Last week I saw a notice in both my local newsweeklies announcing what sounded like an interesting presentation by the organization Brookfield Indivisible at the Brookfield Inn this afternoon.  Shortly before 2 pm, I joined a crowd of about forty people in one of the small meeting rooms on the ground floor.

Regina Edmonds, vice chair of the grassroots action group, introduced the program, “Immigrants Speak: Stories, Myths, Advocacy,” by presenting two powerful images of our country: she played a tape of Priscilla Herdman singing Goodnight New York, with words and music by Julie Gold, and then recited an excerpt from Emma Lazarus’ sonnet The New Colossus, which is inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty.  With the use of words like “gold/golden”,”hopes”,”free”, and “dreams,” both poems present a positive image of America; however, over the course of two hundred plus years, people have come to this country for different reasons (many came over in chains on the slave ships) and have also had wildly different experiences as immigrants.

Ms Edmonds then introduced the first speaker, Mehlaqa Samdani, founder and executive director of Critical Connections and an associate at the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding in Amherst.  Ms Samdani is originally from Lahore, Pakistan, where she grew up and was educated.  In January 2002, she began a graduate program in Boston, on an F1 student visa.  When she arrived, a few months after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, she was a bit apprehensive about how she would be treated, but to her relief and gratitude, people in the school and the community were uniformly hospitable and welcoming.

After she graduated from her degree program in 2004, she found a job in New York City and worked under an H1B visa; at that time she married another professional (her husband is a dentist) and they began a three-year process of applying for permanent residency.  When she achieved “green card” status in 2007, she then began the process of applying for citizenship, which took another three years.  Finally, on July 4, 2012, she became a US citizen.  By that time, she had two children, both of whom are American citizens and have spoken English all their lives.

In retrospect, the ten year process of becoming a citizen was tedious and costly, but she realized that her circumstances were fortunate.  She came from a wealthy background, which helped because the personal cost to the family was between $12-15,000; she also found employers who were willing to sponsor her; and she has family in Pakistan who supported her decision (since it was not advisable for her to return to Pakistan, they came to visit her in the United States).

Ms Samdani spoke eloquently about her sense of obligation and responsibility to her new country.  She wanted to contribute to fostering understanding of the Muslim community, which led her to found her non-profit organization Critical Connections in 2013.  This sense of responsibility also informs her work at the Karuna Center, whose mission “is to empower people divided by conflict to develop mutual understanding and to create sustainable peace.”

The second speaker, Helena Paez, who has now been in the United States for 22 years, is originally from Colombia and also had a fascinating story to tell.  She grew up in Bogotá, the capital city, graduated from high school, then completed her undergraduate studies in Colombia.  She was the third of six children and loved both teaching and all kinds of sports.  In fact, as a young adult, she became a semi-pro soccer player, and this fact in one sense led her to emigrate.  In 1994, she was playing in a soccer tournament in Medellín, at the time one of the most dangerous places in the world, and three teammates were shot right in front of her, in a random killing fueled by the drug wars.  That’s it, she thought to herself, I need to leave Colombia or I will end up a victim as well.

In 1995, she traveled to the United States on a tourist visa.  Then, since she enjoyed teaching, she applied to become a teacher, a process that took years.  In the meantime, she had to work — she worked in a Nypro factory, doing 12-hour shifts, and obtained a work permit.  Then she heard of an opening for a Teacher’s Aide in Leominster and applied for it.  When she was hired, she got a temporary green card, good for two years; she taught physical education and coached swimming and tennis.  With permanent residency, Ms Paez taught in Worcester at the Jacob Hiatt School, in a bilingual program for fifth and sixth graders.  When that program was discontinued, as the adventurer she had always been, she decided to live in Spain for a year, where she earned a master’s degree.  When she returned to the US, she taught Spanish in Charlton (she found it more congenial than teaching Physical Education), but then that program closed.  Fortunately, at the same time, she heard about an opening at Tantasqua, and by a stroke of luck, the principal there was a sports fan and she was able to convince him that she would be a good fit for the school.  In fact, she has now been teaching in the Foreign Languagus Department at Tantasqua since 2004.

Ms Paez is also a dual citizen, having retained her Colombian citizenship.  As a US citizen, she was able to bring her mother to the US, and she has other family members in the US as well.  In fact, her sister came to the US in 1999, four years after she did, and requested asylum, which she was eventually granted.  At the moment, her brother is trying to obtain residency status, for himself, his wife, and two children, but he is on a student visa and has to remain in school to continue this status.  Ms Paez helps him financially, and also provides emotional support, which is critical for people who feel that they are rootless and without a home.

After the stories, we in the audience were invited to ask questions.  We also were provided with advocacy materials and encouraged to continue learning about immigration issues and current legislation, such as the Safe Communities Act on the state level and the Dream Act on the federal level.  Advocacy groups include MIRA (the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition) and SIM (Student Immigration Movement) in Massachusetts, and United We Dream, FWD.us, Cosecha, and the National Immigration Law Center on the national level.  The Brookfield Indivisible group believes that

Without comprehensive immigration reform, lives all over our nation are in great peril.  Families will be broken apart, livelihoods will be lost, important jobs will go unfilled, and lives will be lost.  It is up to us to do all we can to prevent this national tragedy from continuing.