The Ithaca Journal
Panelists share tales of hardship, liberty
By JODY ROSELLE
Journal Staff
ITHACA - Driss Bakhri described his and his wife's trip from Morocco to Ithaca as a “short story.”
“I teach for five years Arabic in high school,” he said. “When I get my permit to live in America, I thought ‘Oh my goodness.'”
Bakhri and his wife arrived in the U.S. about a year ago, Bakhri attributing the move to the couple's shared dreams of travel. He appeared Thursday night as one of six panelists who shared their stories during “Immigrants in Tompkins County: Challenges and Contributions” at the First Presbyterian Church at 315 N. Cayuga St.
“I don't have any problem,” said Bakhri, who teaches Arabic in Cornell University's Department of Near East Studies. He admitted he's working longer hours in the U.S. than he did in Morocco.
Scheduled to coincide with the start of the 11th annual 40-Hour Fast for Worker Justice, more 30 people filled the seats in the church basement to listen to the stories and experiences of the six people who now call Tompkins County home.
Sivilay Somchanhmavong
“ Ithaca has been home to me for the past 26 years,” said Somchanhmavong, of the Ithaca Asia American Association. “As refugees fleeing warn-torn Laos, we fled to Thailand for eventual relocation.”
Somchanhmavong said his father had left Laos first and eventually his mother gathered the children and made several attempts, even being jailed once, before successfully reaching the Thai refugee camps where they waited to be relocated.
“I have relatives in Australia and France,” he said. “Certainly it came with a lot of struggles.”
May YeeLin
YeeLin, an Ithaca resident since 1998, and her family had their own experiences in the Thai refugee camp fleeing Burma during the late ‘80s.
“It all started back in 1988. I was 8 years old and in second grade,” YeeLin said. “My dad was a school principal, and he was involved in democracy and things like that.”
One day, YeeLin's father left without telling his wife or children. YeeLin said not knowing his whereabouts protected the family from soldiers who came to interrogate them, sometimes at gunpoint.
“Six months after that, my dad fortunately, luckily contacted us,” YeeLin said. For years the family hid in Thai jungles to avoid detection until the Burmese-Thai war broke out and they were forced to go to the refugee camp, seeking relocation from the United Nations.
“We faced a lot of challenges in the beginning,” said YeeLin, who was 16 when she arrived. “Weather was a big one. English was difficult - it was really tough not knowing English.”
Fidela Sindihebura
Sindihebura had to leave her native Burundi for Rwanda to finish her education. Sindihebura said government forces during her childhood in the 1960s and '70s went on periodic killing sprees to eliminate political enemies, focusing on the well-educated, including her father and three siblings.
“I spent 10 years as a refugee in Rwanda,” Sindihebura said. “The killings took about 300,000 people.”
After her return to Burundi, a free election was mandated for the country to continue receiving aid from the international community, and when the people elected a different leader, the government went on another killing spree. Nations surrounding Burundi pushed the refugees back across the border this time. Sindihebura's husband was studying at Syracuse University, and she was taking care of the couple's four boys.
“The students signed a petition to take to the embassy to let us leave, and it worked,” she said, referring to Syracuse University students during the early '90s. Only Sindihebura and her children, who were ages 5, 8 and 11 at the time, were permitted to leave - the fourth child had been separated as they fled.
Leonardo Vargas-Mendez
Vargas-Mendez, an Ithaca resident since 1979 and a member of the Latino Civic Association, fled Chile with his family under a program during the Carter administration.
“We decided to become involved in the civic affairs of Ithaca,” Vargas-Mendez said. “We enjoy the liberal, progressive atmosphere Ithaca has.”
Vargas-Mendez told the audience stories of reported incidents of discrimination against undocumented workers in the area and the working conditions of some businesses that could be abusing foreign-born workers.
“We know of cases of physical and verbal abuse in places where workers come to make a good living for themselves,” he said. Vargas-Mendez also spoke out against the proposed immigration law reforms.
“It does a poor job of keeping families together,” he said. “It makes it a crime to be here without documents and those who help so-called ‘undocumented workers.'“
Monica Arambula
A also a member of the Latino Civic Association, Arambula came to the U.S. from Ecuador with the family she worked for to fulfill a dream she had from the age of 4.
“I learned English in Ithaca,” Arambula said. “ Ithaca felt like home.”
Arambula said she earned her high school diploma through BOCES and took classes at Tompkins Cortland Community College before going to work as a teacher's aide in the Ithaca City School District.
Sally Wessels, coordinator of the Tompkins-Seneca-Tioga Board of Cooperative Educational Services English as a Second Language program, said about 150 students enroll for classes and about 53 percent of those people are either “trailing spouses” or visiting scholars to Cornell. Students frequently seek help from ESL personnel for problems they encounter.
“There aren't enough services for immigrants in this community to help them,” Wessels said. “It's tangential, theoretically, to my job, but we can't help them. Catholic Charities is beginning to pick up some of the slack but they're a bit overwhelmed.”
Contact: joroselle@ithacajournal.com
Originally published March 17, 2006 |
