Middle of Everywhere - Mary Bray Pipher [43]
Orientation, Transportation, and Driving
An American city is a complicated place with stores, houses, schools, places of worship, different kinds of thoroughfares, government and business offices, hospitals, emergency services, transportation systems, public and private property, parks, and recreational facilities. And yet, almost from the first, people must get around. They need doctors, schools, and groceries.
Most American cities are designed in ways that make a car necessary. Soon, most newcomers want a car. Buying a vehicle involves evaluating, comparing, and then selecting a car. Many times the purchaser must secure a loan, demonstrate a credit rating, be employed, and have references. Then, he must buy insurance, which is not even a concept in many parts of the world.
Driving is a complex skill, requiring the ability to read maps and street signs, as well as an understanding of vehicles, laws, and traffic. Newcomers must pass a written driver's test and drive with a state employee. Many refugees are very anxious about being alone with a large American wearing a uniform. For many Middle Eastern women, this is the first time they have ever been alone with a man not in their family. After obtaining a driver's license, there is the risk of accidents, speeding tickets, and injuries, all of which can ruin the life of a refugee.
In fender benders, refugees are often at a disadvantage. They don't know the laws or the language and they panic around police. Consequently, newcomers often are unfairly ticketed. I have known refugees to be ticketed when they were rear-ended or even when they were hit while sitting in a parked vehicle.
Certain car dealers have taken to defrauding refugees. They buy an old clunker, clean it up, pour oil treatment in its engine, and sell it for far more than it is worth. A few weeks later, the newcomer, who has spent his life savings on the vehicle, discovers the car needs a new engine or transmission.
Ideally, locals help newcomers shop for cars. They ask questions of the dealers in English, test-drive the vehicles, check on warranties, and get second opinions. Local people know who are the honest car dealers. Furthermore, dealers are more accountable when someone is involved who knows how to call the Better Business Bureau and write letters to the editor.
Cultural brokers can also help with maps and orientation to the city, with all the legal procedures involved in licensing and registering cars, and, if necessary, with paying traffic tickets, which are frightening and confusing to refugees.
Work
Refugees have always done the work that other Americans didn't want to do. But there is a big difference between the work environments of the past and the present. In the past, immigrants and refugees could slowly work their way up the ladder to better jobs. They might be on the killing floor of the packing plant. But their sons would be shop stewards and their grandsons union organizers.
Portes and Rumbaut document this new situation. Whereas job distribution used to look like a triangle, it now looks like an hourglass. There are many jobs at the top and at the bottom, but the jobs in the middle are gone. These intermediary jobs are now handled by computers or other machines. There is no job ladder to climb. Refugees must somehow leap from the bottom half of the hourglass to the top. It's a giant leap, even for the second and third generation. Many don't make it and end up permanendy locked in the underclass.
Refugees are much more vulnerable and controllable than other workers. Hence, they work in the places where their ears hurt from constant noise or where they get headaches or throw up because of noxious materials used in production. They work in factories that have poor ventilation and no windows, and that insist upon