immigration nation

Yesterday, my friend Irene and I drove to Los Angeles in order that she might buy supplies for a Samba costume she is making for the Brazilian Carnival. The store was in an area called the Garment District, which reminded me of commerce on the streets of Mexico or the markets in the Middle East - complete with international citizens! As illegal immigration is a hot topic in the mainstream political rhetoric, I am curious if many of the US Presidential candidates have actually interacted with many of these illegal workers, or truly understand to what extent they rely on the plummeting US economy for their livelihoods.

We walked along the streets lined with vendors speaking many different languages - mainly Spanish but a variety of others - while entertained by this, our goal was to find the supplies that Irene needed. A shiny silver applique of a Hamsa (popular Israeli/Jewish symbol as protector for doorways) on a black t-shirt - beckoned us into one of the shops. I had just given Irene a keychain of the same symbol a few days before as a present, with an all-seeing eye in the center. After we got inside the shop I looked for the Hamsa symbols, and was greeted by one of the employees who exclaimed "its a Jewish symbol!" I told him I knew what it was because i lived in Israel, and I then noticed he was wearing a yamika, traditional Jewish prayer cap.

While Irene was looking around the store, I went over to the front counter, where there was a menu of a nearby restaurant. It appeared to be in Arabic, so I started reading it in Arabic, without looking at the English translations. I was frustrated because I could not understand all of the words, and got a little down on myself since I stopped studying Arabic so vehemently about a month ago and thought I was getting rusty. I began to read aloud to the man with the yamika. He asked me if I studied the languages while in Israel and if I knew Arabic. I said "yes but Im having a hard time with this menu". He admitted to me that the menu was actually in Farsii, the Iranian language though very similar to Arabic - then I realized why I was experiencing so much difficulty! While most of the letters are pronounced the same, the language is different (something like the difference between English and Spanish), and Farsii has 2 more letters than the Arabic alphabet, which he pointed out to me on the menu. It all made sense - the menu was for a Persian restaurant around the corner.

I asked the man where he was from, and he told me he was from Iran. I asked in surprise "so you are an Iranian Jew?" He said YES, with a rather serious insider look on his face. I was overwhelmed with respect and said with equal seriousness, "its a good thing you got out of there!" to which he agreed intensely. I told him that the US Government is hiring people who can speak Farsii and Arabic to aid in their missions overseas, and asked him if he was a US citizen in case he was interested. He told me he was not yet a legal citizen, and I asked how long it took to become a citizen - to which he replied "6 years!" The Garment District seems like a safe place for immigrants on the path to citizenship to work in the meantime - a truly international haven.

Later that night when we returned from LA, Irene received a call on her cell phone, from a Brazilian friend's phone but it was not him calling - an unknown Mexican man had stolen his phone while he was in Mexico. We encountered the friend later, only to discover that on his way back from the border after he lost his phone, he had been robbed of everything else, including his Green Card which he needed in order to live and work legally in the United States. We are unsure at this point if he will get deported back to Brazil since he now has no legal identification, as his path to citizenship has been foiled by yet another person attempting to assimilate into this the immigrant nation.