Living in New York City, it is easy to come across individuals who are immigrants – they are all around us. As part of this course, we were given the opportunity to conduct an interview with an adult immigrant who currently lives in New York City and who immigrated to the United States before 2005. In developing our interview schedules, we focused on two sets of questions: those addressing the immigration process and those addressing various aspects of the integration process, with a focus on immigrants’ experiences with learning the English language, encounters with discrimination, finding employment, and political participation and citizenship.
The interviews allowed us to learn from immigrants what we could not possibly learn from the statistical data we worked with earlier in the semester. Interviews lasted between 30 and 80 minutes. We each audio-recorded our interviews and transcribed the entire interview (yes, that was a lot of work!). We then each wrote a short analysis of our interview, identifying key themes and bringing those in conversation with the course materials. On this page, we share some quotes from our interviews and we have organized them by six broad topic areas. In order to retain the confidentiality of the immigrants we interviewed, we use pseudonyms to identify our respondents. We want to thank our interview respondents for sharing their experiences with us.
- Immigration Process
- Learning English
- Encounters with Discrimination
- Finding Employment
- Political Participation & Citizenship
- Miscellaneous
To follow the story of a specific immigrant, see the descriptions and links below.
- Carolina, a 48-year old immigrant from Romania, has resided in the United States for over 13 years.
- Karen immigrated from Guyana in 1985 when she was 45 years old.
- Jennifer moved to the United States from Mainland China when she was 21 years old in 2002.
- So-yeon immigrated to America from South Korea when she was 12 years old. She has lived in the United States for nine years.
- Irina, a Russian immigrant, is now 39 years old and has been in America for 21 years.
- Rose moved to the United States from Jamaica at the age of 14.
- Kevin is a Chinese immigrant who came into the United States in 2003 when he was 18 years old.
- Antonio, a 43-year-old man who immigrated from Mexico, has been living in America for 28 years.
- Daisy immigrated to the United States from India. She is 58 years old and has been in the country for over 28 years.
- Choi immigrated to the United States from Korea about 10 years ago. She is now 46 years old.
- Pedro, a 26-year-old male, immigrated from Brazil at age 13.
- Maqbool immigrated to New York City from Pakistan when he was in his mid-sixties. He has been living here for about two decades.
- Casey immigrated from Hong Kong when she was 18 years old and has been living in New York City for nine years.
- Svetlana, a 41-year old Russian immigrant, has been living in the United States for 15 years.
- Joe immigrated to the United States from Malaysia when he was 21 years old and has been living in New York City for over 30 years.
- Anna, a 49-year old immigrant from China, has been in the United States for approximately 25 years.
- Johnny, now 30, was born in Venezuela, grew up in Colombia, and moved to Queens for the first time at the age of 11. After some back and forth, he settled in the United States at the age of 18.
- Ivan, a 47-year old Russian immigrant, came to American at the age of 15 from St. Petersburg.
- Alexandra, a 32-year old Russian immigrant, has lived in the United States for eight years.
- Lisa immigrated to the United States from China 32 years ago in 1979. She is now 45 years old.
Credit for picture at the top of the page: http://getajobtoday.org/category/interview-tips/
