Panel explores personal aspects of immigration
USU students, members of the immigrant community in Logan and other interested parties gathered to talk about the human side of immigration Wednesday night in the Eccles Science Learning Center.
Immigrants can face difficulties in adjusting to a new language and a new culture when they come to the U.S., but support from local institutions like USU make the adjustment easier, said Guido Arochi, a community affairs officer from the Mexican consulate in Salt Lake City.
“I’m here to give convocation and call to action students here at USU,” Arochi said to the audience.
Arochi said he invites students to assist in bettering schools and make opportunities better for immigrants in Utah.
“Only students can provide (immigrants) the help,” Arochi said.
To give some perspective, Arochi said there are approximately 350,000 people of Hispanic origin in Utah. He estimated 250,000 of them are of Mexican origin, and there are 28 consulate employees to deal with their educational needs.
The consulate offers education programs in English, computer science, literacy and the history and culture of Mexico, but it needs the participation of community members to continue, he said.
“The goal for these programs is to integrate migrants so they have a closer connection to (the) state and community they live in now,” Arochi said.
Lasting an hour longer than expected, a Q-and-A session was held after Arochi spoke and questions were directed toward a panel of emigrants from Mexico, Peru and Cuba. Panelists addressed the importance of education, parent-child relationships, cultural differences and difficulties immigrants might face.
Sinforoso Guzman, who emigrated from Mexico to follow his family to the United States, said the difficulty was renewing permits each year to stay in the country, until he and his family applied for green cards.
Guzman is a friend of Brent Pickett, director of USU Spanish Ambassadors and organizer of the event.
Miguel Barragan, a Peruvian immigrant who owns a business in Logan and is also a friend of Pickett, said the hardest difficulty is facing the distrust many Americans have toward immigrants.
“It’s hard when (you) sacrifice everything (to) come, (and) they don’t trust (you),” Barragan said of some Americans.
Though gaining trust in this country is difficult, it is possible, he added.
Maria de Jesus Cordero, a professor at USU, said her perspective as an immigrant is different from Barragan and Guzman. Cordero’s parents brought her and her sister from Cuba to the United States when she was 2 years old.
Quoting Cuban-American scholar Gustavo Perez Firmat, Cordero said she is part of the “one-and-a-half” generation. It was not until college that she began to fully understand what it means to be from Cuba, she said.
Though Cordero understood English when she started kindergarten, it was difficult to understand everything until she took ESL classes a year later, she said. She also translated a lot for her parents, which developed an early maturity.
“The disadvantage was that it took away from my childhood,” Cordero said.
An audience member, who said his parents are Mexican immigrants, asked the panel if parents who emigrate realize what their children go through socially and academically to be able to reach their goals.
Barragan said of course parents know what it’s like when children have to go through social barriers. Though, it’s different in the U.S. from Hispanic countries where people are always being congratulated, parents know and appreciate what their children must go through, he said.
Cordero said sometimes there is a divide between parents who grew up in another country and children growing up in the U.S., because they have different experiences. However, parents can relate through the types of experiences faced, she said, speaking of her father.
“I know that even though I do a different kind of work than (my father) does, my very strong work ethic comes from him,” Cordero said.
Another audience member asked if children of immigrants understand their parents’ sacrifices and appreciate it.
Barragan said if parents teach their children not only the sacrifices made but the values of their culture, they will be proud of it.
Guzman, whose answers were translated from Spanish to English by a member of the USU Spanish Ambassadors, said, “Much of the times, (our children) don’t understand the sacrifice we have gone through until they have witnessed and gone through that sacrifice.”
He spoke of his son, who went to college on a scholarship, which fell through, and he now suffers the consequences of not getting an education and wishing he had.
Vice President for Student Services James Morales spoke at the beginning of the forum about the importance of education in his life.
“Those of you who know me, know me as vice president for Student Services here at Utah State,” Morales said to the audience. “But I had a life before I came here – a life that begins in Mexico.”
Morales’ family immigrated to the U.S. and settled in Missouri when he was a child, he said. His father worked as a farm laborer, the children helping after school and on Saturdays. When his father was disabled by cancer, the family moved to southern Idaho as migrant field workers, where the children and his mother continued to work to support the family.
Morales said he remembers one afternoon, at about age 15, he and his brother were hoeing a row of beets.
“I turned over to look at him at one point, and he looked at me as well, and we stopped,” Morales said of his brother. “I remember just this moment where eye contact was made.”
Morales said he hadn’t spoken of this moment again, until 20 years later, when he asked his brother if he remembered it. His brother said he did.
Quoting his brother, Morales said, “Yes, I remember it clearly to this day … I made myself a promise that day that I would not be working in these fields the rest of my life.”
Morales said, in reply, “I made that same promise to myself.”
From that point on, Morales said he and his brother worked harder in school because they knew it was the way out of working in the fields. The brothers also made sure to honor their parents, because they realized how hard their parents worked to send their sons to school, he said.
Pickett said he organized the forum because he wanted to share stories of immigrants so people could have a more informed opinion at USU and to help build a more culturally competent society.
“People can debate the politics and the stats all they want, but until you know those experiences, I don’t think you can have the most informed opinion possible,” Pickett said.
Pickett works with the migrant education program in the Cache Valley public school system, assisting Latino families so their students can be successful in school, he said.
A forum like this was held in 2006, and Pickett said he hopes to hold another one next year.
– la.stewart@aggiemail.usu.edu