Bruno D’Britto left his home in Rio de Janeiro as a teenager, arriving in Nashua to join his father, who had left Brazil for the United States years earlier after his parents divorced. Coming to the U.S. was a chance to seek better opportunities, he said, and to leave a neighborhood beset by violence.
“I saw many people being shot. Like a month before I came (to the United States), this kid got shot, killed pretty much in front of my school as we were leaving. When you are living with that, you kind of become numb to it,” he said. “It actually took me a couple of years after I came to realize that wasn’t the norm.”
D’Britto said his father was able to bring him to the United States under the family reunification program, the leading immigration pathway for foreign nationals (citizens of a foreign country), according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Other pathways: employment-based immigration, refugee resettlement, asylum, and the diversity lottery.
As with much of immigration policy, family reunification – also called family-based immigration – can be a complicated process involving multiple eligibility categories and qualifications. Now an immigration attorney, D’Britto helps others hoping to bring family members to the United States.
D’Britto is also founder and member of the N.H. Brazilian Council, which provides a variety of legal and social services to the Brazilian population and other immigrants in New Hampshire, including promoting language access.