Staff Support for ELA Students: Voices beyond Edmonds

Immigrant Stories is a research and archiving project operated by the Immigration History Research Center (IHRC) at the University of Minnesota.

Jose Antonio Vargas, New York Times, June 22, 2011
SUMMARY:
This is a powerful personal story of Jose Antonio Vargas, an immigrant from the Philippines; the article chronicles his experiences of living in the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant. Even though Jose has lived in the U.S. for over fourteen years and has considered this country his home, he adds, “Yet even though I think of myself as an American and consider America my country, my country doesn’t think of me as one of its own.” To start, Jose didn’t discover his undocumented status until he tried to apply for a driver’s license at the DMV with a fake green card that his family had provided for him. The article also documents coming out to his classmates in high school, his struggles to get financial assistance to pay for college, and all of the challenges that an undocumented immigrant faces in applying for jobs after college. Once a writer for the Washington Post, Vargas still faced many obstacles in having proper documentation to be on news scenes. He describes the never-ceasing paranoia that still takes over his mind: one day he will not be allowed to stay in the country that he calls home.

Laura C. Masterson, Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis

Manny Fernandez, New York Times, October 30, 2015
SUMMARY:
Longer Summary: This NY Times article by Manny Fernandez describes the trend of community colleges becoming global colleges (about 9% of all international students that come to the U.S. are in community colleges). The article focuses on the experiences of international students that attend classes in the Houston Community College (HCC) system, which has the highest number of international students among all community colleges in the country, approximately 5,200. HCC has made itself particularly enticing by offering affordable tuition so that students can complete two years of general studies at a reasonable price before transferring to a four-year institution for a degree. Much like Edmonds Community College, HCC sees international students spending a longer time on the completion of degrees because of additional English language instruction needed before taking college-level courses. In this article, HCC is also being called a global college because it has created satellite branches of its college abroad. In fact, HCC helped the country of Qatar establish its first community college in the capital city of Doha. Ms. Do, a refugee from Vietnam zeroes in on why a global community college would also be beneficial to local students by saying, “I sincerely believe by exposing our students and faculty to international linkages, we can prepare our students not just for a single career, but also for a global life of unpredictable velocity and volatility,” (qtd. in Fernandez).

ASSOCIATION OF INTERNATIONAL EDUCATORS, © 2014 NAFSA
Perceptions on attrition rates differ considerably between what international students actually think and how college and university affiliated respondents perceive retention issues.
Additionally, significant gaps occur between institutional respondents at various Carnegie Classification levels.
(from the website)

Cory Turner, NPR, November 18, 2015