Immigration to Gunnison: Why It is Working
Luke Danielson (Espanol y English Versions)
In all the nasty wrangling over Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio there is a question not much discussed. Why are thousands of people from one modest sized Caribbean country headed to a single Midwestern town of less than 60,000 people?
There are of course the “push factors.” Life is terrible in Haiti, the poorest country in our hemisphere. Millions of people do not have enough to eat, there is political violence, there are earthquakes, crime, lack of health care, and constant foreign interference in any attempt by Haitians to stabilize conditions. Many people saw no future in Haiti and were afraid for their lives, and they fled, often in leaky boats.
And the United States, following the long if not always honored tradition symbolized in the Statue of Liberty, opened the golden door to at least some of those Haitians who drifted the Caribbean to get here. We granted them “temporary protected status.”
But why such a concentration of Haitians in Springfield? Why are there so many Armenian refugees in Los Angeles? Somalis in Minneapolis? Why is there such a concentration of Cora people, an indigenous community from western Mexico, in Gunnison, Colorado?
The answer is in part the pioneers: some people from there who found their way here, and through grit and good luck gained a precarious foothold – a job, a sympathetic employer, a place to live. And they passed the word to some people back home, who also found their way here.
In Gunnison, the story goes, Don Esteban and Doña Paula were the Cora pioneers, who got work on a ranch which provided them a modest home to live in. And some of their family joined them. And it grew from there. How and why they wound up here would be an interesting question, just as it would be interesting to ask people in the Gunnison Cora community whether they accept this account of their community’s landing on their Colorado Plymouth Rock.
It was not a land of milk and honey. It was a land of hard and unremitting work, and periodic misfortune. And the Cora were hardly the only immigrants who wound up in what was hardly a diverse community forty years ago.
Part of the story of why an immigrant community has been able to put down roots here is that Gunnison was still a community of individuals, who in the Western frontier tradition tended to judge other people as individuals, to hire them if they were hard workers, to make sure they could see a doctor if they needed one, help them get a roof over their heads, and to give them a little extra help through the hard times that most of us suffer. Helping others: the best part of our Western heritage.
Where the employers were, or became, corporate, things were different. There was an incredibly hard working ranch hand, who after more than a decade of loyal service, pointed out that he was getting older, and that he would like to have Social Security withheld from his paycheck so that he might somehow, some day retire. And the accountants terminated him.
And there were some of the best, most dedicated employees of the resort businesses at the upper end of the valley, who were terminated in a great purge when corporate ownership came to town.
A worker, older than the typical immigrant, who came from Mexico to earn money to pay for his mother’s surgery, who thought he had won the lottery when he got a job at a supermarket. But he had never experienced ice and snow before, and when he was sent out on a snowy night to collect shopping carts in the parking lot, he slipped and broke his forearm into fragments. Convinced that he somehow was faking an injury, despite the opinion of an eminent local surgeon, workers compensation investigators surreptitiously followed him around, videotaping him at home and at work, trying to catch him using his broken arm. Things did not work for him here, he has gone home, no one knows what happened to his mother.
Another part of the Gunnison story is fair and decent law enforcement. There are communities in Colorado, some of them not far away, where “foreign looking” people apparently cannot drive straight, and are repeatedly pulled over for “weaving,” and ticketed. And far worse than that. But Gunnison had people like Rick Murdie, and Scott Jackson, and Rob Whiting, and others, who believed in straight arrow enforcement of the law and being fair to people. Again, the story is not all a bed of flowers. There were some people in local law enforcement who did not share these attitudes. But they were a minority.
And there were some terrible things that happened to people who got into the hands of the immigration authorities. At least some of them were doing nothing illegal. Indeed, in a couple of cases they were United States citizens, or foreigners who had all the proper papers and visas. And they were locked up, and sometimes subjected to repeated “body cavity searches,” and a lot of suffering.
Another resource that has made the difference in Gunnison were people like Marketa Zubkova and Ellen Pedersen, both immigrants themselves. They met in a Bikram Yoga class in 2002, which they went to because they were both cold. I know because I was there: I was cold, too.
Marketa in a variety of roles, including President of the United Immigrants of Gunnison, and Ellen, as the Director of the Multicultural Resource Office, contributed years of intense effort. We also need to recognize Mary Burt – most rural counties never had, or thought of, having something like the Multicultural Resource Office, and its existence is both a credit to her, and one of the reasons that Gunnison has been relatively successful in integrating immigrants in the community in a positive way. There are so many others – teachers in our school system, the Mentors program, and more.
Ellen and Marketa used their language skills and cross cultural understanding to ensure that immigrants in Gunnison understood how to navigate their way to health care, had successful outcomes for their children in school, achieving adult literacy. And perhaps more important, to ensuring that local people and institutions understood immigrant people, and the difficult challenges they face trying to learn to live with the rest of us.
As her husband, as a lawyer in this community who spoke Spanish, I would not have dared to turn down the suggestions I received from her, and from Marketa, to represent immigrant clients in an incredible variety of issues. In a long and varied legal career, nothing gave me more satisfaction, or taught me more important lessons.
I think that is the most important point. It is not a one way street. Immigrants may benefit from being in Gunnison. But Gunnison also benefits from having them here. This is critical. The climate experts say that one of the principal impacts of climate change is going to be agricultural and economic disruptions that make people leave the places they have lived, and move elsewhere. The number of people who need to leave where they are is increasing, as is the need to find somewhere for them to go. It is critical to our future that we learn to benefit from and appreciate these changes, because here they come, ready or not.
Ellen went through the immigrant experience herself five times, starting with her parents, who were Danish immigrants in Argentina, and she spoke five languages to prove it. Her last immigration was to the United States, where she came as a graduate student to Texas A&M. She came to our community as a biologist to study the Gunnison Sage Grouse, but discovered her real passion was helping the poor, especially immigrants. Ellen was very proud to become a United States citizen, and happy to be a part of the Gunnison community. Since she is no longer with us, it is now up to us.
But the “us” now clearly includes the remarkable leadership that is emerging in the immigrant community itself. We have political leaders, county employees, school teachers, business owners and others who are immigrants or children of immigrants. That is another one of the good pieces of our Western tradition: they are taking charge of their own future, as they should be.
Luke Danielson is an environmental lawyer based in Gunnison but known globally for his work in sustainable resource development.
Inmagración a Gunnison
Lucas Danielson (en Espanol)
En la disputa acerca de los inmigran-tes haitianos en Springfield, Ohio, hay una pregunta que no se discute mucho. ¿A qué se debe la concentración de haitianos en Springfield? ¿Por qué hay tantos refugiados arme-nios en Los Ángeles? ¿somalíes en Minneapolis? ¿Por qué existe tal concentración del pueblo Cora, una comunidad indígena del oeste de México, en Gunnison?
La respuesta es en parte, los “pioneros”: personas de allí que encontraron su camino hasta aquí y, gracias a su determinación y buena suerte, consiguieron un punto de apoyo precario: un trabajo, un empleador comprensivo, un lugar para vivir. Y pasaron la voz a algunas personas en su tierra que también encontraron su camino hasta aquí.
En Gunnison, cuenta la historia, Don Esteban y Doña Paula fueron los pioneros Cora, quienes consiguieron trabajo en un rancho que les proporcionó un hogar modesto para vivir. Y algunos miembros de su familia se unieron a ellos. Y creció a partir de ahí. No era una tierra de leche y miel. Era una tierra de trabajo duro e incans-able y de desgracias periódicas.
Parte de la historia y del por qué una comunidad de inmigrantes ha podido echar raíces aquí es, Gunnison todavía era una comunidad de individuos que, en la tradición de la frontera occidental, tendían a juzgar a otras personas como individuos: a contratarlos si eran trabajadores, asegurarnos de que los buenos trabajadores pudieran consultar a un médico si lo necesitaran, para ayudarlos a conseguir un techo sobre sus cabezas y brindarles un poco de ayuda en momen-tos difíciles – lo mejor de nuestra herencia occidental.
Otra parte de la historia de Gunnison es como se aplica la ley justa y decente. Hay comunidades en Colorado donde las personas con “aspecto extranjero” aparentemente no pueden conducir en línea recta y son detenidasy multadas repetidamente por “hacers”. Y mucho peor que eso. El valle de Gunnison ha tenido personas como Rick Murdie, Scott Jackson, Rob Whiting, Rick Besecker y otros que creían en la aplicación estricta de la ley y la justicia para todos. Una vez más, la historia no es todo un lecho de rosas, y algunas personas en el poder judicial local no compartían esa actitud, pero eran una minoría.
Otro recurso que marcó la diferencia en Gunnison fueron personas como Marketa Zubkova y Ellen Pedersen, ambas inmigrantes. Se conocieron en una clase de Bikram Yoga en 2002, a la que asistieron porque tenían frío. Lo sé porque yo también estuve allí: Sí, también con frío.
Marketa, en una variedad de roles, incluido el de Presidente de Inmigrantes Unidos de Gunnison, y Ellen como Directora de la Oficina de Recursos Multiculturales del condado, contribuyeron con años de intenso esfuerzo para integrar a los inmigrantes a la comunidad. Mary Burt también debe ser reconocida; la mayoría de los condados rurales nunca tuvieron, ni pensaron en tener, algo parecido a una Oficina de Recursos Multiculturales, y su existencia es un mérito del trabajo de Mary. Hay muchos otros que no son reconocidos: los maestros de escolar, el programa Mentores y más.
Ellen y Marketa utilizaron sus habilidades lingüísticas y su comprensión intercultural para garantizar que los inmigrantes en Gunnison entendieran cómo navegar su camino hacia la atención médica, obtuvieran resultados exitosos para sus hijos en la escuela y lograran la alfabetización de adultos. Y quizás lo más importante es garantizar que la población y las instituciones locales comprendan a los inmigrantes y los difíciles desafíos que enfrentan como “extraños en una tierra extraña”.
Como esposo de Ellen y abogado de esta comunidad que habla español, no me habría atrevido a rechazar las sugerencias que recibí de ella y de Marketa para representar legalmente a los inmigrantes en una increíble variedad de asuntos. En una larga y variada carrera jurídica, nada me dio más satisfacción ni me enseñó lecciones más importantes.
Creo que ese es el punto más importante: esta no es una calle de sentido único. Los inmigrantes pueden beneficiarse de estar en Gunnison. Pero Gunnison también se beneficia de tenerlos aquí. Esto es fundamental. Los expertos en clima dicen que uno de los principales impactos del cambio climático será la perturbación agrícola y económica; El número de personas que tendrán que abandonar donde están está aumentando, al igual que la necesidad de encontrar un lugar adonde ir. Es fundamental para nuestro futuro que aprendamos a aprovechar al máxi-mo estos cambios, porque aquí vienen, listos o no.
La propia Ellen pasó por la experiencia de inmigrante cinco veces, comenzando con sus padres, que eran inmigrantes daneses en Argentina, y como resultado hablaba cinco idiomas. Su última inmigración fue a los Estados Unidos, donde llegó como estudiante en Texas A&M. Ella vino a nuestra comunidad como bióloga para estudiar Gunnison Sage Grouse, pero descubrió que su verdadera pasión era ayudar a los demás, especialmente a los inmigrantes. Ellen estaba muy orgullosa de convertirse en ciudadana estadounidense y feliz de ser parte de la comunidad de Gunnison. Ella ya no está con nosotros; ahora depende de nosotros.
Pero el “nosotros” ahora incluye claramente el notable liderazgo que está surgiendo en la propia comunidad inmigrante. Tenemos líderes políticos, empleados del condado, maestros de escuela, dueños de negocios y personas que son inmigrantes o hijos de inmigrantes. Ésa es otra de las buenas piezas de nuestra tradición occidental: se están haciendo cargo de su propio futuro, como debe de ser.
Luke Danielson es un abogado ambiental radicado en Gunnison, pero conocido mundialmente por su trabajo en el desarrollo de recursos sostenibles.