As more and more immigrants come into the United States, misinformation is spread about them through the use of social media, news networks, and politicians. The misinformation makes immigrants seem like a threat to society, when in actuality, they are of great importance to our country and society.
Through the six week Teen JUST-US program, I had the amazing opportunity to intern at The Immigrant Learning Center. I got to learn about many immigrants who came to the United States to seek a better life. As many immigrants came into the States, they decided to take massive risks and open up businesses. The pain and suffering that immigrants experience to do this isn’t really known by a lot of the public. Through my internship, I got the amazing opportunity to help make the story of immigrants more accessible to more people. At my internship, we have a weekly podcast called JobMakers. In this podcast, we interview immigrants and have them talk about their stories and the hardships in their life in opening up a successful business.
For a portion of my internship, I had the task of making transcripts for the podcasts. Even though the work wasn’t the most interesting thing I’ve done, it was the most rewarding in my opinion. Making the transcripts helps make the podcast more accessible to people with difficulty hearing. I found this to be a very important task because everyone has to know this information, but it’s not always accessible. As my parents come from an immigrant background, I find it extremely important to share that information about immigrant stories to everyone and to try and get rid of the misconceptions about immigrants.
Another task I did during the internship was finding more immigrant-opened businesses. The more stories we can share about immigrants, the better. People come to the United States from almost every country in the world, and everyone’s story is different. Some people come from war-torn countries; others come to escape religious persecution. Because people come from all of these different backgrounds, I found it really important to share the stories. No two immigrants have the same story. Finding more immigrants for potential podcasts was time consuming. As you search for information about where they came from, you learn a lot about the values they hod as they build their company. It’s very rewarding,
This summer was enlightening to me. The work that I did really made me feel like I’m going to have an impact on the community in helping spread important information about immigrants. I’m so glad I got this wonderful opportunity to help and try to make more information accessible to everyone. As more and more immigrants come to the United States we learn more and more about the world.