Class helps immigrants bridge cultural divides 'Urgent' need cited for volunteers to help with English program BY TAMMY MCKILLIP Correspondent PHOTOSBYTAMMY MCKILLIP Members of the Keyport immigrant community receive free English tutoring from Monmouth County Literacy volunteers and the Keyport Cultural Harmony Program. KEYPORT - While ordinances in many townships are being drafted to crack down on an ever-increasing undocumented immigrant population, officials and local volunteers in Keyport are looking for ways to better the lives of their town's immigrant community. "It all started about two years ago," said Margie Fischer, a Keyport Central School English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher and co-founder of the Keyport Cultural Harmony Program (KCHP). "Keyport Police Detective Tom Mitchell, my husband, Tom [Fischer], and Federico Quezada from the El Mesias Church were trying to do something to help the non-English-speaking people because some of them were having problems understanding the laws. They were getting into trouble because they didn't understand, so we had an idea that instead of giving them regular community service for any kind of minor offense, we would mandate English classes for offenders." Margie Fischer Fischer said the plan was later expanded to provide English courses and other services for non-offenders in the immigrant population, as well. "We planned a big community meeting at the El Mesias Church," she said. "We put up fliers and advertised that we had food. Mayor [John] Merla came down, and we were planning to present the city officials to try and make people more familiar with some of the laws in town to make them better citizens, but only about 10 people showed up." She said many undocumented residents were afraid of flaunting their illegal status in front of elected officials, for fear of being arrested or deported. Mitchell organized basketball games for some of the immigrant boys, and she and her husband canvassed the neighborhood on foot, walking the borough streets and back alleyways, knocking on doors and passing out over 200 fliers to try and get people to another meeting. "People would say, 'There's a detective here, and these people are all illegal! Aren't they afraid?' And I'd say no. He comes down with his wife and the baby to help out. He wants to help the people. He wants them to know they can come and talk to him." Fischer said she and her husband contacted a local bank to speak at a meeting about setting the immigrants up with bank accounts. "They were keeping large amounts of money inside their homes, and it made them easy targets for thieves, so we had bank representatives come down. But when they got there, it turned out that a lot of the people had false identification, and they could not open an account. After that, we got a little discouraged." Eventually, she said, the group decided to focus on offering free English classes, but getting people to show up for meetings was still a problem, until a few months ago, when members of the borough council proposed a regulation banning landlords from renting properties to undocumented aliens. "Somehow, the Spanish-speaking community heard about it, and everybody was at that council meeting," she said. "They had the Spanish news down there, and Channel 12 covered it. The Hispanic residents filled up the whole room." While at the meeting, Fischer and her husband were introduced to Angel Matos, who was running for council at the time, and together with Al and Claudia Degracia, Anabela Tortorell, Federico Quesada, Detective Mitchell and his wife, Rosie, and other local volunteers from the Latino Alliance of New Jersey, Jesus the Lord Catholic Church and St. Mary's Episcopal Church, they formed the organization to address the most pressing needs of the immigrant community. "These people don't even have the basic communications skills to be able to go in and say, 'I need to speak to my child's teacher because he is sick,'" said Fischer. "We wanted to help them learn English so that they could become better citizens and be in a better position to help themselves." In addition to coordinating ESL classes for adults at Keyport Central School, Fischer said the organization is attempting to get taxpayer identification numbers for many of the town's undocumented residents, so that they can open bank accounts, pay taxes and even buy their own homes, as they begin the long process of trying to obtain U.S. citizenship. She said the weekly ESL program, which began on Jan. 18 and takes place at the school from 3:30 to 5 p.m. every Thursday, will run through the end of May. In addition to teaching volunteers from the Monmouth County Literacy Program, local volunteers are needed to provide baby-sitting services to dozens of children whose parents are in class. "We had such an overwhelming response to the program," she said. "The literacy volunteers are used to working with much smaller groups, one to five, but we ended up with 50 people on the list and 35 people in our class." Fischer said the program is held after regular school hours so that the parents, most of whom don't have driver's licenses and have to walk to the school to pick up their children, will not have to make an extra trip on foot. She said the classes are taught in two rooms according to the students' assessed level, but that everyone is taught from the same book and benefits from the same program. "We have one parent in our group who has never been to school in her life," she said. "She had three children, one in our school system and two others. She has to learn basic literacy, so we have one tutor just working exclusively with her. We have some beginners, and we have some parents who can speak the language but who can't read. Then we have a mother from Pakistan who went to college and can read English but wants to improve her speaking, so she's kind of an advanced student." She said the need for child-care volunteers to help with the six-week program is "urgent" because of the large number of infants and children that need supervision. "We have students from the Girl Scouts, the Key Club, Union Beach and even Atlantic Highlands coming in to help us," she said. "The senior citizens in the town have been great helpers, but we need to get a steady volunteer pool so that the same people don't have to come in every week." She said the children, who are separated into two classrooms based upon their age group, receive homework assistance, play games and watch age-appropriate videos while their parents learn English. According to Fischer, the organization would eventually like to certify their volunteers as teachers so that they can conduct their own classes. She said volunteers do not have to speak a foreign language to become an ESL tutor, since the class in conducted entirely in English. The organization currently has no funding, other than the books, which are sold for $10 to the ESL students. There is no fee for the classes or for the child care. The KCHP hopes to continue the program next year, offering two sessions of classes, from September to December and from January to May. For information on volunteering for the Keyport Cultural Harmony Program or for ESL classes, call (732) 264-8038.