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AU: After I retired, I worked with immigration for about thirty-eight years, and then I retired about seven years ago. And after one year, they had a special project going for citizenship, and they called me back, and they wanted me to help them for about six months giving citizenship tests and so forth, and so I agreed to go back for six months. Ended up being there for two and a half years, so I said that's enough. But it was emotionally getting to me because I'm giving the citizenship test. Of course, you know, normally you have to be able to read and write and speak English. Well, there's a provision where, say if you're sixty years old or older and you have more than twenty years permanent residency here in the United States, you may use an interpreter, so you don't have to be able to read or write. Well, a lot of those refugees that came in from Cambodia and Vietnam and so forth, the elderly people don't have the twenty years. They may be old, you know, they may be over sixty , you know, seventy years old, but they don't have the twenty years' residency, and they wanted citizenship. And I try, you know, you try to make them understand. You try to make it easy for them, but there is a certain amount that they have to at least be able to write a simple sentence like, you know, "it is a nice day," or something like that. And I think they have one sentence that they had practiced like, "my name is Fong," or something like that. And then I say, "Can you write, 'The sky is gray'?" And then they would write, "My name is Fong." I said, "No, no. I'm sorry, you have a second chance. You come back again." Well, they cry and they plead with me, you know, and it was getting to me after a while because you feel so bad. You understand, I know, you want it, but you keep on saying, "You don't have to be a citizen to live here, you know. You got permanent resident. You can live here for the rest of your life and not be a citizen. She wants the citizenship." And when you, when you, you know, come to that, and then of course, the children come in, and they jump on me and say, "Why don't you give it to her?" I say, you know, you tell them, but they say, "Well, she understands." Well, she really doesn't understand. But anyway, it was, it was getting to me, and I finally said, "No, I think I have to leave, "because it was taking an emotional toll on me. But in many, I was able to help.

One funny story is that, you've heard of those pen, not pen pals, those people that you correspond with overseas to get girlfriends and so forth, right, lonely hearts club like. Okay. There's a lot of like people from Philippines or something, very young girls, and you know, eighteen, twenty years old, and here's this man over here who's an American man, eighty-some years, almost ninety years old, and he comes, he comes to me and said he wants to marry this girl. He's in love with this girl. She's in love with him, and you say, "No. I don't think so. Are you sure?" And the kid, his kids are coming to me, said, "Please don't approve this thing," you know. And so anyway, we talked to him and say, I talked to him. I says, "Look. You know why she's doing this to you. It's not because she really loves you. Her whole purpose is to come to the United States, and you're being used for it. Don't you understand?" And he says, "No." So he goes to Philippines. He marries her, and he files a petition to bring her over here. All right, they're legally married, so what can do you? So he comes over, he says, "You know, I went over there, I got married to her, and she's coming over here as my wife," and I says, "Fine." So she comes over here. She's not going to stay with him. The next thing, he comes in. He says, "You know, you were right." He said, "She's running around with this young guy, and she's left me." And the immigration, they're helping her. They're not helping me. I said, "No. But according to the law, you're legally married to her, and she's got residence here, so we can't do anything," you know. And I said, "I told you before, you wouldn't listen to me." He said, "You were right," but that was after. But it's funny stories like that. And then much later, he used to come in the office when I went, then he would look at me and say, "Remember me?" And I says, "Yes, I remember you." But we had funny, all kinds of funny stories.

SG: Was the immigration job the first job you had when you came to the United States?

AU: The first and only job. So I've been with the immigration over forty years.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.