Immigrants

Immigrants

Imagine sitting at a table in a classroom with your child's teacher. He is talking to you while holding a report card and folder with your child's name on it, but you don't understand what he is saying. You are uncomfortable maintaining eye contact with him or her and want to say something, anything, but you don't know what to do or say. So you are silent and can only nod. About 15 minutes later, you walk away feeling confused and frustrated; the teacher, likewise. It may sound like a bad dream, but for many parents who are new to this country or who have limited English abilities; this is a common outcome of parent-teacher conferences. Many Chinese, Korean, Spanish, and other non-English speaking families were uncomfortable participating in activities at their children's schools. The language barrier was created because cultural differences involving active student participation, which is expected in U.S. schools, may be viewed as disrespectful behavior elsewhere, and for many of these parents, involvement in their children's education was unheard of unless there was a problem.

A six year old child named Ricardo was trying to explain the symptoms his sick mother was experiencing to a doctor, but couldn't find the right words. His mother had ate some bad oysters and Ricardo was the only member in his family that knew any English, the rest of his family got by with fluent Spanish and a few key words in English. The doctor was trying to find any important information that could assist him in taking care of the woman's ailments, while making it simply enough that a six year old could explain it. These types of situations may seem unlikely and uncommon but that is far from true. Language barriers are found in schools, medical faculties, and social and government offices. These barriers make it difficult for immigrants to gain help, knowledge, or get close to non-native speaking individuals.

Immigrants arrive every day in America with hopes of becoming rich, finding freedom to do what ever they like, or simply come here in order to survive. They come here as a fish out of water, lost in a foreign place, surrounded by things they don't know or understand. They do not understand the laws or the language and do not have time or resources to go to school and learn them. They can have little or nothing to start off with and may lack any level of education, but they struggle desperately in order to find a place and success in America. They struggle feverishly not only for themselves but their children as well.

There are some positive factors of being an adult immigrant in America. Many adults become resilient and adaptive, such as coping with economic hardship, learning a new language, and adjusting to a new environment. They maintain their culture and traditions and raise their children with strong family values. Immigrant families usually live with an extended family, having family members share roles and responsibilities. Religion and a close community are created and maintained with strengthens the lives and gives ways to relieve stress, find support, and to live with good, strong moral values.

There are many hardships that immigrant adults must face when they arrive in America. Having little knowledge of how to speak the language and lacking proper education, many immigrants are forced to take jobs that have minimum pay, no health benefits, long hours and a grueling physical strain. Some start of trying to find work as Day laborers? Day laborers are people who get paid for work on a daily or short-term basis. They often wait at street corners and wait for employers to drive by and offer them work. Day laborers are a common sight in the Southwest, such as California. A study of day laborers in Southern California estimated their numbers to be as high as 20,000 in one metropolitan area. Day labor offers no health benefits, no job security, no overtime, and payment in cash. They employers get cheap labor, tax-free. And the workers get work. Day laborers are overwhelmingly Mexican men who speak little English and have no more than a sixth-grade education. The 80 percent who are illegal immigrants are especially vulnerable to unscrupulous smugglers, employers, home owners, and contractors. Most are underpaid, are paid less than they were promised, or don't get paid at all. Day laborers can earn as much as $1069 in a good month and as little as $341 in a typical bad month. Many send a large portion of the earnings home; others use the money to smuggle relatives across the U.S. border. Day laborers handle toxic materials without proper safety equipment, perform dangerous work, and suffer injuries on the job. They possess the v very traits that we celebrate yet they are "widely used, abused, and despised" (Schlosser, 2002:72; Rectanus and Gomez, 2002). These factors affect the lives and well-being of the immigrant family. An injury or a health problem could ruin the family's income and welfare.

There are some advantages of growing up as an immigrant in America. Children have a stronger drive to do better and work harder in order to survive. The family bond is closer because large extended families often live together in the same house. Education is emphasized as the route to upward mobile and the pathway for success. Educational and occupational success enhances the family social status and ensures economic well being.

I interviewed Mr. and Mrs. Han, a Korean couple who had arrived in California more than 30 years ago. They started a small business and lived in Los Angeles, for about 30 years before coming to North Carolina. I was interested in their story because they had come from a really diverse and populated area. To my amazement, their English speaking skills was really limited. They seemed to have a fair understanding of the English language when it is spoken to them but speaking it is a different matter. I ask them how they had survived these 30 years in Los Angeles without having to speak fluently in English. They told me that in the beginning it was very hard, they had to rely on relatives living there. After a few years of living in a crowd house, the Mrs. Ahn got pregnant and knew that it was time to move out. They find a perfect little place called Korea town, which was like a mini imitation of South Korea. It was a small little place, where a lot of Koreans had bunched together. It was a place of comfort and helped quell the feelings of homesickness during the rough times. As the years past, they had 2 more children, two girls (ages six and one) and a boy who was five years old. Schooling was a problem for them because they had to work from 10am and came back home around 8pm and their business was a 30 minute drive away. To solve this problem, they asked Mr. Han's mother to come down