Interview with Refugee
Introduction
I grew up in a small town where I was surrounded by white people whose family either grew up in the town or chose to live in this town for its rural/secluded environment. You can imagine the panic I went through when I heard I was going to have to interview an immigrant, when the most culturally diverse person in my town was due to the fact that they were Catholic instead of the majority, Baptist or Methodist. I struggled to find an immigrant here because again being surrounded by mostly white people it is hard to find someone who is a minority and also is an immigrant. There is also the issue of not wanting to offend anyone by assuming that they are an immigrant based on their physical differences from myself. I searched my friend groups that have already graduated, looking for an immigrant or someone who knew an immigrant. Then one day I asked one of my friends and they said “Hayden… I am a refugee.” This was something that had never come up in our conversations. I was shocked and had no clue that this girl whom I had spent many hours with was not originally from America. Not that there’s anything wrong with this. I was just surprised it had never come up in conversation. I knew then that she was the perfect person to interview because I knew she would bring a new perspective to the idea of what it means to be an immigrant. She did choose to stay anonymous just because of the severity of the topic and the fact that not many people know she is a refugee and she wants to keep it that way. For the sake of her privacy I will be referring to her as “Jane Doe” or “Jane”
Methodology
Luckily the fact that we were friends prior to Jane’s graduation and her current close proximity to Harrisonburg I was able to visit her at her house and interview her there. The audio is not perfect, but it is close enough and there are no parts that you can not understand. There are some awkward pauses and moments where the conversation fell into a lull, signaling me to ask another question. I feel as though this interview was able to go as smoothly as it did since we were friends. On the other hand, neither of us are used to being so serious with each other so we did have to do a few retakes or redos for certain questions because we would laugh at one another, when we messed up. I also feel that this really allowed Jane to open up and tell me things about how she really felt because she felt comfortable. One thing I could have improved upon was more follow up questions but I was too nervous to seem pushy and or nosey. I did not want to make Jane uncomfortable and did not want to accidentally offend or use the wrong words/terminology because she was already doing such a huge favor for me by doing this.
. . 
Her Story
Jane was very young when her family fled Afghanistan to go to Pakistan, then Texas, and later Northern Virginia. She was 10 months old when her family arrived in America in 2001. They fled their home country and became refugees in America due to the increased terrorist activity in Afghanistan. From there Jane lived with her aunt for a while, who had moved here a little over a year before. Then travesty struck America about a month later. A month after her family had moved here al Qaeda hijacked hijacked four airplanes and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States. Two of the planes were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third plane hit the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C., and the fourth plane crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
This made it hard for her family to come here and be welcomed when these terrible people who looked like her family committed such terrible acts to the United States and the people affected. Her family and her people were looked down upon, attacked, and isolated. People were not willing to help her family and her mother was specifically attacked multiple times and had her Hijab ripped off multiple times. After the dust settled from 9/11 her family began to find their community in Annandale, Virginia, where there was a large Afghan community. Jane’s mother joined the other mothers and was able to find a piece of home in this new foreign country. This made it hard for Jane Doe to belong to just one culture and that is something she struggles with today. Jane feels as if she’s “white washed” to which she says is the cause of effective assimilation and has no problem being white washed but feels the term is ignorant.
Her mother and her have had consistent disagreements on what is culturally acceptable for her to be doing. Her mother views her as an Afghan woman and wants her to have Afghan values, while Jane Doe feels she has been in American culture too long to have the same values as her mother when she sees other people’s morals and values and wants to be more accepting than the rest of her families’ culture. Jane also mentioned how her family sends money back to their family because it’s assumed in their culture that if you leave home to go to America that you will take care of your family that stayed in their home country.
Labels and Laws
Jane wanted it to be known that she was not an immigrant but a refugee. She said that she feels that the difference is one is a need based term and the other want based term. She said people want to immigrate to the United States for a better life, she then went on to say that she needed to come to the United States to escape the terrorist activity of Afghanistan. She also wanted me to say that some people that immigrate because they are in danger but that is an issue with our current policies.
Jane said that she does not like how refugees are lumped in with immigrants because there are so many people in the system that oftentimes people are “lost within the system” and the government will tell you about the help they can offer but rarely are able to follow through because the government loses track of who is at what point in the process. She mentioned to me after the interview that her mother and indirectly her older sister are victims of this but asked me not to include the details.
As I mentioned earlier she said white washed is a successful outcome of assimilation but does not like the term because it assumes that because she looks different she must act different.
Education
Jane was lucky enough to attend James Madison and graduate with a degree in Accounting but this did not come easy due to the fact that her mother wanted her to follow cultural values but also do well in school. Jane also mentioned how different the education systems are in America and Afghanistan and how her mother is unable to completely understand because her mom speaks Dari and Jane does not know the words in Dari to directly translate, which made applying for colleges and filling out applications very hard for her and her mother. Her mother also does not have a job other than caring for the family, the house, and the family (traditional to her culture.) She always wanted Jane to do well in school but then to get married and take care of her family. Jane has said it was hard for her mother to send her to school and away from her family before Jane was married because it was against their culture.
Even though Jane was a refugee she felt very strongly about fixing the current refugee program before we allow more immigrants in. She felt so strongly because she felt that her mother and sister were kind of swept under the rug and ignored. She went on to tell me after the interview that her sister was a high school drop out because she grew up differently than Jane because a lot of pressure fell on her to help take care of her and Jane’s little sisters. Jane believes that her mother was failed by the system because of their lack of financial ability to afford/get to/receive the resources/help needed. Jane said her mother still can not speak English and that has limited her and her mother’s relationship because they are unable to speak in one language due to Jane’s lack of knowledge of Dari and her mother’s lack of knowledge of English.
During my interview I was making consistent connections back to the class in my head. The main one which I mentioned in the interview was the idea of Jane’s family being a network and coming here before her and her immediate family. I also was able to connect the fact that her family sends money back to her family in Afghanistan. I also noticed at the end when she said it may have seemed like she was bashing her mom but her mom does actually love and care for them, which I felt was her over compensating for a culture she does not know much about which was sad. I found it interesting that when I mentioned connections back to class or different things that connected to class she would say that’s just the culture and it made me think that maybe these are not just theories but how different cultures show their love and appreciation.
Recent Comments