Gillian Gunawan – Internship with CRIS

My STEP Signature Project was an internship with a Columbus-based non-profit organization, Community Refugee and Immigration Services (CRIS). I was involved, specifically, with the Citizenship department, which entailed tutoring senior age immigrants. I helped out the most by providing individualized attention to the people who needed it.

This internship gave me a deeper look into the process of obtaining citizenship in the US. I knew, already, that it was a difficult process, but to sit there and try to help non-English speaking senior aged people understand what the Constitution is and what their rights are made me very aware of how strenuous and frustrating the process can be. Until this internship, I did not realize the lengths that people had to go to before they could even think about applying for citizenship.

I was also made aware of the reality that not everyone has the resources that CRIS can provide. My supervisor in particular would call utility companies, provide transportation and in general go above-and-beyond in order to make sure people were not being exploited simply because they could not yet speak fluent English and did not know their rights. Watching her and meeting and helping these people was very humbling and profound. The empathy was already there for me, but I understand better now how lucky I am to have been born in the US and how desperately I want to be able to help each individual as best I can.

The most profound interaction I had was with an old Bhutanese woman named Rambawati. Every Thursday morning, my supervisor and I would go to a (different) Bhutanese woman’s apartment, where she and some other adults and senior citizens would gather for a two-hour tutoring session on the USCIS Civics test. Rambawati did not speak a single word of English. Most of the summer was spent helping her learn and comprehend the alphabet, a skill my supervisor stressed: making sure the people we were tutoring actually understood what they were learning and being told, instead of just helping them memorize the questions and answers. This ultimately made these tutoring sessions a combination of civics and ESL.

By the end of the summer, Rambawati was able to name and write all the letters in her name, and could pick out specific letters out of a small set of three of four. She came a long way from the beginning of the summer, when we were using alphabet flashcards with corresponding illustrations to develop a loose understanding of each other. Through that, she taught me some Bhutanese words and was able to connect those familiar concepts with the alphabet and simple English words, resulting in a real—basic, but real—understanding of the English language.

Because of my interactions with Rambawati, I saw for myself how difficult all the steps leading up to beginning the immigration process is, and how tedious and tiring it can be, as well as how important it is for people like Rambawati to have the right resources available to them. The US immigration process is unnecessarily complicated and drawn-out, and it was very frustrating for me to figure that out essentially first hand, knowing that there was nothing I could do about the process itself. Instead, I now know that my previous ambition of becoming an immigration lawyer is not what I want to do—I am far more interested in the non-profit sector, where I can help people on the most personal level possible.

This transformation helped me gain a better understanding of what I want my future to look like. For a while I was convinced that going to law school to study immigration was the right path for me—or, less that I was convinced and more that I was determined to prove a point to myself and to my friends and family. But, I realize now that the high-stress high-cost path to becoming a lawyer is not for me. My experiences at CRIS let me see that I want to be on the ground, helping people in every way I personally can. Obviously that is still something that can be accomplished through becoming a lawyer, but I don’t think the law path is where I will feel the most fulfilled and helpful.

I’m not entirely sure what exactly I want to do now, but I am very grateful for the experiences I had this past summer and how it opened my eyes to how thankless and difficult it is to work in non-profit immigration services; but, helping people overcome language barriers and slowly inch their way to learning and comprehending what USCIS is asking of them was incredibly rewarding to see. Rambawati and the dozen other people I met helped fuel my determination to do everything I can to help the immigrant population in the US—a population that, in today’s specific political climate, is violently hated by what can often seem like the majority of US citizens. But, luckily, organizations like CRIS remain tireless in their work to make the US a better, more welcoming place for people seeking safety and new lives.