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Students from St. Luke's Middle School in Manhattan have
travelled to Long Island City in the burrough of Queens
to Newcomers High School.
As people around the country argue about immigration,
two groups of students come together to try to understand the issue on a personal level.
I take the kids on the subway. We come out.
It's very industrial, it's very loud, it's very noisy,
it's very exciting.
But it's also very real.
Newcomers High School is a school for newly arrived immigrants.
Our students generally haven't been in any school
in the United States before.
So, all of our students are English Language Learners. They come from
over fifty different countries, speak over sixty different languages.
As I grow up I started to experience discrimination
from boys against girls.
For instance, I wasn't allowed to go outside alone. I had to stay home and do house work.
Three years ago, when I was 14, my family and I had to immigrate here
because in Ecuador our economic situation was insufficient. Learning a new language and adapting to a new culture,
my father's pancreas cancer was complicated. He was going to die.
My sister
and I were born in Nepal. The
wages of my father in a month in the US, is equal to our whole family in a year in China.
Since JulieMann and Kim Nam met at Facing History
teacher training
students from Newcomers and St. Lukes have collaborated annually on projects that
center on Human Rights.
We started matching the students and
every year it starts with letter writing.
So my students write about themselves and we start writing back and forth more. Today, buddies meet face to face for the first time.
In this year's project called Building Bridges Newcomer students will share
their personal immigration stories.
And the St. Luke's students will interview them about their lives
and turn the findings into research papers.
We include our story,
as immigrants, what difficulties we have faced,
what difficulties we had to
pass-through when we first came here
and what's our condition now. What was coming to America like?
It was full of excitement and I knew that our lives
are going to be far more better than before because we have far more opportunities than we have living in Nepal.
Was is hard to adapt to America?
Yeah, it was hard because
it's not the same food,
it's not the same, like,
friends,
and, like,
school.
You need to start, like, a new life, again.
So, did
you feel ashamed to be an immigrant?
Uhh...not really. But I feel ashamed to tell my story. Or,
how I came here to the United States.
Because...? We came here to the United States because of
the civil war in Congo. And, as a result of the Civil War my father
was a victim of that.
And, any time I think of that it makes me kind of hate
what they did to my father.
My buddies name is Owen.
He's an amazing kid. I think he was like,
"I love you story,"
and "if you don't mind, I'd like to use your story to tell people."
And I was like, go ahead! That's what I wanted. I want to publish it so
that people can understand something.
Julie's students, like a larger immigrant population,
are struggling with the perception that their presence in this country is
a threat. And that their differences make them dangerous.
It's important that people get to know that immigrants are not bad people. That
we're not here
to take away things from
Americans. That we are here to
help, to work, to get a better future, a better life.
I have
two buddies and their names
are Fernando and Jonathan.
They're actually really great.
I learned that Jonathan wants to be an electrician,
which I didn't really expect.
I also found out that Fernando wants to be
a mechanic which is really cool.
So, I got to know a little bit about
what their goals are. They want to have jobs, they want to be responsible people.
I think for the students at St. Luke's who have had little experience with new immigrants to the
United States,
they might have one idea
who they are. And, they can read about it and they can learn about immigration, but
unless they become friends, intimate friends with the person who's immigrants
and really understand what that struggle is about. It's hard for them to know what
that means. And so,
the further back Kim and I can step the more real that relationship is gonna be.
I didn't know there was a war in Congo. And,
their life seems so difficult. They just wanted to come here for a better life.
And, I didn't have to deal with that. So,
it was really interesting
to get to know their immigration stories.
It's really hard enough as it is to even get here,
so by giving them
an even harder time, it's not doing them a favor.
At the beginning,
none of my
friends wanted to told their story because
that is something personal.
Their actually trying to
know about you,
and your past and
your feelings.
Do you feel like an American? Like an American? Not really...
One of the kids today
was crying during one of her interviews. Because, many of the issues that the
immigrant students are dealing with are very, very, upsetting.
But, I think that
they are issues that we have to talk about.
Uh...I don't think that
teenagers are as afraid to talk about it as adults are.
I think they just have to be given the opportunity to.
Over the next few months, students will continue to talk to their buddies
through letters and in person.
And the immigration essays they collaborated on will be collected into a book.
My buddy, he is a very smart guy. Oh my god,l a very smart guy,
smarter than some pictures.
He tells me all my mistakes. (Thank you my friend.)
It gives me hope that
maybe someday,
there won't be
like, racial crime.
Now I feel like
I can make a change.
To start a new beginning.
No matter where you come from, no matter
what your obstacles, your social standard,
your family condition,
you make your own identity. You show the world who you are.