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It is interesting how totally separate events and laws combine to weave a beautiful human experience. Let me begin with two facts:

1.     The  US Immigration Act of 1965 (due to Senator Kennedy) not only liberalized and equalized immigrant quota for Asian but also contained a provision for granting resident status to skilled workers and their families. “Restaurant Chefs” is a recognized category of skilled worker by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) of the US. Since the term “restaurant chef” can be interpreted very liberally,  particularly for Chinese restaurant chefs where there is little native competition and no schooling or certificate exist for such workers.  Many  Chinese, especially the less educated, used this route for quick and legal admission into the US.  True to the spirit of the law, you have to actually work in the restaurant that sponsored you and your families’ admission to the US for a specified period of time to make your resident status (green card) permanently valid. But for the less educated, restaurant work in fact became their livelihood.

2.     The state of Massachusetts always has a large immigrant population and many foreign visitors to her academic institutions. Young children who come with their family do not speak English yet they are entitled to free education in K-12 grade schools in the town their families reside. About three decades ago, a state law was passed to  mandate that “English as a Second Language (ESL)” must be taught in all grade school to children whose need one-on-one help with the English language.  Bilingual teachers were hired to carry out these special individualized instructions. My wife has a natural ability with languages (not only she is fluent in several Chinese dialects and English, but she can converse in Italian, and rudimentary Spanish and French). Thus she became an ESL teacher in the Lexington school system and travels among the several grades schools to give individual instructions to young students. In particular, she has personally taught almost all the non-English speaking Chinese kids enrolled in Lexington grade schools in the past several decades.

Against this background, one XXX family (name suppressed for privacy reasons) moved to Lexington and began working in one of the Chinese restaurants in town. Both parents are not highly educated. They did all kinds of work in the restaurant. They shared housing with another Chinese family. The two families with five kids (they have three) lived in four rooms – two parents in one room each, boys in one and girls in another. My wife tutored their children English for the first years when the children were young and just beginning school. She also serves as volunteer interpreter for the parents during teach-parent conferences and other communications (note in the US, parents have periodic and individual meeting with the teachers at least once a year to discuss the progress of their sons and daughters). This is all normal part of her job and happened quite a few years ago.  There are no special personal relationships between my wife and the parents beyond her professional duties.

Thus, it is most gratifying today (Sunday 4/26/09) that my wife received a call from the mother of the XXX family to tell her that all three of her children my wife tutored in English years ago in Lexington schools have now been admitted and studying at Harvard, Yale, and Brown (3 most prestigious Ivy League universities in the US) with full scholarship support respectively. The mother was of course enormously proud and called to thank my wife for giving her children the head start when they need it (a very Chinese tradition.  In the US, a teacher sometimes is viewed as an employee who works FOR the student). Stories such this are of course what the “American Dreams” are made of. It mirrors my families’ own experience; but I perhaps had it slightly easier. It is thus doubly meaningful when you learn of similar life stories and makes a fitting article to mark the two year anniversary of my blogs.