So for twenty-five years, the relations with my family were bad. I mean, my mother, my sister, and I spoke to each other, but there was always a distance. It's only after they realized I had left him for good and filed for divorce that I felt welcomed back into the family. This happened when my mother was dying. I was already here [America] in 2002 when my mother got really sick, and I went home to see her. She was at home with my sister in Trinidad, and I think she died peacefully, knowing that I would not be going back to him.
What many people don't understand about a third world country: Once you get married, that's it. You have no other choice. So in my situation, I got married to someone who my family did not approve of. I had no education to find a job on my own. I had nobody to take care of my children in case I did get a job. I couldn't just leave them with anybody because I couldn't afford to pay a babysitter, and to get a good job, you have to have a good education. At that time I only had a primary school education.
I knew when I filed for divorce I would have to leave Trinidad. I filed over here [United States]…. His eldest daughter was like the main person in his life. She's a grown woman now. But I came here in 1998 to escape him. That's what I did.
A friend of mine had come to Trinidad for Carnival in February of ‘98, and I told her what was happening with me and that I wanted to get out, and she said, “OK, I'll help you.” She provided a place for me to stay in her apartment in Brooklyn. I came in April 1998 on a tourist visa. My eldest daughter was already over here in America, in Brooklyn. She came here before me in 1998 when she was nineteen on a holiday [tourist] visa, but later on she got a student visa. I found a job in Greenwich [Connecticut] as a live-in. I took care of two girls; taking them to school, getting up in the morning, packing their lunch, helping fix their dinner [and so on].
I worked there for five and a half months because I didn't want to overstay my visa. But I went back home, and within two weeks I was ready to leave. I couldn't stand him! I didn't want to leave because of the children, but I couldn't be around my husband at all. It was just too much! I didn't know what to do because I had left the two children in Trinidad. One was thirteen and one was eighteen. It was very difficult for me to leave them, especially the younger one. One was getting ready to go to university, and the other one was just into high school. When I told my husband I got a job [in America], he didn't say anything because I needed to pay the university fees. So that was my excuse, right?
And over the course of the next five years, that's what I did. I went back and forth. I had a ten-year tourist visa, but you have to go back every six months. So I would go to Trinidad and then come back to Connecticut to continue the job. I did that every two or three months because of the visa and because my mother was very sick and I didn't want to overstay my time here [in the United States]; then if something happened to her, I wouldn't be able to travel back. When I came back, although my husband and I lived in the same house, we didn't have much to say to each other. We slept in separate beds. I slept with the children. So it was under the same roof, but it was very far apart, and he was dating other people, also Indian women….
By 2002, my mother had died, I had filed for divorce, my children had grown, and my eldest daughter was here in Brooklyn. I always wanted to have an education, so I started my GED classes on Saturdays while I worked in Connecticut from Monday to Friday. In my culture, the girls are not pushed for an education. You're pushed, really, to take care of the house and your family, and that's it. You get a primary education, and that's it. You know how to read and write, but you have to cook, clean the house, learn to sew, and take care of the husband and your children. That's it.
I got my GED in 2002, then my associate's degree in liberal arts at Manhattan Community College. I went to Brooklyn College for another two years, and I got a bachelor's degree in 2009 in English education. Presently, I'm doing my master's at Brooklyn College to be a teacher. I would love to be a teacher, only there are no jobs for us right now. My eldest daughter is also at Brooklyn College with me, doing her bachelor's in business. My other daughters chose to stay in Trinidad. They didn't want to come here. One has a degree from a school of chartered accountants. The youngest one started her own business doing web design. My relationship with them is very good. They understand what I went through.
[She pauses.] I came to America to find a better life, but I realized that to have a good life here, you need to be educated or else you're stuck in a menial job. For me, an education is something I always wanted. It was like chasing an elusive dream. I graduated with my bachelor's degree when I was fifty-two years old! So you have to stay focused on your goals, and you cannot give in to the stumbling blocks that will come into your life. There are distractions, but you have to persevere. You have to. People say this country is the land flowing with milk and honey, but you don't see that milk and honey until you work for it. You cannot come to America and be lazy. If you come to someone's country, you have to be an asset to that country. That's what I believe. You have to have people respect you, and that is what I strive for….
I am very happy that I came to America. I can honestly say that my life began at fifty when I graduated college. I'm hoping by the time I graduate with my master's the economy will be better. My husband, thank God, can provide in the meantime. I do part-time babysitting to earn extra money, and I meet babysitters in Brooklyn Heights and I tell them, “You need to go to school!” And they look at me so funny. And I'm like, “No, you have to get an education! That is the key to success in this country.” And they look at me like, “What is wrong with this woman?” That's how I feel. I've always wanted to pursue an education, and my second husband is very supportive of this. I think that's what I love about him.
Census Bureau data show that immigrants who arrived in this decade were better educated than those who arrived in the 1990s. Likewise, children of immigrants were more financially successful than their parents and had more professional skills. The survey also points out that out of an estimated US population of 310 million people, more than 35 million were born outside this country. The bulk of immigrants since 2000 have come from Mexico and Latin America, but also from Asia and India, which have experienced a “brain drain” of sorts—particularly in science and technology—as many of their most intelligent and best-educated citizens have migrated to the United States and other Western nations to pursue better opportunities.
KEY HISTORIC EVENTS
2001:
The September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States result in tighter screening procedures of refugees and the suspension of resettlement programs; the Patriot Act grants the government broad new powers to allow law enforcement and intelligence agencies to investigate and detain aliens suspected of terrorist activities.
2002:
The Department of Homeland Security is created through the merger of twenty-two US government agencies, among them the INS, to prevent and respond to terrorism.
2003:
With the INS dissolved, immigration administration services such as permanent residence, naturalization, and asylum become the responsibility of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), while immigration law enforcement services such as investigations, deportation, and intelligence become the domain of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); Border Patrol and Customs inspectors are combined to form the newly created US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
2005:
The number of legal immigrants who have become naturalized US citizens reaches its highest level in twenty-five years.
2006:
The issue of immigration reform generates rallies and protests in cities across America, largely in support of granting illegal immigrants some type of legal status.
2007:
Economic recession commences, later to become a worldwide recession on par with the depressions of 1893 and 1929.
2008:
Poor economy leads, for the first time, to a “reverse immigration” phenomenon
that has many Americans heading overseas for jobs in Asia and Canada, while a new trend of “reverse revenue” sees Mexican families sending money north to the United States to help immigrant kin—both legal and illegal—who can't find employment; as the recession deepens, more and more migrants return home, unable to find work.
2009:
After a major government crackdown on illegal immigrants, ICE reports a record 392,862 immigrants deported from the United States, about half of them convicted criminals; ICE also confirms there are more than 325,000 people in the country who have been ordered deported but can't be sent away because no country will accept them. Simultaneously, according to ICE, the United States sees a rise in children born to illegal immigrants: more than 4 million in 2009, up from 2.7 million in 2003, with that percentage likely to increase.
2010: Arizona governor Jan Brewer signs SB 1070 into law. The controversial measure requires Arizona police officers to question anyone they reasonably suspect of being illegal and to detain them if they cannot provide proof of status. Critics of the legislation say it encourages racial profiling, but supporters say the law simply enforces existing federal law. Several lawsuits are filed challenging SB 1070.
MIGRATION FLOWS
Total legal US immigration in 2000s: 10.3 million
Top ten emigration countries in this decade: Mexico (1,706,993), China (599,914), India (597,032), Philippines (549,024), Russia (488,115), Vietnam (292,143), Dominican Republic (291,603), Cuba (274,028), El Salvador (252,526), Colombia (235,698)
(See appendix for the complete list of countries.)
FAMOUS IMMIGRANTS
Immigrants who came to America in this decade, and who would later become famous, include:
Catherine Zeta-Jones, Wales, 2000, actress
Steffi Graf, Germany, 2001, tennis champion
Mats Wilander, Sweden, 2001, tennis champion
Hideki Matsui, Japan, 2002, baseball player
Yao Ming, China, 2002, basketball player
Rachel McAdams, Canada, 2002, actress
Somdev Devvarman, India, 2005, tennis player
Rachel Weisz, England, 2006, actress
Sacha Baron Cohen, England, 2007, actor/comedian
Markéta Irglová, Czechoslovakia, 2010, singer/songwriter (movie Once)
Zeituni Onyango (“Aunty Zeituni”), Kenya, 2010, President Obama's half-aunt (deportation waived)
He is a music teacher and conductor from Plovdiv, Bulgaria's second-largest city. He came to America as part of a cultural exchange program and to give his adopted son, Angel, a better life. Like the Ellis Island—era immigrants before him, he worked and sent money back to his mother in Bulgaria until he was able to bring Angel, a gifted cellist, to America so that he could pursue a music education. They eventually settled in the Midwest. He remembers being new in America and working on Wall Street, a few blocks from the World Trade Center, when the 9/11 attack occurred. “I called to Bulgaria and I hear the voice of Angel, my son.” {His voice cracks.} “He doesn't know what happened, and I didn't tell him. He just wanted to hear my voice, and I wanted to hear his. And when I hear his voice, in this moment, I realized maybe our building is going to be the next one and I'm never going to see him again and I start crying and I closed the phone.”
I came to America to visit in 1999 as part of a Bulgarian group for a cultural exchange program. I came here with a regular work visa because at that time I was involved with the cultural exchange between Bulgaria and the United States. I was working with a music foundation in Bulgaria in cooperation with another foundation in New York. We had started this cultural exchange program in 1998, and we organized different seminars and workshops in Bulgaria, and here we worked in the American educational system—in the high schools and universities—with the idea of creating a Bulgarian-American Arts Festival. We would have concerts at the Bulgarian Embassy in New York….
When my visa expired, I had to return to Bulgaria. Then I received an invitation from the Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Church based in New York to become their music conductor, and they offered me a work visa, which enabled me to continue my work in the cultural exchange program here, and on April 1, 2000, I was in the United States and have been here ever since.
I came here to continue my work in this cultural exchange program, but the other reasons were to have a future as a musician, and second, to give a chance to my adopted son because he has dark skin—his parents were Egyptian, and back in Bulgaria we have a lot of problems with people with dark skin color, and I soon realized it's going to cause a lot of problems for him—and for me to give him a chance at a better life. That's why when I had this opportunity from the church to come to the United States, I started thinking, why not become an immigrant? With a work visa, I could get a green card, maybe, and become a normal American….
I adopted my son in 1996 after I came back to Bulgaria because I wanted to have a child. With my ex-wife, we didn't have a child…. I asked all my friends to help me find a way to adopt a child, but because I was single; the advice was to have one child and see if it works. At the time, I was a music conductor with a new Bulgarian opera, and we had a big tour in Europe and then two weeks in the United States. It was my first time here. My first stop was in New York. I remember when I stepped down from the bus in the city after arriving at the airport, I thought, “This is my city; this is where I want to live.”
Then, one day, a friend of mine called me to go to an orphanage because they're going to move the kids from one facility to another and it's a good time to see the kids. They were around three to three and a half years old. This was in Plovdiv, my home city, which was the second-biggest city in Bulgaria after Sofia, the capital. So I went to this orphanage around lunchtime. They had just woken the kids from their afternoon nap for lunch, and I looked at them, and I saw one boy's big smile, and I just said, “This will be my son.” I called him Angel.
Later they introduced me to him. After that, I started to prepare the necessary documents, and there was the hearing for the adoption. But I wasn't able to be there in court because I had a performance in France between Bordeaux and Marseilles, and that's when I got a call from Bulgaria: “You're a father now!” We had a big party, and then I brought him home, and after that, we started our life together.
Life in Bulgaria in 1996 was hard because the Communists were in the government, and this was one of the terrible years. I had found a job as a music teacher from the teacher's union in one of the schools so I could raise my son. It was very difficult because at nighttime I went to support the people who were against the Communists, and during the day I had to teach the kids and I had to raise my son, and it was an unpleasant time. The pay was not good. To give you an idea, for my two-week tour in United States, I was paid thirty-six dollars per day as a conductor. This was like a whole year's salary for a teacher in Bulgaria—can you imagine? And I wasn't a regular teacher; I was a well-known music teacher. So money was one real motivation to come to United States.
After the adoption, I also realized Angel was very talented musically, and it was impossible to give him a future in Bulgaria. He started to play the cello when he was four and a half years old. I got him to a teacher for lessons, and I saw he had natural talent with a good ear.
When I came here in 2000, I left Angel with my mom. The Bulgarian church had given me a work visa, but they didn't give me any salary, so I had to find work to pay my expenses and to send back money to Bulgaria for Angel. So I started to work at a coffee shop on Wall Street in New York, and at this time I didn't speak any English. But I was working with the customers, and it's amazing how kind they were. They took their time to explain things to me, what things meant, like “bagel with cream cheese,” because I didn't know. Or what does it mean when they order “coffee with cream” or “[coffee with] skim milk,” for instance? When the customers had a break, they'd come down from their offices to the coffee shop. Some of them came just to help me and teach me, and that's how I started to lear
n English. That's why I respect and I love New Yorkers.
I was here when the 9/11 tragedy happened. We helped a lot of people with water and everything. There were people who lost consciousness. From the outside they came in or were brought in not breathing, and we helped them. That day, in the beginning, somebody said a plane crashed into one of the Twin Towers. At first I thought it was some spoiled kid without any license to fly who crashed into the tower, and then when the second plane crashed, everything started going so fast, and we realized what happened.
After the collapse of the first building, everybody started knocking on the windows of the building to let them in, but security had locked the doors. It was a huge lobby of an atrium building at 60 Wall Street. Upstairs were several big financial companies like J. P. Morgan. Everybody started knocking on the windows to come in, but the people on the inside started screaming, “Don't let them! Don't let them in!” I thought, “You can't keep these people outside! Let them in!” They were covered in dust and debris. We let them in, and we helped them wash their faces because they couldn't see anything, and we helped some to start breathing because they were choking, coughing from the dust. We gave them water to drink to clear their throats. A few minutes after that, I find the phone, and I called to Bulgaria because the coffee shop had international connections because the owner was Turkish. I called to Bulgaria, and I hear the voice of Angel, my son. [His voice cracks.] He doesn't know what happened, and I didn't tell him. He just wanted to hear my voice, and I wanted to hear his. And when I hear his voice, in this moment, I realized maybe our building is going to be the next one and I'm never going to see him again, and I start crying, and I closed the phone.
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