On a sunny Saturday at the Fields Corner Branch of the Boston Public Library, the children’s reading section transforms into a burbling adult learning center. Small groups of instructors and students hunch over small tables among books about shapes and colors. Together they read aloud from a study guide designed to help students through a much more advanced concept — preparing for the U.S. naturalization exam. Among the scattered study groups is volunteer Trish Fontanilla. She said she heard about the opportunity through Boston Cares, a volunteer service organization, and thought she’d try it out.
“It was my first time doing it and I was a little bit nervous talking about being an American citizen because I feel like it’s such a weird time to be doing that, but I figured I would go and try it out,” she said in an interview with WGBH News after the class.
For ten Saturday mornings this summer, while many people slept in or binged watched television, volunteers with the St. Mark Community Education Program (SMCEP) got up early to help immigrants get ready for the U.S. citizenship test. Fontanilla and many others involved with the course say they were recently motivated to volunteer with the group as immigrants and immigration policy remain in the national spotlight.
If you live in Boston, chances are you probably know an immigrant. The latest estimates from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services suggest Massachusetts is among the top 10 states where lawful permanent residents live. Last year, the agency’s Boston office received more than 19,000 applications for citizenship, with more than 10,000 currently pending.
Additionally, the city’s planning and development agency says immigrants make up slightly more than a quarter of Boston’s population. In Dorchester, immigrants make up about a third of the neighborhood. SMCEP executive director Michael Oliver said that’s the population his organization is trying to reach.
“Most people who come here see an opportunity here and they’ll do whatever they can to move forward. But sometimes, they just need help, from a program like what we have,” he explained. “We’re a stop along the way.”
Oliver has led the organization since 2013. He’s the non-profit’s only full-time employee and says he has seen an increase in volunteers since the 2016 presidential election. That prompted him to think about how SMCEP could do more. Next fall, the program will expand — for the first time — to multiple locations.
One of the new partners will be Dorchester-based health center, DotHouse Health. Additional partnerships are still in the works.
Sitting in the clammy basement of the St. Mark’s rectory, Oliver admitted he isn’t entirely sure all the classes will be packed with students.
“I’m thinking that if we offer classes in places where there’s high concentration of people we’ll be able to reach some of those folks that we don’t reach here,” he said. “This is a hypothesis that there are people out there waiting and that if you offer these classes in these different places, you’re going to get a crowd.”
Oliver says it’s hard to effectively track the program’s success rate. Some people take the class when they’re not yet eligible to naturalize. Others apply more than once before becoming citizens, like Sung Nguyen.
“I think this St. Mark program help[s] so much,” he said.
Nguyen came to the states from Vietnam less than a decade ago. He’s 77 years old now and says before coming here, he hadn’t studied English since high school. He took the test twice with the help of SMCEP before becoming a citizen in 2016. He now works alongside Mike Oliver and the volunteers.
Fontanilla says she wants to keep volunteering, too. She said she feels her efforts do make a small ripple against what she sees as a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment.
“These are just other human beings — mothers, sisters — folks that just want better lives for them and their families, and they’re working hard to assimilate or become as American as they can,” she said.
The new, expanded classes offerings from St Marks Community Education program are set to begin next month.
