If there’s one thing I’ve thought of this week, it’s immigration. Not immigration in the political sense, how countries should govern immigration laws and standards, but immigration from the perspective of the individual. Until I moved to Australia and began working with, for the most part, an immigrant population, I never appreciated the individual and his/her commitment to a better life in an unknown country. Because my husband is a devoted family history buff, I’ve learned of the stories of our ancestors who left their homes in another country to come to America, but I never appreciated the sacrifice and the dream of a better life that motivates that move. I’ve seen my forbearer’s names listed on a ship manifest or on the list from the port of entry into the United States, but never was acquainted with them to know their life story and what drove them to leave family they loved and a country and lifestyle they were familiar with to exchange that with a new language and customs of the United States. I’ve had students who came to America from Mexico, of whom I learned snippets of a former life in another country. However, none of my students were the decision-makers in the choice to come to America, all of them were children of parents who decided to leave Mexico to come to America. The students I have now, even though our time together is brief, have impressed me in a way nothing else has. I see in these young people, a fierce determination to strike out into the unknown for a chance at a better life for themselves and their posterity. I see in them my great-grandparents and great-great grandparents who left beautiful countries to come to America and I wonder if I could have been as brave at such a young age. Because it is so difficult to legally come to America now, the young people I am working with will never see the Statue of Liberty or know the words she is famous for:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
America is very hard to get in to, but Australia makes a good second, so those who can’t get to America, but would like a similar country with similar opportunities, come here. I admire them. These pictures are of students in two of our classes.
They come from countries such as China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, South Korea, and the Philippines. Most of our students are young, single adults who have left their home and family to come to Australia by themselves and spend the time and effort required to become citizens here. Many are educated with degrees from universities in their home country, but some are not. The young woman from Bangladesh is actually a mail-order bride. Her opportunity to come to Australia was to become the wife of an Australian. The couple from the Philippines (not pictured), are engineers. They left the Philippines and went to Qatar where they were able to get really high paying good jobs and greatly improve their standard of living, but life there is so dangerous that, now that they are thinking of starting a family, they felt they needed to migrate to a country where their children didn't have to live on a compound in order to be safe. Australia has changed it'w immigration laws and it’s difficult now, since 2001, to get citizenship. It’s quite a process and at any point if you don’t meet the employment requirements, your visa can run out and you can be deported. The language test I wrote about a couple of weeks ago is a huge stumbling block for many people. English is not an easy language to learn, and the test is difficult. Depending on your score, you are only eligible to live in certain parts of the country. You have to achieve a very high score to be eligible to live in Sydney or the other big cities on the coast, in other words, the best part of the country. Mid-level scores only qualify you to live in the less desirable parts of the country, like Darwin or the center portion of the country (mostly sheep stations and towns with general labor jobs available). People re-take the test multiple times trying to improve their scores. It’s only been recently that these conditions came into being. As recently as 2001, people could come to Australia fairly easily without having to qualify with any type of ‘preferred job’ status. Right now, Australia is giving preference to certain skilled professions, not so much just general labor. I think that’s why our little student from Bangladesh was willing to come as a mail order bride; it was her only chance to get in legally. We met a young woman dentist from Venezuela on the train the other day. She came here on a preferred profession visa and aced the language test, but said it still was extremely hard to find someone willing to employ her. It took her a year and a half to pass all the exams required to acquire an Australian dental license. But life here is so much safer and preferable to life in Venezuela that she said it was worth it.
They come from countries such as China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, South Korea, and the Philippines. Most of our students are young, single adults who have left their home and family to come to Australia by themselves and spend the time and effort required to become citizens here. Many are educated with degrees from universities in their home country, but some are not. The young woman from Bangladesh is actually a mail-order bride. Her opportunity to come to Australia was to become the wife of an Australian. The couple from the Philippines (not pictured), are engineers. They left the Philippines and went to Qatar where they were able to get really high paying good jobs and greatly improve their standard of living, but life there is so dangerous that, now that they are thinking of starting a family, they felt they needed to migrate to a country where their children didn't have to live on a compound in order to be safe. Australia has changed it'w immigration laws and it’s difficult now, since 2001, to get citizenship. It’s quite a process and at any point if you don’t meet the employment requirements, your visa can run out and you can be deported. The language test I wrote about a couple of weeks ago is a huge stumbling block for many people. English is not an easy language to learn, and the test is difficult. Depending on your score, you are only eligible to live in certain parts of the country. You have to achieve a very high score to be eligible to live in Sydney or the other big cities on the coast, in other words, the best part of the country. Mid-level scores only qualify you to live in the less desirable parts of the country, like Darwin or the center portion of the country (mostly sheep stations and towns with general labor jobs available). People re-take the test multiple times trying to improve their scores. It’s only been recently that these conditions came into being. As recently as 2001, people could come to Australia fairly easily without having to qualify with any type of ‘preferred job’ status. Right now, Australia is giving preference to certain skilled professions, not so much just general labor. I think that’s why our little student from Bangladesh was willing to come as a mail order bride; it was her only chance to get in legally. We met a young woman dentist from Venezuela on the train the other day. She came here on a preferred profession visa and aced the language test, but said it still was extremely hard to find someone willing to employ her. It took her a year and a half to pass all the exams required to acquire an Australian dental license. But life here is so much safer and preferable to life in Venezuela that she said it was worth it.
After a long workweek full of meetings and teaching classes it was finally the weekend! Saturday, after our ‘Saturday chores’ cleaning our little house (the whole 20 minutes it takes to clean the bathroom, vacuum, sweep and mop all the floors, wipe down the cupboard doors, and sweep the porch and patio), we left for a day of adventure with some friends. We first drove downtown and went to Paddington Market, an outdoor market in one of the older sections of town. The whole area reminded me of New Orleans. The houses all had lots of wrought iron decorative work, shutters, and interesting rooflines. We spent some time wandering around the market looking at all the interesting and fun things they had for sale. After that we drove to Bondi beach, one of the big main beaches in the city. Sydney harbor has many, many inlets and neat little beaches scattered throughout the area the city is located in. We spent a couple of hours wandering the beach and the rocky area surrounding the beach. I’m not sure if there are sharks in the water in this area of the city, it’s much more inland and protected than Manly beach, the beach we took the ferry out to a couple of weeks ago. The beach at Manly is actually on the ocean whereas Bondi beach is in what is called Circular Quay, the inland bay area. Whatever the reason, there were no shark nets on the two beaches we went to. There were lots of surfers, and plenty of snorkelers and swimmers, so we decided either they were all crazy, or else there’s not much of a shark threat! Even though it’s the end of summer, the water is surprisingly cold.
After the beach we drove back toward home and stopped off at the rugby game. We wanted to watch Will Hopowate play, the young man I talked about last week. It was our first ever live rugby game. Dave watches it on TV and knows the rules fairly well, but I’ve never watched before. We had pretty good tickets so we got to see some fairly close-up action. Seeing the game up close made me gladder than ever that Fruitland did not have a rugby team. Football at least has pads and helmets, but rugby is just the players and the hard ground. They do wear mouth guards though… I can’t figure out why they worry about protecting teeth and don’t seem to be worried about protecting the rest of the players’ body, especially the brain.
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| Our team is the blue team, the Parramatta Eels |
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| Happy day, our team won!! At half-time they had a half-court rugby game going on with little kids. The boys were about 5 or 6 years old and played like little pros. It was fun to watch, but if my child were playing they would be the odd kid with the helmet on, there would be no ‘mouth guard only’ for my boys! |
I’ve decided to post my grandkid portion of the blog on a separate post, I think my posts are getting too long!
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