Journal 9

Kian Raheem

English 1109 Mon/Wed 10:30-12:20

Mr. Lohre

November 29, 2016

Journal 9

            A story that connected with in the book Callings was the story of Austin Chen. He was an immigrant from Taiwan and spent a part of his life in South America.  The special thing about his story is that the amount of work and effort he gave to become a doctor. Having no green card, he was unable to continue on to medical school. He was forced to work low end jobs that did not require a lot of experience. Chen got a job with a cleaning company, and he quotes “And most of the people that I worked with there were immigrants” (Chen 143). Due to him cleaning places he has a lot of respect to the people who clean the hospital after he is done. Chen worked hard to get to where he is today, but learned many lesson in doing so, that he applies and appreciates now.

            I can relate to this because my family being immigrants a lot of things are hard. My dad couldn’t find a good enough job to support my mom and I, and even at one point we spent a night in our car that we had because we had no place to stay. The efforts my father has put in for my family to be the way it is was hard and difficult. Yet, all the lesson he’s learned since then allows him to respect the people who are not so fortunate and are struggling similar to how Chen does.

            Something I found interesting is that Chen says “and most of the people that I worked with there were immigrants” which made me wonder how many immigrants are in the house keeping business. According to the Omega Janitorial Service Blog, that company hire undocumented works so they have a leg up against their competitors who are following the rules and regulations. Just reading that, you almost feel sorry for those workers because they have no choice, so they just do it.