To commemorate this day, we have compiled personal stories of immigrants at the AFL-CIO. As you’ll see, our colleagues’ collective experiences are a tapestry of the immigrant experience. Our co-workers have come to the United States from around the world for a variety of reasons—to escape war and repression, to work, to feed their families back home, to study and to marry.
RICHARD TRUMKA, AFL-CIO President
President Trumka’s parents fled poverty and war from different corners of Europe, his mother from Italy, his father from Poland. They both came to the United States for the same reasons that immigrants have been coming here for centuries: in search of work and to make a better life. His grandparents and parents settled in Nemacolin, Penn. As he explains: “When I was a kid, there was an ugly name for every one of us in all twelve languages spoken in my hometown—wop and hunkie and polack and kike. We were the last hired and first fired, the people who did the hardest and most dangerous work, the people whose pay got shorted because we didn’t know the language and were afraid to complain. My immigrant roots imparted in me a strong sense of justice and the willingness to fight for equal treatment and justice for all.”JOHN SWEENEY, AFL-CIO President Emeritus
President Sweeney’s parents immigrated to the United States from County Leitrim, Ireland, in the late 1920s, though they didn’t meet until years later in New York City. They both came in search of opportunity and a better life. His mother worked as a domestic worker for a wealthy family who lived in a beautiful apartment across from Central Park on 5th Ave. His father worked as a taxi cab driver in Chicago before moving to New York, getting a job as a bus driver, and becoming an active member of the very young Transport Workers Union. They married in 1933 and President Sweeney was born just a year later.
“I remember my mother sometimes had to struggle to get the pay she was owed. She would arrive at the home of one of the families she worked for only to find they had moved—giving her no advanced notice that she had effectively lost her job. My father, on the other hand, had his union. He would always say “God bless the union,” because it protected him and provided him with decent wages and paid time off. I always felt my mother deserved the same, but domestic workers can’t form unions because their not covered under labor law. That didn’t seem fair to me.” President Sweeney is a strong supporter of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, a grassroots network of domestic workers who are organizing for better working conditions despite their exclusion from labor law. This past August, domestic workers in New York won the passage of a Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, which protects domestic workers in President Sweeney’s mother’s state from some of the very abuses she suffered.
THEA LEE, President’s Office
My father was born in a small town in southern China, in Guangzhou province. He came to the United States with his father when he was seven—leaving behind his mother and three sisters, whom he didn’t see again for more than 30 years. He was brought up by his grandparents in Boston’s Chinatown, while his father remarried and moved to Washington, D.C. His grandfather owned a grocery store in Chinatown. His grandmother seldom left the house, as her feet were bound, and it was painful for her to walk. My father went to Boston Latin and then the University of Michigan. He became an architect, a professor of urban studies at MIT, and the director of Capital Planning and Operations for the state of Massachusetts. He met my mother, the daughter of Russian and Polish Jewish immigrants, in New York City, and they eloped to Rome, where he had a Fulbright scholarship to study architecture.My great great grandfather came to the United States to work on the railroad in the 1800s, and his family went back and forth between China and the United States for the next couple of generations. Because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, most Chinese women couldn’t come here legally at that time, so the men went home to marry and start families. That is why my father was born in China—even though he was legally a U.S. citizen, as his grandfather was born in the United States or at least legally established this in a New York court.
NORMA ITZ, President’s Office
Norma settled in the United States for love. In 1977 Norma visited New York from her native Peru, on vacation. There, she met a young Dutch man named John. They fell in love. Norma went back to Peru and John visited her there often. About a year later, they married and Norma arrived in the United States as a young bride. She has been working with President Trumka for more than a decade, and she makes the best alfajores in all of Washington, D.C.
I was born in Chile, the eldest of four daughters. When I was 11 years old, in 1973, my parents came home from work one day and told us we were leaving for Canada in a few days. Chile was very politically and economically unstable at that time. There were constant protests on the streets, sometimes very violent ones. We couldn’t go to school on most days, and because of a nation-wide truckers’ strike, the grocery stores and markets were empty. Everything was sold on the black market. What I remember most vividly from my childhood is standing in line for hours with my sisters and my grandmother, just to get a quart of oil and a chicken, then going home, changing clothes (so we wouldn’t be recognized as violating the “one-per-family” limit), and doing it all over again.That was a scary time for us. My parents were very politically active and my grandfather had been a member of one of President’s Allende’s cabinets. The day that my parents announced that we were leaving, my mother told us that she was certain that there would be a coup soon because a patient of hers—the wife of a striking truck driver—had offered to pay her in U.S. dollars. We left shortly after that, and the coup took place a month later. Canada took us in as political refugees and we lived in Montreal for a few years, along with several other displaced Chilean families. We moved to California in the early 1980s; I moved for college, and my parents for their jobs.
I went back to Chile for the first time in 1988, at the time of the first plebiscite that would eventually put an end to Pinochet’s 16-year reign of terror. There will always be a part of me that feels that Chile is home, just like a part of me will always feel that Montreal is home, and now Washington, D.C. That’s part of the immigrant experience—there is no static concept of belonging.
JENNIFER ANGARITA, Public Affairs
Jennifer Angarita came to the US from Colombia when she was 13 months old. Like many immigrants, her parents came in search of economic opportunity and political stability—after escaping a tumultuous civil war in Colombia. They settled in Texas, where Jennifer lived the majority of her life and attended public school K-12. For years, her parents worked several low-wage jobs trying to provide for her and her brother—but always emphasized the importance of education as a tool for liberation.In May 2010, she graduated from Yale University and became the first in her family to attend college and to hold a college degree. Her brother, a U.S. Citizen, is now a freshman at Columbia University.
Growing up in an immigrant neighborhood in Texas, Jennifer became exposed early on to the harsh realties of many immigrants in the United States today. Because of an overly-bureaucratic and inefficient immigration system, it has taken over a decade for her family to regularize their status. Her story is a reminder of the broken system of immigration that plagues the lives of hundreds of thousands of working families here today. As a first-generation immigrant, Jennifer is passionate about the intersection of immigrant and workers’ rights and believes any approach to immigration reform must respect the humanity and dignity of all immigrants.
GLENDA AVILA, Facilities Management
Glenda, born in Honduras, is a proud U.S. Citizen. She came to the United States as a teenager—like nearly all immigrants, in search of a better life. Her family had to pay a coyote $6,000, an astronomical amount for a family of little means. The trip from Honduras was long. She spent 12 days in the trailer of a 10-wheeler, along with 50 other people, and then walked through the desert at night, for days. She found a good union job when she arrived in Washington, D.C., and has been a union member for more than a decade. She fell in love, married, and regularized her status. She became a U.S. citizen because she wanted to vote. She is very proud that her first vote was for President Obama. Glenda loves her life in the United States. “Here, hard work lets you make a better life for your children,” she said. In Honduras, she saw her family work long, hard hours, but there was no future there. “I am very happy and thankful to be here in the United States and working here at the AFL-CIO. I am always asking God to send showers of blessings to this building,” she said. We are very lucky to have her.
ANNA STUART—Field Department
Anna Stuart grew up in Manila, the capitol of the Philippines. She came to the United States in 1988 in search of a better life. Although her mother-in-law already lived in the United States and had petitioned to get her and her husband green cards, she was anxious to move to the United States quickly to give her six-year-old son a better life with more opportunities than were available to him in the Philippines.Anna then came to the United States on her own with a tourist visa. She soon found a job with the Sudanese embassy. Through that job she got an A-visa for diplomatic staff, which allowed her to work. That visa also allowed her to bring her husband and child to the United States to live with her, but it also tied her to the Sudanese embassy. If she left the job or was fired, she would lose all of their visas and have to return to the United States. Also, her husband’s visa didn’t allow for him to work in the United States, which meant she was the sole provider for her family, which was especially difficult as the Sudanese embassy paid her only $500 per month, significantly below the minimum wage.
In 1990 Anna moved to the Singapore embassy, which paid her better. Still, she was worried about holding on to her job, since her visa still tied her to the embassy. “You can’t sue them. They have diplomatic protections. The bosses can really insult you, and they don’t have to pay you overtime. Still, you have to hold on to what you have when you’re in that position.”
After 12 years, her family’s green cards came through in 1998. She became the executive assistant for the AFL-CIO constituency group, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA). In 2005, her entire family became naturalized citizens. Her son went on to serve two tours of duty in the United States army. He just returned home last month, and plans on going to university soon. Today Anna works in the AFL-CIO field department.
MAUREEN COLLINS—Media Outreach
Maureen came to the United States in 1987 following the brutal murder of her younger brother in her home city of Kingston, Jamaica. Distraught by the loss of her brother, Maureen left Jamaica for the United States. For six years she worked as a caregiver for the elderly in Potomac Maryland. This was a significant lifestyle change for her. In Jamaica, she was upper-middle class and employed people to take care of her kids and home. In the United States she became a live-in caregiver herself. In 1996 she became a naturalized U.S. citizen, and has worked at the AFL-CIO for 11 years.WALTER FERRAYRA—Information Technology
Walter arrived in the United States at the end of a year-long holiday he took in his 20s, traveling up the two American continents by land. Born in Argentina, his grandparents had immigrated there from the western African country of Cape Verde in search of work. When he finally arrived in the states, he had nearly run out of money from his trip.His plan was to take English classes and work just long enough to be able to pay for a flight home. After enlisting in English classes he decided to get a student visa, and soon received a green card through the lottery system. He went on to get married and have two children. Nine years ago, Walter became a naturalized citizen. He is a Senior Technical Support Specialist at the AFL-CIO, where he has worked for nearly seven years.
FRANK KOUAME, Solidarity Center
“In 1979, when I was three years old, my family moved to England from Cote d’Ivoire, West Africa. We moved with my father, who was sent to England to fill a diplomatic post in London. Throughout my childhood, we followed my father’s job to various European countries, including Switzerland, Germany and France. In 2002, I came to the United States to enroll in Virginia Tech’s MBA program, and I chose the United States because I wanted to experience something new. I chose labor because the job somewhat matched my skills and interests and because, coming from France, I already had a favorable view of unions. My parents often travel back to Cote d’Ivoire to visit family and friends, but I do not. It is difficult for my family to get together because we are scattered all over the world.”
NEHA MISRA, Solidarity Center
Neha was born in Miami to immigrant parents from India. She remembers her father telling the story about how he arrived in the United States for a medical residency on July 4, 1964, always symbolic to him as his Independence Day. His three kids were always a little skeptical about the historical date of his arrival, but when he died two years ago, they found his original passport, which sure enough, had July 4 stamped in it by U.S. Immigration. Her parents raised their three children to care about their community and the world. Neha has fond memories of watching Walter Cronkite report the international news with her father, who would teach her lessons about politics, war, poverty and other major issues of the day. She knows that her love of food comes from her mother’s homemade Indian cooking, which was always used as a way to welcome family and friends into their home.Like many immigrants, Neha’s parents saw education as the key to their children’s success. Her father would say that he knew he would never leave his kids with a huge inheritance, but he would leave them with an education that would take care of them all of their lives. Her mother said that she wanted to ensure her two daughters were just as well educated, confident, and able to take care of themselves as her only son so that they could always stand on their own. When Neha speaks to local taxi drivers of Indian descent in Hindi, they always tell her to thank her parents for instilling their culture in their daughter. All three of the Misra children were community activists, and Neha knows that her work on migration issues as part of the global labor movement is a direct result of the influence and values of her immigrant parents.
DENIS NOLASCO, Solidarity Center
Denis, born in the Dominican Republic, is a proud U.S. Citizen. She came to the United States to pursue a career in international law. However, until her mother could find a steady job, Denis worked at 12-hour shifts for less than minimum wage at a small retail store in New York City. She feared she would lose sight of her purpose. Instead, the horrible working conditions led her to empathize with the abuse her fellow immigrants endured, and deepened her interest in the economic and social issues that forced them to immigrate. These issues included laws that allowed workers to receive below living wage salaries and the lack of legal protection against exploitative labor practices.
These experiences motivated her to become more involved with international social and economic justice issues, and to seek ways to advocate for workers domestically and internationally. This passion led Denis to the Solidarity Center, where she leads an exchange program that enhances the skills of Colombian trade unionist to empower them to actively participate in the economic and social development of their country.
HECTOR SANCHEZ–LCLAA
Hector Sanchez came to the United States from Celaya, Guanajuato Mexico in 1994 to attend college. He wanted to study political science, have the opportunity to learn English and get to know and better understand the United States. He came with only basic English skills and remembers being frustrated as he struggled to complete college level courses in a foreign language. Still, he worked hard, graduated with honors, and went on to earn a Masters degree and teach at a college level. “I think that the immigrant experience lights a sort of spark within you. You push yourself to work harder to succeed, to stretch yourself and to make a life for yourself in your new home, you give the best of you. Similarly, immigration provides a spark of inspiration to the United States as well. Here there are so many unique combinations of peoples, ideas and cultures coming together. I have no doubt that the country is really stronger and better because of it. It is sad to see how it has become acceptable to dehumanize immigrants lately.” Today, Hector is executive director of the AFL-CIO constituency group LCLAA, the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, where he works to advance the labor rights of Latino workers, some of whom are the most vulnerable workers in the nation.
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