At Sea in America: Arab Immigrants May Lose Key Services

Home Brooklyn Life At Sea in America: Arab Immigrants May Lose Key Services
Arab American Association of New York (Photo: Hiten Samtani/The Brooklyn Ink)

Kadria Salem is filling in the blanks.

The house is red ____white

Her instructor, Tim McFarland, enunciates “AND” repeatedly to help her.

She marks an “a” on the blank, and stops. This time, McFarland stresses on the “n.”

aNd

She cannot end the word. McFarland tries again.

anD

She’s learning by rote. McFarland has to deconstruct the words, “New York,” four times in the span of 10 minutes. She isn’t getting it. She mutters “Ya Rab (Oh Lord)” every time she turns a page, and takes pains to erase all stray pencil marks.

McFarland opens a coffee-stained citizenship test book for the next set of exercises, on the Constitution of the United States.

We live in the United States of America.

We have freedom of speech,” writes the 62-year-old Yemeni mother of four, who had her youngest child when she was 45. She keeps offering “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as her response to the questions.

“What three words of the Constitution talk about self-government?” McFarland asks.

“We, the people,” Salem says. McFarland nods and she grins. “Shaatir (Clever),” she says, with more than a little swagger. She wears an abaya and a white headscarf, and sports round bifocals that frame what is—save for the folds around her lips and chin—a remarkably unlined face.

Salem has been in America for 11 years. She says that she wants to learn English just to pass the citizenship test and get a passport. She has plenty of friends and relatives in Brooklyn, so she is able to get by with Arabic. But she feels left out. Everyone in her family speaks English, except for her. Salem says her daughter and husband review her work when she goes home. Sometimes they tell her to read out words, but she feels she cannot even do this. When she’s asked to try speaking in English, she gets agitated and refuses. Still, she comes in, for 11 hours every week.

For the past year, Salem has been taking this free ESL course at the Arab American Association of New York. The not-for-profit association is located in Bay Ridge, and provides services—including adult education, citizenship and immigration, and healthcare consultation—to the more than 117,000 Arab immigrants in Brooklyn. The association’s operations are supported by AmeriCorps, a federal anti-poverty program that partners with nonprofits and charities. AmeriCorps service members make up six out of the association’s 11 full-time staff.

But on January 1, AmeriCorps will end its support, and when it does, all the association’s AmeriCorps service members, McFarland included, will lose their contracts.

What this means is unclear. It could mean a dramatic cut in services. And, if the association cannot secure funding—roughly $22,000 plus benefits per service member—to hire back some of the staff it will lose in January, it could mean the end of classes for students like Salem.

AmeriCorps allocates service members to the Arab American Resource Corps, which in turn funnels them to the association, says Jennie Goldstein, the associate director of the association.  The cuts to the corps, she adds, “are not something we could control.” The association lost two NYC Civic Corps—an AmeriCorps program funded by Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office—members in July, and lost an AmeriCorps VISTA member in August, so Goldstein is used to doing more with less. But the loss of six more AmeriCorps service members come January will be a challenge.

***

Tim McFarland, ESL teacher (Photo: Hiten Samtani/ The Brooklyn Ink)

Tim McFarland is back in his office, having just finished teaching Salem. “Kadria recognizes a word she has learned, but finds it very difficult to recall it,” he says, nailing the guttural “K” in Salem’s first name. The 24-year-old native of rural North Carolina, who wears stud earrings and has permanently windblown hair, is not someone you’d expect to be in charge of an ESL program for Middle Eastern women. But he’s never had any problems with his students, or their husbands. “Just the fact that I’m a Caucasian male makes me a little bit innocuous,” he says. “I have a friendly but formal relationship with them, and I stay away from taboo topics like religion and sex.”

He has a degree in linguistic anthropology and is dexterous with language; he combines his basic Arabic conversational skills with gestures and simple English words to create a pidgin that his students can understand. When he started at the association in 2009, the ESL program didn’t have a formal structure, and students floated in and out. McFarland implemented a syllabus called “English in Action” and focused on engaging students in dialogue. “While they’re learning the present continuous, they’re also learning how to interact with people at the bank, or how to take the train,” he says. “What we strive for is communicative ability rather than pitch-perfect English.”

The association offers these courses to more than 100 women at four levels of proficiency: literacy, beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Sixty percent of the women enrolled are returning students who work their way up the levels. Most of them are recent immigrants, who are either green card holders or married to citizens.

McFarland talks about some of his past students. “There were two Moroccan girls, Aziza and Mariam,” he says. “They would initially respond in French, now they share jokes with me in English.” Their breakthrough, he adds, represented a true rite of passage—“being able to tell and understand jokes is one of the keys to knowing that you get a language.”

He also mentions Suhair, an Egyptian woman in her late 20s. “She had zero English when she came in,” he says, “and became a straight-up fluent speaker in eight months.” Suhair is now employed full-time as a home aide. “I’ve never seen a person more motivated to learn a language. She would see something at home or when she was out, and bring it in, always asking questions.”

AmeriCorps announced its decision in May. But the students in McFarland’s classes don’t yet know that their program might end. Jennie Goldstein says that the association hopes to raise $100,000 during its annual gala on November 18, where it will also celebrate its 10th anniversary. “All our eggs are in the gala basket,” Goldstein says. “We cannot count on government funding. And not on the women who come here, whose husbands work in delis and who are trying to learn English. What we need is 10 doctors in the Arab-American community to write a check.”

***

Shamsya Essa, 36, wears a gold ring on her right hand, and has intricate embroidery on the sleeves of her abaya. She’s made an effort to be stylish despite the restrictive Yemeni dress code.  McFarland conducts a mock immigration interview with her.

McFarland: What is your A (Alien Registration) Number?

Essa: 0416*****

McFarland: What is the national anthem of the United States?

Essa: Star-Spangled Banner

Even though he is gentle and patient with her, the drill manages to recreate some of the anxiety of sitting in front of an immigration officer. She keeps looking to him for assurance.

Before coming to America, Essa was illiterate. She finds that learning English helps her everywhere: at the hospital, on the street, at her son’s school. The interactions at school frustrate her the most; she cannot discuss her son’s report card with his teacher, even though she understands what’s being said. She has eight children, and her youngest son doesn’t speak any Arabic. She speaks with him, she says, “through his brothers and sisters.” But now, she practices her English with him.

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