Week 1, Day 2: A Story of Who Immigrates

 

As a flood of Latin American migrants move around each year, they each hold their own unique background story. However, people generalize these stories and them reduce to merely the pull factor of the United States, the American Dream, and the push factor of their own country, political unrest. While those notions remain true to an extent, the current image of migrants reflects them as the poorest of poor people. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo challenges this image in his work, Domestica Immigrant Workers Cleaning in the Shadows of Affluence. Hondagneu-Sotelo mentions how many Latina domestic workers come from affluent and middle-class backgrounds since they can afford the journey, A credible fact as I thought back to the many stories of my mother and her English as a second language (ESL) students. Many of which were viewed as poor in the states but came from extreme backgrounds of wealth.

            “Never judge a book by its cover,” a well-known phrase that helps prevent assumptions. And the continual preaching of such throughout society, many Americans have fallen victim to harmful stereotypes. Back in elementary school, I recall my own experience with ESL students and how it felt our worlds were so far apart. They were kept to their own class for all the subjects, and no one ever interacted with them. I was fortunate enough to have spoken Spanish, my Native language, and got to know them. But for the rest of my grade, the lack of interaction led to rumors and assumptions about what the kids were like. Harsh ideas existed about them: their parents were all alcoholics or did not care about them. Imagine how dreadful it must have been for those ten-year-olds to hear such things. I wonder how those kids are doing and how these statements affected them… I hardly knew them as well, but to what extent did my elementary mind believe it? And for my peers, how did this affect their views on racism? Those ESL kids probably had tons of interesting stories and backgrounds that were drowned out by these harmful stereotypes.

            Nevertheless, the adage remains true today as my mother’s students face the same thing. While language plays a critical role in culture, the way it connects people yet also sets them apart from the supposed “other” remains a mystery to me. Even elementary school students face the constant pressure of the “other” and the dominating majority’s judgment on them. Even when these children came from great riches, there remains this idea that they went from rags to rags. My mother tells me stories of how many of her Venezuelan students were prominent members of their society. Their parents had a great influence on the government, and they received much money in return. These children came from great mansions with gardens and horses as well as many servants. Then political turmoil caused them to flee.

            For many of these Venezuelan students, they had plenty of money to immigrate to the United States. And that money lasted a few years once they made that journey. The problem occurred when that money ran out. My mother states that many of the families were accustomed to their old lifestyle and thus acted accordingly. And while there are state programs to receive financial help and/or literacy, it can still be very confusing to gain access to such a complicated system. Never mind the fact that white America (more specifically, wealthy white America) does not their precious tax dollars to go towards these immigrants. And so, what happens when you are low on money, in a foreign country, and the place you sought refuge is not all that?

            For many immigrants, the answer is to fall into the niche job markets for their racial-ethnicity group (Hondagneu-Sotelo). Recall those ESL students, they were pushed together for one simple fact: English was not their first language. On a macro scale, this concept reveals itself in how communities are established based on ethnicities. Most of them speak this common language which separates them from the rest of society or the established majority. And when America looks towards these ethnic enclaves, it parallels how the students look towards the ESL classrooms… full of harsh stereotypes.

            All in all, everything links back to the concept of language. Hondagneu-Sotelo mentioned the surprise of the white women when their Latina live-in knew about classical music. People somehow link not knowing English with a poor upbringing, unaware of high-class mannerisms. Such a myopic view allows for teachers to look over ESL students and not fully recognize their intelligence. They are put behind their peers as standardized and intelligence-based testing often requires understanding English. And thus, schools cannot properly provide their students with the necessary push academically. All of which creates this continual cycle of poverty through lack of education.