The Human Face of Immigration

"So,” Mindi Rappaport asks the eighth-graders in her English class, “What’s going on these days with immigration?  How do you feel about it?”

The students, in the leafy and historic town of Ridgefield, Conn., jump in eagerly to talk about what they know and what they’ve heard.  It’s not long before their consensus is clear: Legal immigrants are good, model residents; “illegals” are very bad.

You can’t blame them for reaching that conclusion. After all, immigration has returned to the front burner of American politics. Last year, Arizona passed a series of laws hostile to immigrants. Thousands of Facebook users became fans of pages asserting, “This is America, I don’t want to press one for English,” and the term “anchor baby” entered our vocabulary (see No. 9 in “10 Myths About Immigration”).

In the past, nativists opposed immigration, period. The sharp distinction between “legal” and “illegal” immigrants emerged fairly recently, according to immigration historian David Reimers, a professor of history at New York University. “Basically, by the mid-90s ‘legal’ immigration was no longer an issue,” he says. “The hot-button issue became the undocumented immigrants.”

That makes immigration a powder keg for teachers. It’s a deeply important part of American history, a part of nearly everyone’s family legacy and present in almost every community. Many educators agree that concentrating on the power of personal stories helps students see how today’s immigrants are not that different from those in the past. 

A Nation of Immigrants

Most people living in the United States are here because someone in the last 400 years came here from somewhere else. Immigrant experiences are naturally strong for first- and second-generation immigrant families. But Reimer says that memories and language skills typically tend to fade by the third generation. It’s hard to understand the immigrant experience if your family has forgotten it. And forgetting, as Reimer suggests, has long been a part of assimilation.

Mindi Rappaport’s classroom—which we’ll return to later—is filled with students whose families have lost track of their roots. But across the country, in another eighth-grade English classroom, sit students whose immigration experience is firsthand.

Welcome to Dale Rosine’s class at Grace Yokley Middle School in Ontario, Calif. From time to time, Rosine sees new immigrants arrive in her class. When they first get there, she says, they are uncomfortable and afraid.

Sixty percent of Ontario’s population is Latino, with many people tracing their U.S. roots back to the 19th century. Like the rest of Southern California, Ontario is a divided camp when it comes to immigration. While unauthorized immigration is a hot political issue, the immigrants are a part of the fabric of life, with a cultural heritage shared by most residents. “Many people understand the reasons people come, [while] others are frustrated with the process,” Rosine says, adding that right now, “It has lots to do with economics.” 

Rosine worries about her students. “Some of the students from Mexico talk about the way they feel disrespected and second-rate in society,” she says. “They see what their parents go through, what lies ahead, and what’s going to be available to them.”

“Some of them are really in pain,” she says.

The Family Heritage Project

Rosine was determined to use the students’ own experiences as a guide.

Her “Family Heritage” project aims to connect students—all of them—to their family backgrounds while promoting diversity and understanding in the classroom. “I look at students who see themselves as not smart, not worthwhile,” she says. “I try to build on what they can do and raise the expectations they have for themselves.”

She begins with the play The Diary of Anne Frank. She and her students discuss prejudice, oppression and Anne’s statement that “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

Halfway through the play, Rosine outlines the project. It calls for students to conduct family research, but not the “family tree” assignment, which experts warn can be painful for children who are adopted or fostered or whose families are separated. For children in those situations, Rosine suggests that they “choose the family who you see as family.”

Under Rosine’s guidance, students ask family members about their cultural heritage and the challenges they had to overcome. The students ask questions like, “Who came here [to the United States or to California] first?” and “What difficulties did they face?” Her students build a cultural identity for themselves as well as a family history of resilience.

Sometimes, Rosine admits, there’s reluctance from children whose families say, “Oh, we don’t know anything” about their origins. But a story usually emerges.

Rosine is after a real story, not just a cultural bazaar. She encourages her students to find out about the oppression and prejudice buried in the family history, and to ask elders to talk about the family’s hardships and worries. Some of her immigrant students talk about what it’s like to come over the border, she says, and they give voice to “the feeling of desperation and the fear of being deported.” Others, from all over the world, relate how their families were separated for years while one member in the United States worked to arrange for the others to come.

She’s had Japanese-American students who have told the story of their families being sent to internment camps and African-American students who learned about their ancestors leaving the South.

For some of her students, the experience really lowers walls. “When they hear so many kids with different backgrounds, and the difficulties they’ve had, it opens their eyes and makes their own situation seem less personal. They often remark that they thought they were the only ones who had experienced something until they heard their classmates’ stories.”

The project isn’t just about oppression, though. When they present their work, students bring in heirlooms or other items that are special to their families. “We’ve had wonderful artifacts,” Rosine says, “including Hawaiian sculpture, Filipino lanterns and ethnic clothing. We’ve also had military discharge papers and dog tags, as well as keepsakes that have been handed down for generations.”

As part of their presentations, students have shown pictures of dances and celebrations in which they’ve participated while visiting their family’s country of origin. They have also shared stories they’ve learned. Often, parents and grandparents come to class for the presentations, which are taped and photographed.

For Rosine, the payoff on the project comes when her students hear the presentations and are amazed to discover that the world is much bigger than they originally believed.