Why Come To The United States And Live, Our View
We think it’s easy to say the Marshallese people come to the United States to find jobs and to get a better education. If you ask the parents they will probably give you these answers and the folks we asked on the atoll also said as much. The U.S. also has better health care and hospitals to care for ailments and rehabilitation. To us these are all easy answers that do not dig deeper into the mindset of today’s Marshallese Island residents. We think the Marshallese people come to the U.S. to have opportunity. Not just the opportunity to get a better job or education but they believe that there is opportunity.
Julie and I visited elementary, high school and college classrooms and asked two predominant questions; what is your favorite subject and what do you want to be when you grow up (or what do you want to do when you graduate in the case of the college students). The first question gave us universal answers; math and science. It seems that the Marshallese students love math and science or the dozens of students we asked were lying to us. The second question seemed a bit harder for the students to answer…What do you want to be when you grow up/graduate? With this question we could usually hear crickets in the background because it was so quiet. Sure, one high school student said the president of the United States and another said he wanted to work for the Coast Guard, but beyond that there were no other answers from the high school students. The college students surely would have some aspirations beyond the hallways of their college but that class only gave us one answer, a young man in the back of the class raised his hand and said he was going back to Arno (an atoll just east of Majuro) to sell coconuts. Now, selling coconuts is a noble profession, and I believe one should always follow their dreams, but there was something else in what he said... it was the way he said it. His words told us he was going to sell coconuts but everything else about him, from expression to body language, was saying he was selling coconuts because that's what you do... he didn't know there was another option. Soon after we returned to Iowa we were at our county fair and we saw some Marshallese teenagers. All but one of them were born in the United States and the other was born in Majuro but moved to Iowa before he turned one. We asked them the same questions and they told us science was their favorite followed by social studies and math. The real difference came when we asked what they wanted to be when they graduated or grew up... every one had an answer, from a nurse to a pastor to an athlete. There was a vision of the future and they were part of it.
Therein lays the belief that there IS opportunity in the United States, that something actually IS out there for them. Every kid we talked to knew of the United States, but it seemed like some distant land at the end of a magical yellow brick road which they will never travel. If you read the LIVE portion of this website, specifically the “Social Issues” portion you know we found there was not much for the people to do on Majuro and this also suppresses the idea of opportunity for them. While meeting with the U.S. Ambassador to the Marshall Islands, he told us that from January to June of 2014, 1,000 people had left the Marshall Islands to head to the United States. They were all traveling their own yellow brick road and looking for that elusive thing they've heard of called… opportunity.
Julie and I visited elementary, high school and college classrooms and asked two predominant questions; what is your favorite subject and what do you want to be when you grow up (or what do you want to do when you graduate in the case of the college students). The first question gave us universal answers; math and science. It seems that the Marshallese students love math and science or the dozens of students we asked were lying to us. The second question seemed a bit harder for the students to answer…What do you want to be when you grow up/graduate? With this question we could usually hear crickets in the background because it was so quiet. Sure, one high school student said the president of the United States and another said he wanted to work for the Coast Guard, but beyond that there were no other answers from the high school students. The college students surely would have some aspirations beyond the hallways of their college but that class only gave us one answer, a young man in the back of the class raised his hand and said he was going back to Arno (an atoll just east of Majuro) to sell coconuts. Now, selling coconuts is a noble profession, and I believe one should always follow their dreams, but there was something else in what he said... it was the way he said it. His words told us he was going to sell coconuts but everything else about him, from expression to body language, was saying he was selling coconuts because that's what you do... he didn't know there was another option. Soon after we returned to Iowa we were at our county fair and we saw some Marshallese teenagers. All but one of them were born in the United States and the other was born in Majuro but moved to Iowa before he turned one. We asked them the same questions and they told us science was their favorite followed by social studies and math. The real difference came when we asked what they wanted to be when they graduated or grew up... every one had an answer, from a nurse to a pastor to an athlete. There was a vision of the future and they were part of it.
Therein lays the belief that there IS opportunity in the United States, that something actually IS out there for them. Every kid we talked to knew of the United States, but it seemed like some distant land at the end of a magical yellow brick road which they will never travel. If you read the LIVE portion of this website, specifically the “Social Issues” portion you know we found there was not much for the people to do on Majuro and this also suppresses the idea of opportunity for them. While meeting with the U.S. Ambassador to the Marshall Islands, he told us that from January to June of 2014, 1,000 people had left the Marshall Islands to head to the United States. They were all traveling their own yellow brick road and looking for that elusive thing they've heard of called… opportunity.