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Macaulay Honors College
at Baruch, Spring 2013Professor Els de Graauw
ITF Benjamin Miller Log in
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Revolution
Neville, a 63-year-old immigrant from Jamaica, reflects on why people leave the safety and familiarity of their home countries:
Yeah, [Jamaicans] migrate a lot. It’s what they call, um, a pressure release? People migrate because if, uhm, if it wasn’t for migration, then you’d have revolution… because there would be no outlet for individuals to acquire what they’re looking for, what the government can’t give them.
To Leave, Or Not To Leave….Definitely Leave
For Lilya, leaving the Ukraine was an easy decision after 42 years of hardship:
I’m a Jew and it was not easy to be a Jew in that country because of umm anti-Semitism and a lot of discrimination to the Jews that I went through, and that’s why I always dreamed to live in some country that I feel freedom, that I wouldn’t feel discriminated to get the job, to get the education because I’m Jew, not because I don’t have enough knowledge, enough education, enough experience, but because I am a Jew and I don’t think that this is fair and I don’t want this life for myself and I don’t want this life as I told you, for my kids and grandkids and future generation.
Why Lucy and Her Husband Left Guyana
Lucy describes the evils and corruption of Guyana:
There’s a lot of bribes- people can commit crimes, and the rich person- if- say- like this, the rich person son do something, you c- i- to the poor one – who doesn’t have money – you can’t do anything about it. Because you don’t have the money. The judge would take the bribe, and the rich one walks free. That’s how it is with everything. You bribe people to get a good job in the government. Every- everyting is a bribe, and lotta drugs money dere. And de police and de government and de president and everybody is involved in it.
She goes on to describe the poor conditions and low standard of life in Guyana:
[My husband] didn’t have a job in Guyana, so his grandfather brought him over here. He came and I wanted to come too; me nah get food for the kids, me nah get money to spend on them, and there was a lot of hardship and no job…and I can’t even buy clothes for myself. I couldn’t even feed my children properly, couldn’t even buy books for them. Shoes, milk, anything.
Coming to America for Education
Lucy describes why American education makes America so great, and the opportunities it creates that Guyana lacks:
This country like I said, have educated all my children. Made me get houses, and cars, I couldn’t- I didn’t even have a bicycle in Guyana. I have my money- you can work over here- once you work you can buy anything you want. Like dey se the sky is the limit. You can do anything you want. You educate yourself until you are 80 years old. In Guyana there’s no way you can go to school after a certain age. You don’t have the money, the means the nothing. And after that you don’t have a job, even. But this country- God bless this country. I love- I will not trade it for anything.
Drawn to the Land of Opportunity
Miriam and her family came to America because they heard the streets were paved with gold:
We came to New York because everyone knew at that time that this place, specifically here, in America, was the land of opportunity.
