Deporting Cambodian-Americans who Commit Crimes: Passing the blame…

Today, while reading the KI-Media blog of Cambodian news, I came across an article outlining the plight of Cambodian-Americans who break the law and are deported to Cambodia. Many of them have never lived in Cambodia – they grew up in refugee camps on the Thailand border, and moved to Long Beach when toddlers. They don’t speak the language (Khmer), and have more knowledge of Hip Hop culture than Cambodian culture. When they commit crimes in the US, they are deported to Cambodia, and left to fend for themselves. These are people already on the margins of American society – people with addiction and mental health issues. To quote Holly Bradford, founder of an NGO to help re-patriate these Cambodians:  “In my opinion, it is a direct violation of his human rights to send somebody who has that kind of mental illness to a country where there’s no resources to treat him.” She goes on to say that 25% of deportees have mental health problems. Drug use runs rampant among deportees once they arrive in Phnom Penh. Bradford’s NGO, Korsang, gives work to some of the deportees, taps into their sordid past as a way to educate others, and aids them in acculturation.

Cambodia is a country already rife with child poverty and inequity. It seems ridiculous to me that these Cambodian-Americans, who grew up in the USA, who are products of American culture, and who were failed by the American education and legal system, should be returned to a country struggling to deal with its own demons of the past. It seems like the American government is sending away its dirty laundry instead of acknowledging and addressing what is causing the crime and drug abuse, the beginning of which might be the decision to prop up Lon Nol’s government in Cambodia in the 1970s. But, that’s another post all in itself… You can read the whole article about the deportation here.

Sharing Experiences

As part of the creative process for our collective (The Theatre part of the Dinner Theatre I’m working on) students wrote found poems using newspaper articles about their neighbourhood. Due to poverty and all the various isms that are alive in our world (racism/classism/ageism, etc.) almost all of the articles portray the neighbourhood negatively. To give you a sense, here are a few of the headlines: Break and Enters Rise; Trial Set for Teenager Accused of Lighting 80 Fires; 20 Years for Double Slaying; Twelve Sub-standard Homes Shut Down — I think you get the point.

One young woman in my class chose the article entitled Pit Bull Used as Weapon Against Officers, Police Claim. When explaining her poem to me, she asked if it was alright that she called the dog Champ, since that was his name. She told me that she knew the dog, and was so sad when it was shot by the Police. This led into a discussion about the stories we were reading. The students noted that only one side of the story was told, and it never included anything positive. We decided that part of our show will tell those stories to add some humanity to the negative daily (it really is daily!) press the neighbourhood receives.

Another activity students did was to list confessions about things they did. These were then reworded to begin with “we” in order to reflect the universality of their experiences amongst students their age. I used this activity to try to help the students understand that their realities are not all that different from those of other students. One confession was “We drink too much.” I related a story from years ago when some friends and I rented a house near one of the cities most prestigious high schools. Coming home from a night out, I passed hundreds, literally hundreds, of teenagers walking down the street. As I got closer to my place, teens were pouring out of the neighbour’s house, and a police car was there. However, there was no media coverage the next day. I asked my students if they thought that it would be in the paper if there was a party of teens that had to be broken up by the police in their neighbourhood, and they thought it would for sure. This led us to another discussion on the media, and what they choose to report, or not report.

So, it was a very satisfying week – however, we are running short on time. We have nine days until Easter (2.5 days of which we are on field trips touring theatres or watching plays) and after Easter, we have a week to pull it together. Oh my.

Reality Check

Two interactions over the last two days caused me to take a step back from my middle-class world, and appreciate everything I have that I take for granted.

In drama class, we were reading an abridged version of MacBeth. While trying unsuccessfully to help a student understand the idea of “theme” I was caught off guard when he asked me what I knew about welfare. I told him not much, and asked why. He said, “Well, I want to see if they can set me up with an apartment, so that I can keep coming to school.” Then the whole story came out – he is 17, has been kicked out of his house for months and is currently staying with a cousin, but is feeling like a burden, and not wanting to outstay his welcome. He is still in grade 10, with no high school credits, but has a desire to complete school. The significance of theme vanished immediately, and I took him to our Student Services teacher, who referred him to an Elder we have on staff to work it out. He came back to class later that morning, and seemed in better spirits, assuring me that he had a plan. Oh, and he suggested that a possible theme for the play would be that power corrupts.

The other interaction occurred yesterday, when a student tracked me down in the hallway and apologized for missing my class that morning. He explained that he had an appointment with Social Services to see if he would qualify for Social Assistance. He told them that he wants to quit his full-time job, so he can focus on getting through school. However, when he was there, he didn’t have all of the identification required, and so he had to walk back to his house (a 45 minute walk in -30 degree Celsius temperatures) and get it. He stopped in at the school for a minute en route back to the office to tell me why he was absent, and why he had to leave again right away, and would miss the rest of his classes for the day.

Moments like these remind me that teachers at my school are fighting an uphill battle against poverty and its myriad of side effects. So much affects our students that is beyond both our, and their control. I am also reminded of the privilege afforded me through no doing of my own – my white skin color, my middle-class upbringing, my literate family, my supportive parents – I could go on, but you get the point.