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Arries takes service-learning to the Eastern Shore;
Illegal immigration: A Mexican failure

For thousands of migrant farm workers who labor in the produce fields and the packing houses of Virginia’s Eastern Shore, illegal entry to the United States has nothing to do with politics, say William and Mary students who served as language interpreters among them this year. The migrants, the students believe, are looking only to escape joblessness and hunger in their homelands.

The students worked in medical clinics and at migrant labor camps during their four-week summer stints, Afterward, they described the lives of migrants using terms such as poverty, marginalization and pain. One student referenced a woman who was robbed three times on her way from Florida to Virginia—“since they are not legal, they can’t put their money in a bank,” she explained. Others told of Latinos being “ganged up upon and beaten by locals.” In the camps, the students saw people living in trailers with broken plumbing; they spoke about profiteering crew chiefs; one told of watching the “bugs” scurry from the car seat of a child being transported to a health clinic. Despite the hardships, the students also saw joy among the farm workers—young women envisioning better lives for their children; young men pleased to provide food for their families.

For Michelle Thorne (’07), one man’s story became telling. He had been admitted to the Shore Memorial Hospital in Nasawaddox, Va. Thorne, along with Erika Peterson, a full-time social worker, had been summoned to translate.

“He had just come from Mexico,” Thorne said. “He had spent three days walking in the desert and had ended up with third-degree burns on both of his feet. He didn’t know anybody here. He didn’t speak any English. He had left everything he had—which wasn’t a lot—in the desert because he had to crawl the last few miles.”

Thorne described the man as being “happy that he was alive” and “hopeful because he was in the United States.” What impressed her, however, was his work ethic. “He was genuinely upset because he could not work while he was in the hospital bed,” she said.

His story, along with those of other farm workers she came to know, reinforced Thorne’s concern that debates on immigration being conducted in the U.S. Congress and reflected in the nation’s mainstream media outlets are lacking. “The root causes are that these workers cannot make as much money in Mexico and that there are people in the United States who are happy to employ them because they can pay them less and have them work hours that Americans do not want to work,” she said. “When people say we should build a wall between Mexico and the United States, or that we should support everybody who is here illegally, they are not offering solutions.”

Other students, including Alice Harman (’09), agreed. “When you understand that the people who are here just want to work, it makes the debate more difficult to see in the polarized terms,” she said. “Some say you can close the border; others say you can give them amnesty. The solution has to be much more nuanced.”

Privileged selves
The students were not on the Eastern Shore to solve the immigration problem. They were there to serve as translators for non-profit agencies that provided services for the Spanish-speaking migrant population. Harman and Thorrne were enrolled in the course Hispanic studies 483, which is offered by Jonathan Arries, associate professor of modern languages and literatures. In addition to translating in the clinics and the camps, they were assigned a complementary research project. Beatrice Beardsworth (’06), who recently graduated, did everything Harman and Thorne did except for the project. Another student, Olga Grosh (’07), worked as an intern for the rural development office of the Virginia Council of Churches. On the Eastern Shore, they found themselves thrown into unfamiliar surroundings that tested not only their Spanish-language skills but also their sense of themselves.

“The benefit is not the grade,” Harman said. “It’s having your eyes opened.” Her first concern was whether her language skills would be sufficient. On the job, she quickly gained confidence. “I realized I could translate in a way that would not endanger any lives and that would keep people’s privacy intact,” she said. Having been confident about her ability to communicate in Spanish with professors and other Spanish-language students, she was most challenged by the use of slang. “A lot of medical stuff is unpleasant, so people don’t want to use the actual word for a problem or for a part of the body,” she explained.

Thorne also was extremely conscious of the “accountability” she had assumed. “I had never worked in a medical center, and it’s not something you want to mess up,” she said. “You don’t want to tell a person that they have something or to take medicine in a dose that is different than what the doctor prescribed. That could be dangerous. I was nervous, but I learned that I could succeed.”

In addition to proving their language capabilities, all of the students spoke about becoming self-reliant, about figuring out how to learn on their own and about understanding the challenges and sacrifices made by persons who invest their lives in non-profit service organizations.

“The migrant workers really rely on the clinics,” said Beardsworth. “It is not just a place for them to have a healthcare provider. If they needed anything, whether it was a birth certificate for their child because they didn’t have an id card, if they needed a visa or if they had legal troubles, they could contact the clinic’s health-care provider. The clinic was one of the biggest supporting networks for migrant workers.”

Grosh found herself in a situation that reflected the experiences of full-time outreach workers—she calls them "true heroes”— who essentially are on call 24 hours each day. She had been in the camps encouraging pregnant woman to attend the prenatal clinic she was organizing and had agreed to drive one woman to the hospital during the afternoon of her scheduled check-up. At 6 a.m., the woman called Grosh complaining of “pains.” After Grosh reminded the woman of her appointment and that she was still planning on giving her a ride, the woman hung up.

“She called again at 7 a.m. and said, ‘Olga, where are you? My pains are 20 minutes apart,’” Grosh recalled. Immediately Grosh realized that “pain” means “contractions” when talking to a pregnant woman. Knowing that the woman could not afford an ambulance, she and Harman drove to her house, picked her up and, while communicating with 911 operators, took the woman to the hospital. By the time they arrived, the woman’s contractions were occurring every 12 minutes. At the hospital, the students walked the woman upstairs to the maternity ward—no wheelchair was provided. They helped her find a nurse and assisted with filling out the paperwork.

Afterward, Harman considered the woman’s plight. “Olga and I were very surprised by all of this,” she said. “People we know in our family have always known who their doctor was going to be. She didn’t have any of this. This woman had no friend to come with her, only two random college students who picked her up and sped her down the highway. She was young, and it’s hard not to identify with people who are your own age. They’ve been picking tomatoes for a couple of years, many even though they are pregnant; I’ve been going to college. It’s so easy to think of them as doing jobs that I would never do, but then you meet them and it’s like oh, they are 19, too.”

Grosh and Beardsworth also found grounds to empathize with the migrant workers. Grosh was touched by the fact that so many were so young. “You don’t see so many middle-aged farm workers,” she explained. “The work will wear you out; there are so many physical repercussions.

“It’s sad because it’s not the life that middle-class college students are used to seeing,” she continued. “I’m an immigrant from Ukraine. I went through some hard stuff, but it was not like this at all.”

Beardsworth said, “They live their lives, which are really challenging, but they continue to survive and thrive. Some of them would work seven days a week. When you see how much less they have for how much more work they’re doing, you understand how privileged you are.”

Immigrants and the humanities
Arries never has had difficulty finding William and Mary students who want to serve as translators on the Eastern Shore. However, those who take his class are made aware that the hours they spend in the clinics and in the camps will not get them a passing grade.

“Service is a medium for learning,” he said. “The students get no credit for the service. What I evaluate are the connections they are able to make with the culture of farm workers. Their job is to mediate between cultures.”

In their cases, Harman and Thorne will be graded on respective projects. Harman is attempting to evaluate the effectiveness of art that relates to migrant workers the dangers of working in fields where pesticides have been sprayed. Thorne has constructed a poster that encourages workers to drink water as opposed to the “10 or 12 sodas” they may normally consume to combat thirst. The sugar in the beverages, she believes, exacerbates the high prevalence of diabetes among the migrants.

Arries started offering the course in 1996, viewing it at the time as “a culminating experience for rising seniors.” He also used the term “transformative” to describe the impact it would have. This year, as two of the five students enrolled in his course are rising sophomores, he realizes that culminating is no longer applicable. As far as being transformative, it depends on the student, he said.

“Some come back and talk about the experience as being enjoyable—they have used their linguistic skills and improved them. Others say, ‘I already have worked in Palestinian refuge camps, and this experience was affirming of what I saw there,’” he said. “For those, the experience is not transforming. However, others will say, ‘This was transformative. I was confronted with poverty; I was confronted with myself.’”

Arries, although he has commented on the national immigration debate through local editorials, refrained from discussing it for the purposes of this article. The students are there because several years ago clinic operators asked whether or not he could help.  “We are just trying to make a difference by meeting needs,” he said.

Grosh also indicated a reluctance to talk about the political implications of the immigration debate. She, however, could not completely separate her service from the ongoing discussion.

“Politicians and their constituents have to grasp the reality that as objectified as migrant farm workers are, they are here, and we have to remember that they are human beings made out of the same cells and tissues that any other people are,” she said.

“You asked me about ‘sadness,’” she continued. “I think the real sadness is that there are so many people in this country who do not know what migrant workers go through, what they do or that they even exist in local communities such as Williamsburg. I think first we have to acknowledge them, and that would be the first thing to irradicate ignorance. Then maybe we can help each other instead of making the other person the bad guy.”

It is the kind of statement that strikes a chord with Arries. “That’s why they call it the humanities,” he said.

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