Asian American Studies 197B
Spring Quarter 2002

Reflection Journal 1
Ye Jin, "My Life as a New Immigrant"

I do not feel that I have been influenced at all by UCLA-centric student viewpoint. Due to my ethnic identity and personal academic experience, I sometimes think I am one out of the one percent student body that has stayed immune to the influence of institutional forces that has shaped the thinking of majority UCLA students. Most Chinese students who come to this school were mostly born in the United States or came into the country when they were little. They speak fluent English and identify themselves with the dominant white culture. I, however, immigrated to Los Angeles when I was thirteen years old. I struggled in high school and encountered great difficulty acquiring the language skills. I have never viewed myself as belonging to either the while culture or the American born and raised Chinese subculture. I only identify myself entirely with the Chinese culture. In a way, I do not feel connected to students on campus or other Asian student organizations. Majority of my social life, in fact, is spent with family members and few close friends that are outside of UCLA circle. In addition, I had transferred to UCLA from a community college. Perhaps, a short duration of my academic study (I will graduate after spending two years at UCLA this spring) has shielded me from the traditional UCLA perspective. I see myself as different from all of those who have entered the university from high schools. I spent half of my college life elsewhere and I was well aware of the cultural shame being associated with a low-prestige community college. Due to the above two factors, I do not communicate with others thinking from a UCLA-centric perspective. That is not to say that I am not proud of this greatly recognized institution, in fact, I really enjoy attending classes here. However, I just think we should not put too much emphasis in forming a distinct UCLA community secluded from the outside world. Rather, I believe every person should be entitled to a unique and individual college experience which includes his or her family background, life history, and ethnic identity.

It would be easy for me to shift from UCLA-centric student thinking to community-centered thinking. Since I am a minority immigrant myself, I clearly understand the importance of community in helping immigrant families for establishing their lives and maintaining their own cultural identity in a foreign country. I strongly identify with the Chinese community and therefore can easily restructure my thinking from a community-centered perspective. My family, especially my grandmother, benefited greatly from her community friends and their support for having established her immigrant life here. But, in order for me and most other fellow UCLA students to transform our world outlook and provide greater service to communities, each one of us should first walk out of the protective environment of university life and bring ourselves into the lives of especially those who already live in an ethnic minority community isolated from the dominant culture, whether they are Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korea, etc. Through personal contact with these people, we may learn their day-to-day struggles they face in working and social domains. Furthermore, those students who are already familiar with the community should host workshops and provide educational seminars or even pass out flyers on campus to further spread immigrants’ experience and their community life. We, at the same time, should also come across that barrier between the real, yet sometimes dangerous world and our safe little community environment at UCLA. Only through seeing and understanding immigrants’ plight and injustices firsthand, then we are at an optimal position to extend our service, whether being educational, social-rights action, public awareness or financial assistance, for aiding these communities. It is time that our students should pay a visit to the sweatshops, restaurants, or markets in person where some of our parents or friends may have spent time working there before. We can not really truly help these communities without first understanding and feeling a sense of connectedness to their experience.

Through our community-based internship, we should overcome existing community perceptions of UCLA students and their stereotypes of our students by abandoning our traditional UCLA-centric viewpoint; encouraging our students to initiate personal contact or even get acquainted with immigrant workers close to our community; offering service and help to those who needed the most. Since some students go through life granted with luxuries and privileges, they may never be aware of other people’s unfortunates, especially those that are ethnic minority and recently immigrated. We should at least educate and influence students with such a background through either classes or seminars on campuses about the significance of community-oriented perspective, and UCLA should not remain the only acknowledged community for our students. Then, students can become involved in a community-based internship to personally get to know the immigrant workers or anyone who face struggles in their daily lives. Because knowing someone well is a favorable way to decrease negative perceptions of a group, community groups will realize that the students are also nice human beings who all have big hearts to help good causes. I would personally treasure this internship opportunity to get to know these people who share a similar background as I do. I would do my best to convince them that most UCLA students are not what thought (arrogant). I would also persuade my friends to change their traditional university thinking and show more concerns and care for our communities. We can work together on community projects and visit their working and living environments within their immigrant community to gain a full appreciation of their difficulty life. During all these encounters, I will show respect for all those in the community groups. In addition, students have the benefit of incorporating school resources such as student organizations, classes, workshops and flyers to help the immigrant workers overcoming social injustices. Through the UCLA student-body, the public may become aware of the problem which was previously ignored. By following all these steps, community groups should gradually modify their UCLA-student perceptions to a more positive tone.

As a UCLA student in this period, the first step I can take is to involve myself in an internship or a class that emphasizes Asian American Labor Studies. By working on the internship project, I can personally help community group members and immigrant workers to recognize their cause and overcome social injustices through either social or legal means. I could also join student organizations that are concerned with labor rights to pass out educational flyers or pamphlets. Fellow students and I could organize immigrant workers labor rights’ seminars on campus to educate other students who are oblivious to the issue. Most important of all, UCLA students can reach into the community and educate immigrant workers about their rights and encourage them to join workers’ unions to reduce unfair treatment at their jobs. We could also send students that share the same ethnicity as these recent immigrants to build rapport because they have similar language and cultural history. It is also important to combine both community and school strengths. Students, like I, could organize school parade targeted at such issue. We could use students’ voices to influence media and community groups outside of our campus. For example, students could go to specific job locations to send out flyer and wearing pro-union or workers’ rights logo shirt. Students can attend community groups’ meeting to discuss the progress of workers’ movement. Best of all, we could work together through the creation of actions and campaigns. By extending students’ concerns combined with community organizations’ pressure into the actual places where injustices occur, employers who exploit their immigrant workers are more likely to abandon their previous rigid position. Therefore, as a UCLA student myself, I believe students from other universities should also be obliged to use their skills and school resources to support the struggles of low-income immigrant workers. Students from everywhere need to work with the community groups to create a fair just social world.