By Kathianne Boniello
Tunde Kashimawo watched over her charges at Queensborough Community College earlier this month with a sharp eye as dozens of volunteers guided more than 100 immigrants through what are often laborious citizenship applications.
As Kashimawo, director of the Bayside college’s Center for Immigration, supervised Queensborough’s annual Citizenship Application Day on Oct. 11, her own journey was never far from her mind.
“It was tough at the beginning to struggle it out,” said Kashimawo, who immigrated to America from Nigeria as a student in December 1964. “But I was determined that I was to make it. That’s what I came for — I came to educate myself, to improve myself.”
With her experiences to back her up, Kashimawo has spent the last few years helping Queensborough’s considerable population of foreign-born students to not only feel at home in America, but to become citizens, as well.
The efforts have paid off: In the six years since the City University of New York system began helping foreign-born students with the citizenship process, Queensborough has worked with about 1,100 people — more than any other school in the CUNY system, according to figures provided by Kashimawo. The school created its Center for Immigration two years ago.
Overall, CUNY schools have helped about 10,200 people with the citizenship process, the figures show. Queensborough’s citizenship program is open to students, faculty, staff, their families and the community, Kashimawo said, and has attracted people from throughout Queens, the city and Long Island.
At QCC, where students hail from some 135 countries, the peak of the Center for Immigration’s work comes during the annual Citizenship Application Day, when Kashimawo and a team of volunteers from around the school typically help between 120 and 150 immigrants with citizenship applications. Kashimawo also heads Queensborough’s International Student Affairs office.
Susan Curtis, QCC’s director of marketing, got involved with the CUNY citizenship effort several years ago.
“It’s like one-stop shopping,” Curtis said, as she watched immigrants go over application forms one-on-one with volunteers, have their photos taken and get legal guidance, all for free. “The volunteers are going over the application (with them) step by step, putting the package together.”
Since the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service toughened immigration rules after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Kashimawo said the process of becoming an American citizen has gotten tougher.
“The INS is changing the regulations almost every month,” said Kashimawo. “It makes it more difficult, more hectic.”
Luis Freire, a CUNY employee, has been working with CUNY’s citizenship project since 1998, and was on hand during Queensborough’s Citizenship Application Day earlier this month.
Born in the United States but raised in Ecuador until age 11, Freire said he understands the immigrant experience from having helped his wife and other family members gain American citizenship.
When he first started in the program, Freire said, “there was a large population of Spanish-speaking students. I got involved just helping the students.”
Kashimawo credits QCC President Dr. Eduardo Marti, who took over the school’s helm in March 2000, with kick-starting the Center for Immigration.
“The citizenship project happened before then but not at the level that it is now,” said Kashimawo, who said Marti allowed the program to expand.
But being Queensborough’s point person for immigrant affairs is more than just helping people obtain citizenship, she said.
“I wish I had someone who worked with me so closely,” Kashimawo said, reflecting on her first years in the country when she obtained a bachelor’s degree in sociology from City College and a master’s degree in education from the State University of New York at Buffalo. “Maybe I wouldn’t have felt so lonely, so left out.”
To that end, Kashimawo has established mentoring programs for incoming immigrant students at QCC, where an older student works with newcomers to help make them feel more comfortable.
“It relieves a lot of burden on them and really helps them out,” she said.
For more information, please call the QCC Center for Immigration at 631-6611.
Reach reporter Kathianne Boniello by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 157.
