Whether as a participant or an observer, I’ve taken part in any number of ceremonies and events over the decades. The one that touched my heart the most was when I was lucky enough to witness a naturalization ceremony at Union Station in Indianapolis.
I was there to watch our high school’s We The People team battle for the state championship. When I learned all the participants had been invited to attend the ceremony, I decided to join them and watched roughly 80 people, representing every part of the world, stride proudly and with tear-filled eyes to the front of the Great Hall. After the speeches and oaths, our nation’s newest citizens were formally introduced to a cheering crowd of family members, friends, and some random folks like me. I don’t think my pride in America has ever been stronger than at that moment, and my eyes water whenever I recall it.
As the proud grandson of immigrants, I look at immigration through a different lens than many people in Hendricks County. When I see a Chin or Senegalese family at the supermarket, the park, or the local elementary school’s Open House, I see my grandparents struggling to adapt to a completely different culture in a place they had never been. They were small-town kids trying to provide for their own children in an industrial city thousands of miles from their families.
There’s a lot of anxiety about immigration these days. It’s a remarkably divisive issue. But speaking from a school board member’s perspective, we didn’t have the luxury of criticizing or praising the feds’ immigration policies. We were too busy solving the challenges associated with folks who left another part of the world and came to our neighborhoods because they believed their children would be better off here.
Hendricks County is becoming more diverse, but that’s not because of some “woke” decision made at the local level. It’s becoming more diverse because the United States of America is becoming more diverse, and has been for a very long time. Centuries, in fact. There are those who don’t like that idea and will dispute it, but I won’t waste time arguing with them. I’ll just suggest they review the county’s Census data across the decades.
From police officers to the school principal, you can hear how the increasing diversity of our newest residents affects local government. For example, Brownsburg Schools is responsible for educating kids whose families speak 85 different languages at home — many you’ve never heard of, particularly some of the dialects from Africa and Central America (where, contrary to common belief, not everyone speaks Spanish). One week, a youngster is in a classroom where everyone communicates in the family’s dialect, and the next week, they’re facing a teacher who speaks only English. That takes courage.
How do you handle a parent-teacher conference or special education case conference with a parent who doesn’t speak English? One solution that seems obvious to many is to use the child as a translator, but that requires complete trust in the child’s fidelity to what the teacher’s saying, and kids – well, you were one once. It happens outside of school, too. For example, how can an EMT communicate with an accident victim who doesn’t understand?
Language isn’t the only challenge. There are so many cultural differences to navigate. Here we think having a child bring a weapon to school is a bad thing. How do you explain that to a family who is just days removed from a place where getting to and from school was a literal matter of life and death? How will someone from a country where the local police regularly conduct beatings or demand bribes react when they get pulled over after rolling through a stop sign? Think of how confusing our healthcare system is to you, and then try to imagine navigating it when your vocabulary is limited.
For local government, working with a changing and growing population is just a part of everyday life. From the schools to first responders to the judicial system, they’ll tell you they don’t have the answers to immigration. They’re just doing what it takes to get the job done.