblin and Nordstrom talk about Scandinavians and history on settlement in region.
September 23, 1996 - MPR’s John Rabe speaks with Rochester resident Yascin Mohamed, an 18 year old who came to the city in 1994. Mohamed speaks about the discrimination and racism he has experienced in the city and his high school.
September 24, 1996 - All this week on Minnesota Public Radio, as part of our effort to help you get informed before you draw the curtain to the voting booth in November, we're looking at immigration and U-S foreign policy. Every day this week on All Things Considered, we're talking with a different immigrant who bring their point of view on U-S life and policies. Last night, we met a young Somali who lives in Rochester, and tomorrow night, we'll talk with a Hmong immigrant who just graduated from Carleton. Tonite, we meet a longtime legal alien -- 45-year old Ed Boyle, a native of Glasgow, Scotland. Boyle lives in the Twin Cities, and has been familiar with American culture since he came as a tourist in 1975. Boyle told me his biggest surprise was the racial makeup of the United States.
September 25, 1996 - As part of a series on immigrant voices regarding immigration and foreign policy, MPR’s John Rabe interviews Tou Ger Xiong, a Hmong comedian and entertainer.
December 30, 1996 - If you're a legal alien in this country and you commit a crime, chances are greater than ever before you'll be deported. Tough new immigration laws passed by congress this year have expanded the category of crimes for which resident aliens can be deported, and have severely limited a judge's ability to grant any relief. The impact of the new laws is already being felt in Minnesota, and legal advocates are concerned the changes may do more harm than good in the long run.
January 22, 1997 - MPR's Lorna Benson reports that founders of a new Center for Cross-Cultural Health are hoping to minimize medical anxieties by better preparing Minnesota health care workers trying to deal with a cultural curveball.
January 29, 1997 - Mainstreet Radio’s Mark Steil looks at turnover issues at meatpacking plants in Minnesota. The average worker in the meatpacking industry only stays on the job for a few months. The job is so difficult, dangerous and some might argue downright nasty that many plants hire the equivalent of a new work force each year. That creates problems for towns which host a meatpacking factory, with school enrollments changing constantly and short term housing stretched to the limit.
March 24, 1997 - MPR’s Karen Louise Boothe reports that hundreds of people rallied at the State Capitol on behalf of a bill that would restore the cuts in benefits to legal immigrants in the new federal welfare reform law.
June 30, 1997 - Minnesota's population of people from Somalia is small but growing fast. The number has more than doubled in the past two years to about 8000. The attraction is the state's booming economy. But unlike some other economic migrants many of the Somali's arrive as refugees with no money and little English. What they find is a climate and culture vastly different from their homeland.