Interview With an Immigrant - Assignment Example

Interview with an Immigrant Me: So, Elena, tell me a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? How long do you live in United s? Elena (further El.): I was born in Ukraine in a pretty big city Odessa. When I was nineteen I finished my second year in university and decided to take part in a special project for students of Eastern Europe. It was called Work and Travel program and the point of the program was to open the Unite States for young people allowing them to work on some seasonal jobs, collect money, and then travel for some time until the end of summer. A travel agency provided us with job offers and some pretty cheap housing for us. Me: Did you have to pay for this program? El.: Yes, of course, I believe it cost approximately thirty hundred dollars including flight expenses, but excluding living expenses and housing cost. Me: What kind of job did you get? El.: I worked in local pizzeria called “Moose Jaw” in a small town Lake Delton, WI. We lived in a pretty cheap motel near the job place, there were three people in our room: me, my brother and his friend. Me: Did you work in a kitchen? Was it hard? El.: Yes. It was very hard. Sometimes we had to work standing on our feet even for 13 hours! Can you imagine how hard it was to make some monotonous work for such a long time? Me: But it was a kind of exploitation, wasn’t it? El.: Absolutely. But we didn’t have any choice. We were paid $7,35 per hour and we needed to pay for housing and food. In addition, we were supposed to travel at the end, so it also required several expenses. Me: But if your living conditions were so tough than why did you decide to keep working and then to stay in USA? El.: When I was going to the Work and Travel program I wasn’t ready to immigrate as I decided it lately. Me: So immigration wasn’t your purpose? El.: No, it wasn’t. Me: When did you realize that you want to stay? El.: It happened accidentally. You know, one day I just realized that I had no future back there in Ukraine. Even though my city Odessa is big enough still there was a little chance that I could have got a well-paid job there and could have managed success one day. Ukraine is pretty much poor and corrupted country, it is not that easy to become successful there if you don’t have, you know, so-called good offices. Me: So you decided that you had more chances to become successful in the US? El.: Kidding? I’m not so naïve! Let’s be honest, I realized that I will be nobody here in the US. But at least I knew that my financial situation will be better. Me: And what’s your current situation? Did it become better or are you disappointed now? El.: Hard to say. I didn’t get my hopes high about the thing. At the beginning we all had legal job offers, the Social Security Numbers, and everything was settled for us. Together with my friend Nastya we decided to stay and we were too excited to understand that life in America is not that easy and sweet as it seemed to us. We moved to Chicago because we heard from some other immigrants that there is a strong Russian-Ukrainian community and we thought they would help us. But you know what? They didn’t. These people just pretended like aware of helping and like they were happy to welcome us. But in fact they were too obsessed with their own interests. Me: But how exactly did you think the community was supposed to help you? El.: I don’t think we thought about this. We heard that immigrant communities are pretty powerful and at least they could have helped us to get jobs! But you know what I realized then? That this patriotism Ukrainians are used to promoting is totally pretended. If you put Ukrainian flag above your bad it doesn’t mean that you are a patriot. I believe it is not real patriotism, because think about this: how can you say that you love your motherland when you escaped from there? You felt like it is too hard for you to live there? So why didn’t you stay and change something to make your country better. Me: And these thoughts made you become out of conceit with your nation? El.: No. I just started being suspicious about immigrants. When I lived in Ukraine I believed that my country meant something for me. Because I felt like my people and I were the same, we understood each other, we had the same discourse. Obviously it was so because we were raised in the same conditions. But now I feel like they are strangers to me, at least these “my people” here, in America. Me: So you stayed here illegally. Weren’t you afraid of such status? You could have been caught by police and deported any time. El.: Of course we were, but people who have nothing to lose are liable to crazy doings. I knew it was hard for illegal to survive in American system. Lots of things we got for free in Ukraine were too expensive. For example, our insurance system isn’t so developed; we don’t need insurance to get medical aid, because it is free, so all we have to pay for is medical preparations. So when I first got sick I went to a hospital and was simply examined by doctor. Actually I knew my disease I just needed a prescription, when in Ukraine I could have got the drugs without prescription simply coming to a pharmacy and paying money. And you can’t imagine how surprised I was when I got a bill from the hospital! In total I had to pay $350 for a simple visit without any procedures. Luckily I had prepaid insurance! But when the time of the insurance was up my biggest fear was to get sick again. Me: So what happened after you got to Chicago? Did you have difficulties with finding a job? El.: I couldn’t find a job for a month, so I was spending the money I had earned that summer in the pizzeria desperately trying to find anything with at least the lowest hourly wage. In addition, Chicago is situated in Illinois State where taxes are really big, so life there is pretty expensive. Me: What was the reason why you couldn’t manage to find a job? El.: Well, the obvious one! If you are not American you’re nobody in the United States. Me: So you’re saying you were discriminated? By whom? El.: Yes. But I was talking about the US law. So I guess it wasn’t really discrimination, the reasons why employers didn’t want to hire me were concerning my illegal status so they were right and did quite a good thing I wasn’t get used to Ukraine. The Ukraine law is something not that important for us, because, you know, there are a lot of ways you can get what you want evading law. Me: So you haven’t experienced any discrimination in the US? El.: I didn’t say that. Absolutely I had, but when I was illegal it was logical why many employers didn’t want to hire me, especially for good positions. I realized that there are even different sorts of immigrants. Some of them were considered as not so bed like western Europeans: French, Italian, Irish and British. Eastern Europeans like Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian were much lower so they could get lower job positions. And the people with a different color of skin were the lowest sort of immigrants who could get the dirtiest jobs. Me: And which position did you finally get? El.: I became a babysitter in a quite rich family of businessmen. They were happy that I had a white skin and spoke English well. Me: Did you feel they discriminated you in some way? El.: I can’t call their actions discrimination. They did what they could do, because they saw I was in desperate situation so they felt free to use it. Me: Like what? El.: They paid me the lowest hourly wage and kindly asked me to do some stuff I wasn’t supposed to do according to the babysitting position I was hired on. I understood that it wasn’t such a good idea to argue with them, so I kept doing some “favors” like cleaning and cooking. Me: But now you work as teacher. How did it happen? El.: I met a guy and we got married. Then I got an American citizenship. I realized that I had lack of education so when we got married and I hadn’t got the citizenship at once I got a sort of green card and went to college to become a teacher lately because in Ukraine I studied pedagogy and was going to become a teacher lately. And then my citizenship helped me to become at least someone in this country. Me: So how many years have passed since then? Are you already a legal citizen of the United States? El.: Yes, I am a citizen of the United States. Let me count…I’ve lived in the US for 2 years illegally, then I got married with an American and after a few years I got citizenship. And now it is almost 11 years since I came here first. Me: How was it to marry someone who wasn’t like you said from “your people”? El.: The point is that my husband is an American Russian. His parents moved to the US legally so he was born in the US but was raised by Russians – “my people” if you want. The difference was only in our religious beliefs and churches. His family was Orthodox Christians and I was from the Greek-Catholic church. Me: Did you have essential disagreements concerning this? El.: No. Not really. We found a compromise and my husband ceded so we got married in Ukrainian Greek-Catholic church. Me: Does this mean that religion is not important for your husband? What role it plays in your family now? El.: Vice versa religion is crucially important for us. First, if you look closely to Orthodox Christian and Greek-Catholic religious doctrines, you will notice that actually they don’t make a big difference. So together with my husband we decided that God is something more than religions and churches for us and it doesn’t matter through which prayers we talk to him. That’s why we don’t have any problems with religious beliefs in our family. Me: How can you estimate your changes since you have come to USA? Have your values and worldview essentially changed? El.: Definitely I went through a lot of changes but I can’t say my values have changed. I’d rather estimate myself as young and inexperienced in my decision to stay. I thought that material things were the most important in this life, but when I went through some humiliating things and discrimination I realized how important it is to live where everything is familiar to you, surrounded by people you understand and love – by your people. For a long time I couldn’t call the US “home”, because I didn’t feel like I was home. Me: Do you feel like you’re home now? El.: Yes. Because now I have a family here so I’m surrounded by people I love and I am beloved by. And now I can say that home is where I am and my family is. Me: What does it mean to be American to you? El.: I’m not American, I am Ukrainian living in the different place and in better conditions. Me: Do you miss your country? Are you a patriot? El.: No and no. How hypocritical it would be if I said I’m a patriot. I admit that I don’t have any feelings for my country because for me it did nothing to be grateful for and I don’t miss it, and I don’t ever want to come back. But I am Ukrainian by nature and it is a fact. Read More