Josie Huang
is a reporter and Weekend Edition host who spotlights the people and places at the heart of our region.
Published December 19, 2023 5:00 AM
Mina Manzano, standing center, supports a family that includes a son with a genetic disorder, another son in college and a disabled husband.
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Courtesy of Mina Manzano
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Topline:
Across Southern California, thousands of immigrant families are waiting to bring loved ones to the U.S. But a severe visa backlog has forced applicants to wait years, sometimes decades to come to the U.S. Calls are growing to revamp the visa system.
Why it matters: Working immigrant families are struggling to support their households without much needed reinforcement from loved ones waiting to come to the U.S. to help. We meet one family where a woman is single-handedly supporting a husband and son who are both disabled and an elderly father. She's been waiting for 10 years for her brother to come from the Philippines.
What's causing the backlog: The visa system uses per-country caps. No more than 7% of visas in each family category can go each year to any one country. This creates long lines for visas in certain parts of the world, like Asia. Demand is high in populous countries like China or India, or countries with strong ties to the U.S., and have historically had a lot of migration between the two countries, such as Philippines, a former American colony. By contrast, some countries in northern Europe don't hit their caps.
An attempted fix: Politicians like Rep. Judy Chu are calling on President Joe Biden to take executive action and free up hundreds of thousands of visas that went unused over the last 30 years.
Mina Manzano is the sole breadwinner in her Azusa household.
She supports a disabled husband, an elderly father and a teenage son with a rare genetic disorder. At 4 in the morning, she rouses to administer her son's first tube feeding of the day before heading to her nursing job caring for developmentally disabled adults.
Her youngest brother in the Philippines has offered to give her much-needed respite. Like thousands of immigrants across Southern California who've petitioned for loved ones to come to the U.S., her family has been anxiously waiting for his visa application to come through.
"I'd have someone to help me in order to survive,” Manzano, 52, said.
It’s now been 10 years since his application was submitted. A huge visa backlog, only exacerbated by the pandemic, has forced applicants to wait years, sometimes decades — a limbo that some policymakers say is unduly cruel and is renewing calls to revamp the visa system.
Mina Manzano works as a licensed practical nurse taking care of developmentally disabled adults.
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Courtesy of Mina Manzano
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Manzano’s family is in particularly dire straits. Her mother, who petitioned for her brother, died. He had cleared all the application hurdles and only had an interview left to do at the U.S. embassy. Now the family was back at square one, all those years of waiting seemingly amounting to nothing.
Limited spots, lost hope
Manzano’s mother, a legal permanent resident, in 2013 started the process to bring her son over. There is a limited number of visas and through the quirks of the U.S. immigration system, it’s faster for a parent who's a legal permanent resident to apply for a child than for a U.S. citizen to sponsor a sibling.
The family waited, and waited. Meanwhile, immigration lawyers noticed that paperwork required by the federal government had become more onerous under former President Donald Trump, stretching out timelines. Then, the pandemic hit and shut down consulates, which then had problems staffing up again.
Next thing Manzano knew, more than nine years had passed. Then last year, Manzano’s mother died of a cardiac arrest, she said.
The petition for her brother Apolonio Francisco, Jr. was automatically canceled, they learned. If Manzano were to file a petition for him, she could expect to see him in 21 years or so, the estimated time it takes to bring a sibling from the Philippines.
“We lost hope," Manzano said. "Even my brother."
Taking on risk
Jonathan Fung, an immigration attorney who directs legal services at theImmigration Resource Center of San Gabriel Valley, said he’s seen too many applications languish when something unforeseen strikes like death or illness.
“It's unfortunate that we ask immigrants to plan their lives decades ahead of time for how and when they're going to reunite with their family members in the U.S. when nobody else is expected to perform that kind of mental task,” Fung said.
Mina Manzano's youngest brother, Apolonio Francisco Jr. (far left) has offered to move to the U.S. to help his sister Mina Mazano (fourth from left), but his application is now in limbo.
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Courtesy Mina Manzano
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He said the basis for the backlog is a system that uses per-country caps. No more than 7% of visas in each family category can go each year to applicants from any one country.
Fung said this rule has a disproportionate impact in parts of the world where demand for visas outstrips availability, such as Latin America and Asia.
"You start to hit that 7% pretty quickly, especially for countries with huge populations like China or India, or countries with really strong ties to the U.S. such as the Philippines, a former American colony," Fung said.
Applicants from Asia make up more than a third of 4 million people mired in the family-based immigration backlog, according to the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus.
Unused visas by the hundreds of thousands
Meanwhile, other countries, such as those in northern Europe might not hit any caps.
“The thing that really irks me is that actually we have so many unused visas,” said California Rep. Judy Chu, who represents West San Gabriel Valley.
The result is that less than 75% of 226,000 available family-based visas were allocated during the last fiscal year. Chu, a Democrat, said this is an improvement over past years, but not enough of one.
Chu chairs the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, whichsent a letter last month calling on President Joe Biden to open up hundreds of thousands of visa slots that have gone unfilled over the last 30 years and add them to family and employment-based visa categories. The caucus also wants Biden to expand the use offamily reunification parole, which allows visa applicants to live in the U.S. while they wait for the backlog to clear.
Both are proposals in Chu'sReuniting Families Act of 2023 and would benefit not only families but the labor market, she said.
“When family comes, they support each other,” Chu said. “So if there is child care that needs to be done, that family member can take care of it instead of having the family suffer, and perhaps one worker int that family from having to drop out."
Solo parenting in a backlog
The president has not formally responded to the letter but Chu said his administration has talked about the possibility of recapturing unused visas through congressional action.
Congress, though, is at an impasse over immigration reform. (Exhibit A: the Reuniting Families Act has been introduced and re-introduced since 2008).
Rep. Judy Chu. who chairs the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, speaks in the Reuniting Families Act in 2019.
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Mark Wilson
/
Getty Images
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With no clear relief in sight, Chu's office hears from constituents from across her district who are stuck in the visa bottleneck.
One constituent wants only to be identified by her first name Sylvie because she's concerned anything hindering her effort to bring her husband from Lebanon.
A legal permanent resident who lives in Pasadena, she first came to the U.S. with her parents in 2017, leaving behind her boyfriend. She returned to Lebanon to marry him during a visit. But then the pandemic struck and she didn’t return to the States until mid-2020, while pregnant with their son. Weeks after his birth, she petitioned for her husband to join them in a country that she feels offers stability and opportunities.
Her immigration lawyer had told her in a 1 and 1/2 years, they’d all be reunited. More than three years later, it hasn’t happened. Meanwhile, Sylvie’s fears about her husband’s safety grow because of regional unrest related to the Israel-Hamas war.
"We waited all this time," she tells her disheartened husband. "So let's just be patient a little bit more and we're going to be together."
Privately, she despairs as she parents their son on her own while working as an auditor.
"Every December, we say hopefully this Christmas we're going to be together," she said. "But it's never happening."
Humanitarian exception
Mina Manzano also needs help now.
Fung, of the Immigration Resource Center, has taken on her case as a supervising attorney working with staff attorney Bree Salthouse. The team is trying to keep her brother’s application alive by seeking a so-calledhumanitarian reinstatement through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
“It's really up to the officer who is looking at the application to determine under their own judgment, whether or not something is going to meet the definition of hardship,” Fung said. “Ultimately, it’s just who you get.”
And it could take years to get a petition reinstated. The last humanitarian reinstatement Fung filed for another family took more than two years to attain.
Meanwhile. the pressure has only been mounting on Manzano. She now has college costs to cover: She has an older son who is a freshman at UC Irvine, studying computer science. When he talks about getting a job to help support the family, his mother gently rejects the idea.
“I can still manage, my son,” Manzano tells him. “So just concentrate on your [studies]. God will provide.”
Every day she prays her brother can come to the States and her son can finish his studies. She just needs to hold on, she says, because that’s all she can do.
Jordan Rynning
has been following this case for months, including interviewing the man at the center of allegations.
Published October 31, 2026 7:00 AM
Michael Angel Alvarez, 41, spoke with LAist on Sept. 16, 2026, about the federal body armor case against him being dismissed.
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Jordan Rynning
/
LAist
)
Topline:
The L.A. County District Attorney’s office dropped its felony body armor charges against Michael Angel Alvarez earlier this week. Alvarez was sentenced to time served on a lesser charge — a probation violation. He served more than 100 days in jail earlier this year while awaiting trial.
Most serious claims haven’t materialized: Though federal prosecutors made headlines claiming in court documents and on social media that Alvarez was “leading a violent street gang, while claiming to be a gang interventionist for the City,” they have not filed charges related to those claims.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office dropped its felony body armor charges against Michael Angel Alvarez on Wednesday. Alvarez was sentenced to time served on a lesser charge — a probation violation. He had served more than 100 days in jail earlier this year while awaiting trial.
Why Alvarez’s arrest made headlines: Alvarez was working as a city-contracted peace ambassador in MacArthur Park when he was arrested by federal agents in May. Federal and county prosecutors each brought felony charges against him, claiming he was in possession of body armor as a violent felon.
Bill Essayli, who leads the U.S. Attorney’s office in L.A., pointed to the case on social media to criticize city officials for allowing taxpayer money to be “shelled out to a convicted gang murderer.”
About his criminal record: Judges in federal and state court have now dismissed prosecutors’ felony charges against Alvarez, after U.S. District Judge Anne Hwang found on Sept. 9 that Alvarez did not have a violent felony conviction. Alvarez was 15 when he committed a gang-related murder. He was tried and convicted as an adult in 2002. After a change in state law increased the age at which minors could be sentenced as adults to 16, Alvarez’s case was sent back to juvenile court, and he was released in 2024. At that point, he had served more than 20 years.
A federal judge ruled Tuesday, Oct. 7 that Republican Bill Essayli is not legally serving as the top U.S. prosecutor in Los Angeles.
The ruling is the latest roadblock to the Trump administration’s effort to extend handpicked acting U.S. attorneys beyond the 120-day limit set by federal law. The strategy was designed to bypass confirmation by the U.S. Senate — something that generally requires a degree of bipartisan support.
Essayli “is unlawfully serving as a ‘de facto’ United States Attorney,” U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright wrote.
The order won’t take effect until the court rules on the government’s motion for a stay pending appeal. Essayli said he doesn’t agree with the court’s order. He said the president and Attorney General “have every right to select supervisors within the Justice Department.”
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Mariana Dale
explores and explains the forces that shape how and what kids learn from kindergarten to high school.
Published October 31, 2026 5:00 AM
Myrna Velasco (left) performs as Dolores Huerta in “¡Sí Se Puede!” at Boyle Heights City Hall on April 2, 2026.
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Carlin Stiehl
/
LAist
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Topline:
An all-ages play about the life of Dolores Huerta and other under-told stories of the farmworker labor movement is back on tour in Los Angeles.
The backstory: Center Theatre Group commissioned ¡Sí Se Puede! from Eliana Pipes in March 2025 and it debuted in L.A. this spring. “There's this perception that farm work was only done by men,” Pipes said. “There were women on the fields, there were women on the picket lines, and there were women in leadership in the United Farm Workers movement.”
An all-ages play about the life of Dolores Huerta and other under-told stories of the farmworker labor movement is back on tour in Los Angeles.
The show's extension had been announced prior to the news that Huerta died Wednesday, Oct. 28., at her Bakersfield home. She was 96 years old.
“There's this perception that farm work was only done by men,” said playwright Eliana Pipes. “There were women on the fields, there were women on the picket lines, and there were women in leadership in the United Farm Workers movement.”
Center Theatre Group commissioned ¡Sí Se Puede! from Pipes in March 2025 and it debuted in L.A. this spring.
CSULA seeks memories from underground music scenes
Adolfo Guzman-Lopez
is an arts and general assignment reporter on LAist's Explore LA team.
Published October 31, 2026 5:00 AM
CSULA is seeking memorabilia from LA's underground music scenes for its research archives.
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Courtesy Special Collections and Archives, University Library, California State University, Los Angeles.
)
Topline
There’s a whole world of underground Southern California music history that’s hidden in storage boxes — photos, fliers, cassettes and other memorabilia. Research librarians at the California State University, Los Angeles are holding a community archive event on Nov. 5 to ensure the cultural memory of L.A.’s underground music scenes are preserved for future generations.
Why it matters: The memorabilia are the physical remnants of the supportive L.A. communities built around music and enjoyment. But many of these objects languish out of sight, and run the risk of being lost, along with the memories attached to them.
Why now: For four years, archive staff have held an annual day to receive ephemera from the public. They're doing it again on Thursday, Nov. 5.
Read on… to hear how goth, rockabilly and other underground clubs in L.A. inspired the head archivist.
Right around the year 2000, there was a club night in Hollywood called Clockwork Orange. Fans of The Smiths, Depeche Mode, Bauhaus and other bands came for the DJ’s mix of their favorite songs but also for a vibe that welcomed people regardless of race, ethnicity or sexual and gender identity.
“I was a pretty shy person, and so that was a place where I could sort of be myself and express myself,” said Azalea Camacho, a regular there in those days.
She had just graduated from Workman High School in the City of Industry and was also clubbing at rockabilly music nights in Rosemead and goth club nights in downtown L.A.
Camacho said there was lots of memorabilia from those times, such as photos taken in and outside the clubs, ticket stubs and promotional fliers. They're the physical remnants of those supportive communities built around music and enjoyment, but many of them languish in shoeboxes and storage units, at risk of being lost — along with the memories attached to them.
Cal State LA has hosted Sounds of the Underground Archive for the last four years. It's an opportunity for people to donate their underground music scene memorabilia.
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Courtesy Special Collections and Archives, University Library, California State University, Los Angeles
)
“I think the danger is maybe those stories are not being told, or people don't know about the story,” she said.
Keeping stories alive
More than two decades later, Camacho is now in a position to make sure those stories are kept alive. She’s head of special collections and archives at the university library at California State University, Los Angeles.
Four years ago, she and library staff created an annual day for area residents to donate or digitize memorabilia for their Sounds of the Underground Archive. This year it's on Thursday, Nov. 5. They’ll accept physical donations, but they’ll also have a scanner to digitize printed material, so people can keep items that are precious to them.
SOUNDS OF THE UNDERGROUND ARCHIVE
Date: Thursday, Nov. 5 Time: 2 p.m. – 5 p.m. Location: Cal State LA Library Community Room, 5151 State University Drive, Los Angeles
Camacho is hoping this year will bring in a bumper amount of memorabilia. It's taken time to get the word out, she said.
“From the actual community archiving day [we’ve collected] maybe 100 or less than 100 items. … It's not a lot,” she said.
She said they're on the lookout for a wide range of mementos, including:
Fliers
Handbills
Zines
Newsletters
Posters
Set lists
Photographs (prints, negatives or digital files)
Cassette tapes, CDs, or vinyl records
Ticket stubs
Wristbands
Band merchandise (stickers, buttons, patches, T-shirts)
DIY press kits or liner notes and correspondence (letters, emails, messages related to music scenes)
Venue or collective ephemera (membership cards, schedules, announcements and more)
