Students Get a Taste of the Immigrant Experience

Ashley Jackson tried to apply for a driver’s license on Wednesday, but ran into a roadblock. She didn’t speak Spanish.

“Cual es su apellido?” the desk clerk asked, wanting to know her last name.

Ashley grew dazed as a dozen other questions rattled by in Spanish. Then she shrugged her shoulders and told the clerk: “Start over.”

This was no scene south of the border. This was Dorsey High School in Los Angeles, where students turned the campus library into a foreign land for a day, complete with passports and paper money.

Waves of students tried to negotiate their way through a bank, a post office, a movie theater, a car rental agency and a medical clinic where no one spoke English.

The clerks and bank tellers and doctors who staffed the stations were actually immigrant students from Dorsey. This time, they were the ones who understood everything. And they were conducting business their way: in Spanish, French and a made-up gibberish language.

The experiment was enough to humble Ashley, 16, a varsity cheerleader who works at Starbucks after school.

“Immigrants have a hard time,” she said after her encounter with the driver’s license clerk.

The foreign country idea was dreamed up by U.S. history teacher James Berger more than a decade ago. He wanted to give his students an eye-opening view of what it means to be a newcomer in Los Angeles. About 300 history students at Dorsey participated Wednesday.

“Just about everybody in this country is the child of an immigrant, who came here willingly or unwillingly,” said Berger, whose grandparents arrived in the United States from Poland early last century. “There’s a common link for everybody.”

That link has special relevance in Los Angeles and throughout California, where immigrants account for an emerging bloc of the population.

Recent census figures show that California leads the nation as a destination for immigrants, with a quarter of the state’s nearly 34 million people coming from other countries.

The metropolitan area that includes Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties is home to an estimated 4.8 million immigrants as of 1997, the latest date for which figures are available.

Such diversity also is found in Los Angeles Unified, where about 37,000 students--5% of the total enrollment--have been in American schools three years or less, and where 83 languages are spoken.

The Dorsey High students relied on that diversity for their project.

Signs leading up to the second-floor library announced the harsh reality for those about to enter: “WARNING, YOU ARE NOW LEAVING THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,” one said in large black letters. “YOU MUST HAVE VALID PASSPORT,” another said. “HAVE MONEY READY TO EXCHANGE,” read a third.

The first stop was a customs station that resembled a modern-day Ellis Island. Two students posing as customs officers barked questions in rapid-fire Spanish.

“Como te llamas?” they asked, seeking names of the students who approached.

“I don’t know what that means,” one girl replied. The customs officer refused to stamp her passport.

Another girl mistakenly thought she was being asked about her race. “Oh, black,” she said.

One by one, the students passed the station, facing a barrage of questions with mostly blank stares. “This is unfair,” one complained.

After the customs stop, the students circulated through the library. They were required to have their passports stamped at each station to demonstrate that they had successfully passed each test.

They had to order a meal from a menu in Spanish at “Restaurante Los Amigos.” They had to fill out an application in French at a car rental agency. They had to get an eye exam at a clinic but only after filling out a form in Spanish.

Many grew frustrated.

“This is very confusing,” said a dejected Teama Hunter, 16, who was sulking in a corner in between stops. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Some of the students who are still learning English took a devilish pleasure in turning the tables on their English-speaking peers.

“How does it feel when we come to the United States and we don’t speak English?” asked Julian Recino, 16, who emigrated from El Salvador three years ago. “It feels bad. You don’t know what to say. You don’t know how to speak.”

Julian was staffing the motor vehicle counter, issuing licenses but not before running the applicants through a series of questions.

One of student who showed up at his station was Ashley Jackson.

“I need to fill this out,” she told him, pointing to the application.

“Donde vives?” Julian responded, asking where she lived. Ashley had no idea what he was talking about. Julian helped her fill out the form, chuckling just a little when she finally finished.