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Macaulay Honors College
at Baruch, Spring 2013Professor Els de Graauw
ITF Benjamin Miller Log in
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Schooling and Employment: Introduction
Amongst the many reasons why immigrants come to America, the opportunity to climb the socio-economic ladder has been the motive for hundreds of years. Some arrive with set skills that they then apply to an occupation, but many come with the dreams of acquiring skills in the American education system towards a high-paying job. American schools are unique in that anyone can take advantage of it and anyone can do well in it, and immigrants are often surprised by how liberal and encouraging the environment can be. However, immigrants also often face challenges in education and employment. Like learning English, education is a necessary stepping stone for attaining employment, and yet there are those who face the legal and financial issues of not having citizenship regardless of how hard they have worked.
Born and Raised to Sit Down and Keep Quiet
Beatrice, a 20-year-old Italian immigrant, speaks about individualism and having a voice in America:
Here, I feel like its less disciplined, like, in comparison to schools in Italy, here, I think people speak up more. For example, if students have a problem with the test, they will be more open to the teacher, saying like, oh, but you didn’t say this was on it….people speak up more, and they were taught that what you have to say matter, everyone has a voice. And I’ve never really been like that because I was taught to keep quiet and stay in my place. I feel like the ideology here is that you’re an individual and it’s very foreign to me that people fight back and say, ‘I’m an adult, I’m an individual, you can’t tell me what to do…’
A Colorful Culture Shock
Beatrice, a 20-year-old Italian immigrant, discusses her impressions of the American school system and issues of safety after experiencing the 2001 terrorist attacks on NYC:
Everyone was just white. In my class there were no Blacks, no Chinese. All my friends were just white. I mean I’m not prejudiced or anything, but here people integrate more. There, I mean everyone is Italian. There’s no one from England or France or anything. It was very—it’s just, I don’t know, it was a culture shock. Oh, and it was right after 9/11 too. 9/11 happened on my third day of school, and I didn’t speak any English. My mom sat next to me and had to translate everything because I didn’t know what was going on. And it was just, it was very scary, that’s all. I didn’t feel safe here, I didn’t like where I was, I didn’t like the people at school… I stuck out. Like I was just used to a different kind of life.
American Life
Eliza, a 48-year-old immigrant from Belarus, talks of her experiences adjusting to life in America:
Basically, it was… in the beginning, it was very hard and difficult process to get used to all the new surrounding in terms of cultures, customs, and without knowing of language, it was hard to land any job, and we went to…we started to study language to the extent that we can communicate freely to…go to different places, to communicate with people, and finally we went to college to some…to get some kind of degree and majors that we can utilize in this country.
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.
Losing Out For No Fair Reason
Jane, a 24-year-old girl who moved to America from Canada 2 years ago, talks about the frustrations of getting a green card:
The process of getting a green card just takes so long, the job wasn’t willing to wait to find out if I was approved. They were like, listen, you’re a great candidate for the job and your exactly what were looking for, were so sorry, try again next year. I ended up getting a different job, but its not as good, I get paid less and I have worse hours. So I didn’t get the job I really wanted because of the green card process.
A New Lifestyle in America
Miriam, an immigrant from Russia, decides to break her parents’ old-world tradition and goes to college against their wishes:
No, my parents did not want me to go to college at all. They felt that college was not necessary for a girl at all. A girl was going to get married and have kids, and so on, and if I hadn’t lived in New York City, and been able to go to a City University, I would never have been able to go to college, because they didn’t have the money, and even if they had, they wouldn’t have spent it. They wouldn’t have thought it was important.
Making a Living as Skilled Shoemaker
Miriam talk about her father, a man with modest human capital, who made a living as a shoemaker:
My father was a shoemaker. He was in an old-fashioned European intern…no not an intern…he was an apprentice when he was 11 to a master shoemaker, and he learned his trade from them, you know. And he was the kind of shoemaker that…he could make a shoe and just say, ‘put your foot on a piece of paper,’ he’d draw it, and the next thing you know, you had shoes. I mean, he could make a shoe from beginning to end. And when we came here, there weren’t too many jobs in shoemakers, so he worked as a leather cutter in the pocketbook industry. In the expense of pocketbooks, you have to know how to cut the leather properly so that it fits together and looks right, and there are no damages and so on, so of course he was very knowledgeable about leather, so that’s what he did.
