Author: Gaiutra Bahadur

By Gaiutra Bahadur
The Philadelphia Inquirer

The hullabaloo over the signs at Geno’s Steaks has been fed by a perception that many immigrants don’t want to, try to or have to speak English.

That perception is so fierce and deep that elected officials at every level have reacted: The U.S. Senate voted last month to make English the national language as part of its proposed immigration overhaul. The coal-country town of Hazleton, Pa., just passed an English-only ordinance. And President Bush, in an address in May, urged newcomers to learn English to “honor the great American tradition of the melting pot.”

He was proselytizing the converted, judging by the demand among adult immigrants for English classes – a demand that has been outpacing funds for such instruction.

“You close your mind. You close all the opportunities for your life” without English, said Ruben Del Rosario.

The 27-year-old Mexican immigrant lives near the now world-famous Geno’s signs that exhort, “This is America. When ordering, please speak English.”

That is just what Del Rosario has been trying to do since coming to the United States six years ago. He picked up the word cocky from sportscasters riffing on Sixers games. He puzzled over the word nappy, overheard on the streets of Philadelphia. And he attends English classes three hours a day, five mornings a week.

About 1.2 million adults take English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) classes subsidized partly by the state and federal government and typically run by civic groups, community colleges, churches and even unions. Others take classes funded by charitable groups; still more pay for-profits to school them.

The classes are full to the brim, pushed there by growing numbers of immigrants who are isolated by language. Ten years ago, Philadelphia’s Center for Literacy had a few English classes for adult immigrants. Now it has 16 classes and 400 students.

One in four people speaking a foreign language at home wants to study English but can’t because of a lack of time, child care, money or transportation, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

At the same time demand has risen, state and federal funds for adult-education programs, which include English for immigrants, have stagnated. The budget for one program, Even Start, was halved last year and faces more cuts in 2007.

“There aren’t enough resources to teach all the people who want to take English classes,” said Liza Rodriguez, an ESOL teacher for a decade.

Juntos, a Mexican community association in South Philadelphia where Del Rosario studies English, gets no government money for its small, volunteer-taught classes. It applied for funding through the state but was told there was no more, organizer Peter Bloom said.
More groups are applying for federal and state adult-education grants distributed by the Pennsylvania Department of Education, said spokesman Brian McDonald.

“We’ve had to turn them away,” he said. “We can’t necessarily take on more of a load.”
Despite the growing need, the department has awarded the same yearly amount for ESOL classes since 2002: about $8 million, or one-third of all its money for family literacy.
Funding for English classes at ACLAMO (Accion Comunal Latinoamericana de Montgomery County), a community service agency, has dropped from $119,000 to $98,000 over the last five years.

“We’re stuck having to raise more private dollars,” said Justin Fink, its associate director of education programs. The agency used to serve 20 families through Even Start. Now it serves 18.

A health crisis with her baby daughter drove Norma Flores, 21, to ACLAMO’s classes a year ago.

“We went to the emergency room, and sometimes nobody spoke Spanish,” the mother of four explained in English. “The doctor needs to know if she drink the medicine, if she has a fever, and I couldn’t tell him.”

“I feel…,” Flores said, straining to find the words. Her teacher, Marla Benssy, pulled out a binder and indicated a page with emoticons. Flores found the ones that applied: “I feel ‘stressed out.’ I feel ‘sad.’ ”

Most of ACLAMO’s English students are women from impoverished rural areas in the Mexican state of Puebla. About a third balance classes with work and child-rearing. Many were forced to drop out of elementary school, some as early as the third grade.

“It’s one thing to teach English when it truly is a second language,” said Benssy, an ESOL teacher for 15 years. “It’s another thing when they have no idea not only what a tense is, but what a verb is… . They really are up against huge odds, and it’s amazing that they get it.”

To skeptics, it might be striking that immigrants even want to get it. Twenty-seven states have passed ballot initiatives or bills making English the official language for government business. A similar legislative effort is underway in Harrisburg.

Those who want to mandate the use of English, whether from state capitals or from cheesesteak row, say that society does not force immigrants to speak English the way it did a century ago.

Limited-English speakers now have federal protections. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars discrimination based on national origin. Under Title VI of that act, recipients of federal money must take “reasonable steps” to give “meaningful access” to services for those with little English, according to 2002 Justice Department guidelines.

But enforcing those guidelines is a battle, said Paul Uyehara, a lawyer at Community Legal Services in Philadelphia.

“You could walk down the street, and there are violations left and right,” he said.

The Philadelphia Police Department, for one, was in danger of losing federal funds until last fall, when it started training officers to use qualified interpreters to talk to victims and suspects.

Also, neighborhood comfort zones remain for non-English speakers, on small scales such as South Philadelphia’s nascent Little Mexico and on large ones such as Miami-Dade County in south Florida.

“In almost any language in the U.S., you can find an enclave,” said Benssy. “You can get through your life speaking only Korean in some parts of Lansdale or Philadelphia.”

A Korean woman here for three decades finally went to Benssy’s class in Glenside so she could communicate with her grandson.

“Some people come here at an old age, and it’s very difficult to master the language, but most people want to speak English,” said Marina Lipkovskaya, a teacher at the New World Association.

Her nonprofit teaches English to 700 adults in Bensalem and Northeast Philadelphia, areas crowded with Russian-speaking doctors, auto mechanics and insurance agents.

West Marshall Street in Norristown, home to ACLAMO, is an enclave in the making. The street is studded with signs in Spanish. They advertise Las Mejores Botas de Mexico (“the best boots from Mexico”), apartments for rent, children’s clothes, DVDs and phone cards.
Adelita’s Mexican Market carries Maxim en español, a telenovela magazine, a book about migrant deaths on the border and erotic comics – all in Spanish. A Spanish-English dictionary stands out in the mix.

Nearby, an African American barber has posted a written sign in Spanish. It translates to: “Victor the barber. There’s a Mexican here to serve you.”

Even in this linguistic cocoon, Andres Rosas, a cook at a Buca di Beppo restaurant who has been in this country six years, realized he needed to learn English. He enrolled in ACLAMO’s program with his son 11/2 years ago.

“When you don’t speak English,” he said, “always it’s very hard.”

© The Philadelphia Inquirer. All rights reserved.

The Immigration Debate | Then vs. Now
By Gaiutra Bahadur
The Philadelphia Inquirer

How do you say steak wid’ in Spanish?

Joseph Vento, the owner of Geno’s Steaks, doesn’t know. And he doesn’t care.

Just read the laminated signs, festooned with American eagles, at his South Philadelphia cheesesteak emporium: This is America. When Ordering, Speak English.

The political statement – coming from a man whose Italian-born grandparents spoke only broken English – captures the anger and discontent felt by many Americans about illegal immigrants.

With a battle looming between the House and Senate on legalizing some immigration violators, the public backlash is framed by two complaints: One, my grandparents came legally. How come these guys can’t? And, two, my grandparents had to learn English. How come these guys don’t?

“Go back to the 19th century, and play by those rules,” said Vento, 66, whose grandfather became a U.S. citizen in 1921.

But history challenges many assumptions about the hurdles aspiring Americans used to face, say scholars of the last massive migration to the United States, which occurred between 1880 and 1920.

“There was no such thing as an ‘illegal’ immigrant,” said Roger Daniels, a member of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island History Committee and author of Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigrants and Immigration Policy Since 1882.

The Old Country often required exit visas, which created the possibility of illegal emigrants. But the United States did not issue entry visas until 1921.

Before that, no meaningful immigration restrictions existed, except for a bar on Chinese enacted in 1882. Congress imposed no other limits on the number of immigrants – from any one country, or in total. About a million arrived each year in the early 1900s. It wasn’t until 1924 that Congress imposed an annual cap of 155,000 immigrants. “If you could get here and weren’t terribly diseased, you could get in,” Daniels said.

By contrast, backlogs, country quotas and annual caps now make legal immigration a tortuous and nearly impossible process for many, said Thomas Conaghan, director of the Irish Immigration and Pastoral Center in Upper Darby.

Past immigrants, once here, faced a backlash fueled by anxiety about religions, languages and races that were relatively new to the United States. Fear of anarchist and “Red” ideologies and the competition for jobs also played roles.

Help-wanted ads limited applicants to native-born Americans, said Kathryn Wilson, director of education at the Pennsylvania Historical Society. Current critics of illegal immigration echo earlier generations of nativists, say academic experts on ethnicity.

“A lot of the rhetoric was similar: ‘They don’t speak English. They don’t want to be Americans,’ ” said Mae M. Ngai, a University of Chicago historian and author of Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America.

The Senate bill passed last Thursday, which gives some illegal immigrants a chance to become citizens, included an amendment that would make English the national language.

An English-only movement also took shape in the late 19th century, with an abortive attempt to require newcomers to read a passage in English at Ellis Island. In the end, the literacy test was administered, but in the immigrant’s native tongue.

Joseph Vento’s grandfather and namesake, a street-corner jeweler from Sicily, had trouble with English.

“They tried,” Vento said of his grandparents. “They had a hard time. Look at the price they paid. They were limited.”

The Ventos rarely left their South Philadelphia neighborhood. Now, in a way, the neighborhood has left the couple’s descendants. Geno’s sits at Ninth and Passyunk, the hub of Little Italy turned home to thousands of Mexicans.

Some try to order a cheesesteak. And it bugs Vento if they can’t ask for American cheese, provolone or the classic – Cheez Whiz – without pointing.

“If you can’t tell me what you want, I can’t serve you,” he said. “It’s up to you. If you can’t read, if you can’t say the word cheese, how can I communicate with you – and why should I have to bend?

“I got a business to run.”

Vento, who lives in Shamong, put up the signs when the immigration debate seized national headlines six months ago.

With Geno’s Steaks tattooed on his arm, Vento is used to publicizing things, especially what’s on his mind. Speak English signs also poster his Hummer. He has driven through South Philadelphia blaring through the SUV’s P.A. system denunciations of neighborhood business owners who hire illegal immigrants.

“I say what everybody’s thinking but is afraid to say,” Vento said. That many think as he does may be true. The dominance of Latinos among new immigrants has triggered a backlash, said Peter Skerry, a political scientist at the Brookings Institution.

Spanish-speakers make up about 30 percent of legal migrants and roughly 80 percent of illegal migrants, compared with the 21 percent preponderance of Italians a century ago.

“It’s just a huge concentration . . . that raises questions for people about how these immigrants are assimilating,” Skerry said.

He and other experts say that current immigrants are taking no longer to assimilate than Vento’s grandfather did. Now, as then, English takes hold among the children of immigrants, and native languages disappear by the third generation.

What’s different, Skerry said, is that many Americans now value multiculturalism, and technology allows it to flourish. Satellite TV beams soap operas from Latin America to U.S. living rooms, phones make it cheap and easy to connect with relatives back home, and airplanes allow a back-and-forth existence.

In society, “there is a notion that people are entitled to their own culture,” he said. “Assimilation is a dirty word in many quarters. Sometimes, we don’t even use the word anymore.”

Vento is lashing out at that self-assertion by immigrants: “I don’t want somebody coming here to change my culture to their culture,” he said. “They want us to adapt to these people. What do you mean, ‘Press 1 for Spanish’? English, period. Case closed. End of discussion. You better make it the official language.”

Follow-up Story: A Lesson in English; Figures show that demand among adult immigrants for language classes is outpacing funds for such instruction.

© The Philadelphia Inquirer. All rights reserved.

By Gaiutra Bahadur
The Philadelphia Inquirer

Carlos’ secondhand white van zigzags through his South Philadelphia neighborhood, plastic rosary beads dangling from the rearview mirror.

The Mexican migrant, who did not give his last name because he is here illegally, is on his way to FDR Park with his wife and three children for a birthday barbecue. On the CD player, the boy band B5 pelts out hip-hop:

You don’t know what you do to me

Between your eyes and your smile, girl,

You’re killin me.

It is the soundtrack for a gloriously sunny April Sunday – Carlos’ day off. But the Center City restaurant worker doesn’t understand much of the English lyrics.

He explains, in Spanish: “Es para mi hija.” (“It’s for my daughter.”)

So are the back-to-back shifts – 8 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., Monday through Saturday – making pastries at two of Center City’s swankiest restaurants for a total of $600 a week, after he pays taxes.

And so was his dramatic journey across Arizona’s Sonora Desert with a human smuggler in 1998, his first illegal trip to the United States – almost a rite of passage for young Mexican men aiming for a better life.

Carlos had been working in Mexico City as a bodyguard for children of the wealthy, frequent targets of kidnappers. It was a dangerous job. A friend had died doing it, and Carlos’ wife wanted him out, fast.

The way out led to Philadelphia, where his cousins were making a decent living washing dishes in the city’s budding off-the-books economy. Carlos, too, assumed the life of an illegal laborer 2,000 miles from home. It was a workaday rhythm, broken up by occasional phone calls to his family. He would crumple at the sound of his daughter’s voice, so far away.

The separation became unbearable, and in 2002 Carlos returned to fetch his wife and daughter, then 7. There was another desert crossing, this time even more perilous. Bandits waylaid the migrants, stealing their money and clothes. The group, including women and children, were stripped naked temporarily. Carlos was seared by the shame.

But at the end of a four-day trip, crammed tight with two dozen other illegal immigrants in a van from Arizona to Philadelphia, Carlos now had his family with him. He would no longer go crazy with loneliness.

“It’s logical,” Carlos says, “for a man to be with his family. There are consequences if he isn’t.”

At 34, a magnetic man with hazel eyes and a muscular build, he is a leader in the city’s 12,000-strong Mexican community. He is an ambassador for illegal immigrants to the police, meeting monthly with precinct captains since a rash of armed robberies began last summer against restaurant workers walking or bicycling home from late-night shifts in Center City.

“He’s a great guy,” said Philadelphia Police Capt. Joseph Zaffino, commanding officer for the Fourth District. “He shows true concern for the Mexican community.”

“People trust him and come to him with different issues,” said Peter Bloom, an organizer with Juntos, a Mexican community group based in South Philadelphia.

And he is known as a devoted family man.

Once he had his wife and daughter safely with him, Carlos set about growing his family. He and his wife had another daughter, now 4, and then a son, now 14 months old, whose christening Zaffino attended. He found a pink-stucco, three-bedroom rowhouse near the Italian Market to share with another Mexican family – seven people and two breadwinners in all. They split the $850-a-month rent.

Life now has a rhythm other than work, at least on Sundays. He plays with a start-up soccer league that practices near Oregon Avenue. (His team is Los Falcons.) He worships at St. Thomas Aquinas Church.

And, some days, he takes his children to the park, enduring the pulse of his elder daughter’s music.

She is 12 years old, named after him, and a B+ student at a public elementary school in South Philadelphia.

Swooning to B5’s sentimental stylings like any other preteen, she doesn’t carry herself like a girl whose status is precarious and who has to act as linguistic go-between for her parents.

“It’s hard,” she says. “Sometimes, I don’t know a word, and I make it up.”

At FDR Park, she scrambles out of the van, her siblings in tow, to join the party. It is for a little girl dressed in a frilly pink dress. A half dozen children, all either undocumented or the children of the undocumented, chase one another around while brandishing tree branches. Carlos’ infant son, who has been sick, looks on quietly. He hews close to his mother and the other women barbecuing chicken on a grill. Carlos has made several late-night trips to the emergency room with his son. The doctors, he confides, want to test him for meningitis.

The fathers – a construction worker, a factory hand, several restaurant workers – gather in a tight knot at a picnic table. They worry about what Congress plans for them. They are angry they might be branded felons. They are not criminals, they insist, but have only come here to work. They want a chance to stay and become legal residents of the United States.

“Don’t close the doors,” Carlos says. “We beg for an opportunity. This country is about opportunity for all people.”

© The Philadelphia Inquirer. All rights reserved.