Charlottesville, VA— Living in over a dozen different places in my lifetime has given me a unique perspective on the world. Three of those locations – Iran, Yap and Guam – were very different cultures from my own.
Before joining the Peace Corps and being sent to the western Pacific in 2016 to provide marketing services for the 2018 MicroGames and the Yap Visitors Bureau, I earned a certificate in teaching English as a foreign language from The New School in New York City. Now, I’m using that knowledge to help immigrants in Charlottesville, Virginia, improve their English.
My students, who arrived in the United States with UN-issued humanitarian visas, or advocacy by relatives who are already U.S. citizens are from Colombia, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Russia and the Republic of Congo. Most have found housing, jobs, schools and social services with the help of government and nonprofit organizations like the International Rescue Committee. All have full-time jobs in facilities management at the University of Virginia, where I provide personalized lessons.
I am in awe of each one of them. Some spent years in refugee camps, while others hiked at night in deep snow across the Himalaya mountains to evade Chinese soldiers. They all left family behind, with some unable to ever return to their homeland due to civil wars and foreign invaders. Most grew up hearing about America and the opportunities it offers for freedom and a better life for their children.
Nine of my 10 students have studied for the citizenship exam and taken their oath of allegiance. Some voted for the first time on Nov. 5.
The jobs they perform – cleaning and maintaining the university’s buildings – are physically demanding. Several work their eight-hour shifts beginning at 4 a.m., while others end their shifts at 1 a.m., juggling childcare and eldercare with their spouses, many of whom also work at the university.
There are so many immigrants in these types of jobs because white Americans, while complaining about immigrants taking jobs away, are not willing to do menial labor. Employers know immigrants work hard and are grateful for their jobs. In return, employers like the university offer excellent benefits, including health care, paid vacations, and more.
Among the many benefits my students receive is $2,000 per year for education, which they can use however they want. They have chosen to take weekly one hour, one-on-one English lessons through my employer, Speak! Language Center, which has a contract with UVA’s facilities management office.
The stories my students tell me about their journey to get to America often leave me in tears. One man from Congo grew up tending his father’s cattle and, like most children in his country, never attended school. When the genocide began, his father’s land was taken and the family fled to a refuge camp in Rwanda, where they lived for 15 years.
The UN helped him, his wife and their four children immigrate to the U.S. They recently welcomed their sixth child, who automatically acquires U.S. citizenship along with their fifth child, who was also born here. Their oldest daughter started college this year thanks to free tuition for Virginia residents at the community college. She hopes to transfer to UVA in two years and become a doctor. Their father, my student, is studying for his citizenship exam while working at the university during the day and driving for Uber at night.
Another student from Congo has a four-year nursing degree and eight years of nursing experience in her homeland. She is studying to become a certified nurse assistant while cleaning professors’ offices and public bathrooms.
I also teach a couple from El Salvador who work at UVA’s world-renowned Darden School of Business. With three years of higher education in El Salvador, the husband recently graduated from Virginia’s local community college with a degree in cyber security, which took him three and a half years of night school to complete. But, he told me, he likes his maintenance job at the university and plans to stay on for now.
Their oldest daughter’s story is heartwarming. When they arrived in Charlottesville over a decade ago, she would accompany her parents to the university hotel during school breaks, where they worked. At nine years of age, she told her parents that she was going to study there some day. After high school, she enrolled in the community college and graduated with straight A’s at the same time that her father graduated this past spring.
Not wanting to overshadow her father’s accomplishment, she chose not to participate in the graduation ceremony, telling him proudly that the day was his to celebrate. This summer, her dream came true when she received her acceptance letter to UVA; she started the next phase of her college career in September and plans to go on for a master’s degree.
Stories like these are why so many immigrants decide to come to America. They are stories that have been repeated for thousands of years, beginning with the long treks that the indigenous people made over continents to arrive and settle in new lands. My own ancestors arrived in this country over 300 years ago, fleeing religious persecution.
And let’s not forget the Micronesians who left their families to live, work and send their children to school in Guam, Hawaii, Oregon, Texas and places in between, in search of a better life and more opportunities.
As John F. Kennedy said: “Everywhere immigrants have enriched and strengthened the fabric of American life.”
The election is now over, and immigration reform was high on the checklist for voters. Granted, the immigration program needs improvement, but the bipartisan bill providing funding should have been passed. It was sent to Congress by President Biden the day after his swearing-in. It is disgraceful that one narcissistic and evil past—and now future—president told his acolytes in Congress to vote against its passage as a campaign tactic to blame his presidential opponent for not doing anything.
As a result, the incoming president persisted in warning his followers that immigrants are “fueling violent crime.” But a 2024 National Institute of Justice report titled “Unauthorized Immigration, Crime and Recidivism: Evidence from Texas” disputed this assertion and found that undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes. The gasoline fueling crime is coming from within.
My own fear is that the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who are the backbone of this country, whether legal or not, will be rounded up, jailed and thrown out. I am also fearful that immigrants—my students included—who are brown or black, will face harassment and danger by followers of the next president. In fact, it’s already happening. And that includes those brave men and women from the Federated States of Micronesia who have served in the U.S. military to defend this nation despite not being citizens of it.
I will continue to dispute the self-serving lies about “illegals” and support the courageous immigrants who leave everything behind to come to this land of freedom and opportunity. They must not be vilified.
Joyce McClure is a former senior marketing executive and former Peace Corps volunteer in Yap. Transitioning to freelance writing, she moved to Guam in 2021 and recently relocated back to the mainland. Send feedback to joycemcc62@yahoo.com
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