February 22, 2006

By Rosette Royale
Staff Reporter

“ The [guide] told us it would take five hours to walk across the border. It actually took three days,” says Hector, an immigrant living in Washington. “We did not have enough water or food with us, and we thought we would die of thirst. You can’t explain an experience like that in words.”

Words. While Hector may think his fall short, he is not alone in his reliance upon words in potentially shedding light on what it means to be an immigrant in this country, in the Northwest. Literally hundreds of others — from Iraq and Honduras, from Eritrea and China, from elsewhere across the globe — give voice to confusion, frustration, longing, and fear in a report entitled In Our Own Words: Immigrants’ Experiences in the Northwest. Released on Valentine’s Day by the Northwest Federation of Community Organizations (NWFCO), the nearly 40-page report is a sampler of unsweetened tales, the bulk of which speak a similar theme: the immigration system in the U.S. is in need of serious repair.

Carrie Tracy, NWFCO research associate, says that her organization became determined to undertake such a project at the prompting of immigrants themselves. “All the people we worked with were saying that the stories they heard in the media, they weren’t true,” says Tracy. “So we decided to tell immigrants’ stories in their own words because it’s a story you don’t hear.”

Up until now, it was a story Tracy says hasn’t been heard in the Northwest at all. But a smattering of reports had been conducted by various organizations in other regions of the country, she says. Representatives from those organizations helped her craft a methodology, says Tracy, one that allowed interviews to be conducted with immigrants in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.

In all, 230 individuals and/or families divulged their stories to interviewers in a nine-month period that spanned 2005 and 2006. Interviewees emigrated from 19 countries. Of those interviewed, 75 percent did not have legal documentation; as such, many of the interviewees in the report are given fictitious names.

Aided by a standardized form, interviewers asked closed- and open-ended questions, designed to elicit detailed testimonials about the immigration experience in the region addressing, but not limited to: reasons for migration; method of travel; family structure; conditions in the workplace; contact with immigration/ law enforcement officials; and access to health care.

Emil Jada, policy intern at NWFCO and daughter of parents who hail from Somalia, conducted nearly 30 interviews with immigrants from Somalia, Yemen, and Pakistan. Spending up to an hour with her subjects, she says she had no problems in finding people to speak with. “Many of them stepped up and said, ‘I could give you a story,’” recalls Jada.

One story she says that struck her, and is recounted in the report, is of a Somali neighbor’s detainment by immigration officials at Sea-Tac Airport:

“ My wife and children were waiting for me at the airport but I had no way of letting them know I was there being questioned,” recounts Abdi. “They assumed I was not on the flight and went to their relatives’ house. When they let me go I called the house and got no answer. I did not know anyone else.” Befriended by a Somali airport worker, Abdi was eventually reunited with his family.

Interspersed with the stories are recommendations to fix immigration policy on both the state and federal levels. At the recommendations’ core resides a fundamental tenet: “citizenship,” says Tracy. The report notes that complexities, backlogs, and red tape make the path to citizenship all but impossible to navigate.

Tracy says she hopes the report will offer a fuller dimension to the immigrant experience, one that allows immigrants to be seen as neighbors, not foreigners. “Immigrants are a really important part of our community,” she says. “And we need to start treating them well and with humanity.”

Yasmin, from Oregon, echoes the sentiment with her story of being harassed because of the assumption she hailed from Mexico.

“ The whole incident terrified me,” says Yasmin. “I was also upset that people who witnessed this incident chose not to intervene, but left me alone, even though I was being harassed because of the color of my skin and the perception of me being an undocumented worker. Incidents like this should not happen to anyone regardless of skin color or immigration status.” n

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You can read the stories in In Our Own Words: Immigrants’ Experiences in the Northwest for yourself, check out the NWFCO website: www.nwfco.org.