Immigration Oral History Honors

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Bernifka Saint Jean History Mr. Streff 01/16/15 2nd Quarter Project: Immigration Oral History Honors “ Ironically I faced discrimination from other immigrants rather than Americans themselves”, stated Valentina Luma when she was been interviewed. This quote was the most relatable to my experience of being an immigrant to United States of America compares to hers. Valentina Luma was the age of nine when her and her family immigrated from Dominican Republic to the United States. Luma’s journey to the United States wasn’t arduous physically rather mentally where the process to get accepted took almost a decade, she admits to understand why some immigrants would rather come to America illegally than wait almost a decade to come. Some of the positive …show more content…

Coming to America where she was placed in an English-Language Learning program, she met two other Haitians but with her lack of the ability to speak Haitian Creole she felt isolated from either languages: English and Haitian Creole. In Dominican Republic, Luma went to two schools one in the morning and one in the afternoon, when she came to the U.S she felt the pressure to be able to handle one school and for the results of her grades to be higher than before. One of the things she struggled with was her ability to write essays, which led to her to questioning whether if moving to the U.S caused that or if that was a lack of skills. To overcome this obstacle she tries her best to write the best essay she can by asking the teacher for help and not waiting the day before to write her essays. Luma’s experience from school versus mine is drastically different, I went to one school which was a private school which started and ended around the same time as Medford High …show more content…

Since things are not processed by papers anymore but rather through a computer the process should be faster. Privacy would be provided, where a private room would be given for an immigrant's family to stay while there papers are being processed. As well as a sense of freedom where they could go outside whenever they want, even the yard would be guarded but it wouldn't feel much as a prison. Activities for the immigrants would be provided to keep their minds occupied. Profiling wouldn't occur to a certain person based on their look but based on the evidence provided from the background

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