Immigrants Face Language Barrier
By Alex Villarreal

For the more than 650,000 Latino immigrants in North Carolina, education is a major concern. And the first step is learning the language.

Maribel Cieza, her husband and their three daughters moved to the United States from Peru just two years ago.

She says the language barrier created a different struggle for each member of her family.

Her middle child, Michelle, suffered the most when she began kindergarten last year at Mary Scroggs Elementary School.

"When she went to school, it was a disaster,” Cieza says. “Since everything was in English and the teachers could not evaluate her, she was considered a child who knew nothing."

"It's just one of those things we need to be aware of,” says Anne Stanfield, family specialist at Mary Scroggs Elementary. “The difference in, when children come with their skills, what they have, and what we expect them to have and what we want them to have."

Kids are not the only ones affected by the language gap. Although Cieza speaks some English, her husband speaks none.

"He has a lot of abilities,” Cieza says. “He studied administration. He's a prepared man, but because of the language, he can't advance."

Ben Balderas, executive director of El Centro Latino in Carrboro, says the center offers classes in English as a Second Language (ESL) because, as Cieza has
experienced, not knowing the language prevents advancement in this country.

"If they want to succeed, and if they want to make it and get by, they need to learn the English language," Balderas says.

Cieza says that although she and her husband want to learn English, with her husband working seven days a week and sometimes 12-hour days, they can’t spare the time to attend ESL classes.

"We are a large family,” Cieza says. “We have three daughters. I don't have constant work, and he works all the time, so this possibility of saying ‘OK, I'm going to study’ doesn't exist for us."