Hispanics make life in U.S.
Immigrants struggle to adjust to new culture
By Mary Frances Czarsty, assistant news editor
Posted on September 14, 2006

At 19 years old, Janeth Reyes Jimenez left the familiarity of her friends, her home and her family to travel alone through the desert of Mexico to come to the United States. Her story is the kind students read about and discuss in GANTH 195, but is one that hits closer to home than some might expect.

“I traveled mostly alone,” Jimenez said of her one-month-long trip on foot from Oaxaca, Mexico, to the United States. She walked to Arizona, where she met her two older brothers to drive to Harrisonburg. “I hardly had any food or water in the desert. It was a very long trip,” she said.

According to Steve Camarota, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, the nation’s foreign-born and immigrant population reached a new record of more than 35 million in March 2005.

Census Bureau data show that between January 2000 and March 2005, 7.9 million new immigrants settled in this country, making it the highest five-year period in American history. Nearly half of this number is estimated to be illegal aliens.

Rockingham County and Harrisonburg saw this increase especially in regards to the Hispanic community. The U.S. Census found that while the combined city and county population rose only 3.3 percent from 2000 to 2005, the Hispanic population increased 38.5 percent.

Job incentive is often cited as the primary reason to immigrate, and Jimenez agreed. “I came to find a job to make money for myself and to send home to my family,” she said.

The transition to life in town wasn’t easy, she said, because she had to deal with the language barrier before finding her current job at a fast-food restaurant in town.

“The hardest part was not speaking the language. I watched a lot of television and talked to my sister-in-law to practice, because she is an American,” Jimenez said.

JMU used to have a program through the Center for Career Advancement designed to help people like Jimenez with their language skills. The center had contracts with local poultry plants to go in and teach. But the center had to discontinue the program three years ago because the plants did not renew the contracts.

Center Director Shelvy Williams said, “We had big buses with computers on them that we would take to poultry plants, and we worked with Hispanic workers to improve their English.”

Williams said she thought the end of the program had to do with the management of the plants. “The workers were still getting paid while they studied with us, and I don’t think management was willing to give up the labor time anymore,” she said.

While Jimenez has her paperwork filed to work in the United States temporarily, the fact that many illegal aliens live  in Harrisonburg is an issue citizens want to address.

“We’re having a speaker come the first weekend in October to present information on illegal and legal immigration,” Harrisonburg City Councilman Charles Chenault said. “It’s a hot- button issue for many of our citizens.”

Jimenez’s boss, Lisa Cox, said a lot of immigration laws simply don’t make sense to her. “If you come from overseas, it’s so much easier to become a citizen,” she said. “It’s like they have more rights than someone from Mexico.”

One of Jimenez’s older brothers has been working on his citizenship for two years now, and his status is still pending. “He married an American, and he has a lawyer, but every month comes and goes with no citizenship,” she said.

Cox speculated that the amount of red tape necessary to gain citizenship is a major factor to why many choose to remain here illegally. “It’s just too long and difficult of a process,” she said. “It doesn’t surprise me at all they would choose to stay illegal.”

It has been three years since Jimenez trekked to the United States She says she is happy here, but hopes to save up enough money to return soon to Mexico. “It’s just different here. Different language, different kinds of people,” she said. “I want to go home and go back to school to become a veterinarian.”