The new immigrants
McCarthy, Abigail
reliance on the idea) scrap it? Jesus was also unpopular on the idea of the demonic: "Deliver us from evil" is a reference not to some abstract evil but, most scholars seem to agree, "the...
...That remarkable lady lived to be 111 and even as a centenarian gave Juliet a careful upbringing...
...She and her husband alternate semesters--one goes to the university...
...Lesford rightly sees his life story as remarkable and has hopes of writing and publishing a book to inspire others...
...I don't think this comes into our lives accidentally, like a draft of cold air through a door that blows open...
...In still another she was beaten so badly by the woman of the house that her face bore marks for months...
...Overwhelmingly they prefer English to the native languages of their parents...
...his mother, who hated his dead father, told him instead--deliberately withholding the word love--that his father had been proud of him...
...When he was six and she sent for him, he made the journey here alone...
...There is no proof that God is real, or that anything in life makes any ultimate sense...
...There is nothing clear here, only clues which can be seen as pointing in different directions...
...Endurance, resilience, industry, good humor, and a cheery hopefulness--these were the marks of the new immigrants I came to know...
...That is not what he needed to hear, and his mother's need for revenge, probably hidden to her, nearly destroyed her son...
...The study serves to assure us that the country is enriched by the latest immigrant wave...
...Nothing could be further from the truth...
...But he hasn't stopped there...
...She had come as a child with her parents and was educated at the University of Southern Illinois...
...In addition, he preaches in his small house church...
...the other works...
...I know a man who spent years recovering from a single sentence...
...To our shame, this is true of inner-city Washington...
...It may not seem so big a deal to you, but it was for him...
...And the evil one will use anything he (or she---we must be inclusive) can, including confused and unhappy little boys, or--at a more banal level than the Jonesboro murders--unhappy wives, husbands, sons, and daughters...
...The real mystery is not Hitler's sickness (if he was sick at all) but the fact that so many were willing, and some even happy, to follow him...
...From our point of view, the father's wavering faith isn't much to work with...
...Clearly they fill a need in a country whose population swells as age advances...
...It is not so nice here," says Nono...
...Lesford tells of working three jobs and bringing up his three children alone after his wife left him...
...He also spends many hours with his computer and has become an expert in computer graphics...
...He managed to buy a house in neighboring Prince George's County and to make a secure home for his children...
...help my unbelief...
...He gives a lot of time to helping others...
...Clara speaks with pride of the self-possession of her youngest son who was left behind in Sierra Leone...
...Pius from Cameroon, the most compassionate and kind of nurses, has taken to other American skills with alacrity...
...Mature now and caring for others, she speaks calmly of what she has endured...
...The deeper truths of what happened in Jonesboro are not to be found in the sad, stupid acts of adolescents who acted in an evil way, but in the noble--all the more noble and moving for not even having been thought about--reaction of Shannon Wright, and the kindness of people who wanted to donate blood...
...On the other hand, many of ~hese prospective citizens are enthusiastic about this country and the opportunities it offers them...
...One of the nursing assistants had a far worse experience...
...Evil has been defeated, but doesn't know it...
...Admittedly they worked in an environment where they were made to feel valuable members of a team--not always the case...
...The range of evil and its way of working with us goes from this tragic domestic level to Hitler...
...Our freedom makes us capable of choosing anything, and our fallenness makes us likely to make mistakes based on what will shore up our own egos, and a series of bad choices can lead us into a corner in which we might find ourselves making the choice to wound or kill someone we see as an enemy...
...In turn, the godmother supervises Juliet's two sons and helps them with their manners and homework...
...To believe that meaning can be found anywhere here is an act of faith, like the faith of the father who, after Jesus told him that all things are possible for the one who believes, cried "Lord, I believe...
...He has a collection of musical instruments-some peculiar to the Caribbean--and on weekends gathers in children of lessfortunate friends to give them instrument lessons...
...As she awaits the fulfilhnent of this dream, Juliet has taken in her godmother, a former teacher of nursing who can no longer work...
...And something more is part of our tradition, and it has to do with something deeper than choice, something instinctive and holy: the teacher, Shannon Wright, who, hearing the shots, threw herself between the shots and the chiIdren and died to save them...
...They throng the field of health professionals-most still on the lowest rung of the career ladder, but a majority working toward fuller degrees...
...Clara from Sierra Leone...
...The new immigrants also have their dreams...
...He reported a happy weekend working on the brakes of his car--"saved maybe $200," he says with satisfaction...
...You just hope and wait," she said...
...We don't like to think of this as a continuum, because it is important to our self-esteem--always an illusion-to think that we are radically different, or different in some way, from those who are capable of serious evil...
...s with any surge in immigration, the current one-the second largest in this century--seems alarming to some experts...
...The wonder is that God can use even this doubting faith (the only kind most of us will ever know) to work miracles and heal...
...It is nice at home, but not many jobs," Linda explains...
...Like other immigrants in other times, some of the newcomers yearn for their countries of origin and plan to return...
...When they finally graduate they wiI1 go back to South Africa...
...Linda from Grenada and her husband also plan to return once they have their degrees...
...It goes without saying that when he finds the wife he seeks he will be a kind and responsible husband and father, and his family will be an example of "family values," albeit perhaps very different in aspect from the mental picture of those so quick to tout these values...
...When welcomed they are quick to adapt to, and to love our common country, to which they bring a new energy...
...Because of her I love old people," says Juliet...
...He wanted to be reassured that his dead father loved him...
...I say to these American guys--you d o n ' t know--you just don't know...
...What countries did they leave...
...I have worked in nursing homes and there are so many people who shouldn't be there but have nowhere else to go...
...That is also part of the tradition...
...Who are these immigrants...
...All we can do is to pray that we have the discernment to live by "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Hebrews 11: 1...
...The study shows that the 13.7 million children of immigrants have higher grades and sharply lower dropout rates than other American children...
...Pius and Christopher obviously from a Catholic missionary enclave in Cameroon...
...He is proud of his son in the Air Force and his other two children in school...
...He delights in creating greeting cards for special occasions for his colleagues and patients...
...the miracle is that the most dramatic evil is finally defeated by humble and un-selfconscious acts of love...
...The only bachelor among the group, he says, "I'm looking, I'm looking...
...We are made in God's image, and it shows itself in places like this...
...Although more than half have experienced discrimination, a larger majority said that the United States was the best country in which to live...
...Juliet, Lesford, and Linda from Jamaica...
...Jesus was also unpopular on the idea of the demonic: "Deliver us from evil" is a reference not to some abstract evil but, most scholars seem to agree, "the evil one...
...He has coped successfully with great changes in his life--getting to know the mother he had never seen and his stepfather, and going to a school where initially he did not know the language...
...A very interesting, recently published four-year study by sociologists Ruben Rumbaut of Michigan State University and Alejandro Portest of Princeton University indicates that, despite the doubts of some newcomers themselves, the future of these immigrants' children is bright...
...There were a veritable corps of licensed nursing assistants--soft-voiced and smiling Rhadika and Bilhibai from south Commonweal 8 April24, 1998 India...
...Commonweal 9 April24, 1998...
...another Linda from Grenada...
...And we can help our country...
...It is a hard place to raise children...
...There was Freh, born in Ethiopia, fine-featured as most Ethiopians are, and a registered nurse...
...Juliet's dream is more modest...
...He builds their self-esteem by finding places for them to perform--one of them entertaining the patients in the hospital where he works...
...He loves his adopted country and has only scorn for those who complain that they aren't given enough by our government...
...She was left behind in Jamaica when her mother and her mother's second family moved to this country and remembers her first thirteen years with her great-grandmother...
...Without exception, those I came to know were an achieving and hard-working lot...
...He refused to leave the plane until the attendants put his passport in his hand...
...Some day I would like to have a house big enough to take in four or five older people and take care of them...
...Some of these immigrants have survived harsh conditions that Americans might think of as causing lasting trauma...
...Nono speaks lyrically about the region around Durban and lists the flowers and fruit trees there like a litany...
...Families were often separated as one member or the other made the quota and worked to make a place here for the others...
...If we are educated, there are jobs for us...
...At the first hospital where I worked," said Rhadika, "I was aIways a foreigner...
...and from South Africa a gentle woman bearing a famous name, Nono Buthelezi, niece of the South African cabinet member who was once a rival of Mandela...
...They fear that the children of these immigrants will develop into an underclass, cut off from the mainstream by academic failure and an inability to speak English...
...I gave little thought to that until I was thrown into intimate contact with many--first in the hospital, then in a rehabilitation center...
...Charito from the Philippines...
...and the approximately five hundred people who, without any public call, showed up to donate blood...this is a sign of something deeper and finally more true about humanity...
...Moved from family to family while she waited for her mother to send for her, she was attacked twice--once by the father in one household and once by the son in another...
...Something is out to destroy us, and until quite recently most of Christian and Jewish tradition understood this...
...We have to pray for the boys who allowed this to happen, for their families, for the families who will never again know the presence on earth of the people they loved...
...The waiting and separation of his first years have left no lasting mark...
Vol. 125 • April 1998 • No. 8
