By the Numbers

When I was six or so, I had to memorize a string of nine numbers. About a year earlier, I had learned to count to one hundred by rote as a requirement for entering kindergarten at the public school. My oldest brother, Mike, helped me with both of these tasks, as well as tying my shoes, another pre-req for kindergarten. The string of nine numbers was broken into chunks of three numbers, two numbers, and four numbers. Mike had me repeat each chunk over and over until I had each one tattooed on my mind and could call it forth on command.

Of course, I was learning my Social Security number.

There is little a person can accomplish in the US without a Social Security number. School enrollment, bank accounts, any kind of credit, and all interactions with local, state, and federal government require it. In grad school, we graduate assistants had to type the last four digits of our SSNs into the copy machine for it to function. And it tallied our paper usage according to the number, refusing to let us make more copies when our maximum quota had been reached.

All the students in my ESOL classes have Social Security numbers that were issued as part of their immigration process as refugees. Few have memorized their numbers; even fewer understand how important this basic identifier is in the US.

The students in Rebecca’s Vocational ESOL class are ostensibly eligible for and actively seeking employment. I say “ostensibly” because they are not all great candidates for the job market. Take Lindu for example. (I have changed all the names of the refugees I write about to protect their privacy.) He is 65 years old and has been in the US for about a year and a half. He began learning English when he arrived here.

“He’s not going to get a job,” Rebecca tells me, speaking quietly so the English-speaking administrators of ASIA, Inc., won’t overhear. “He’s got diabetes. He’s told me several times that he wants to be on SSI. They keep him in this class so they can bill for it.”

Rebecca worked at the International Institute as an Immigration Specialist for eleven years, helping refugees and asylees fill out endless government paperwork for things like changing visa status or petitioning for a family member to enter the country. She understands the complexity of the citizenship process, as well as the byzantine process of applying for and maintaining government funding.

On the second day I showed up to volunteer with her class, we spent the first full hour helping eight students sign in on three separate forms. One form required only a signature and printed name, the other two required the student’s SSN and signature, as well as the class start and end times.

As I walked into class about five minutes late, one of the students was on his way out.

“You’re not staying?” Rebecca asked with a small smile.

“No,” he replied; “Working. Cleveland.”

“But you signed in…”

The student smiled back and turned both his palms up with a slight shrug of his shoulders, as if to say I don’t know.

“See,” Rebecca turned to me, “they don’t really care if they stay; they just want the signature so they can bill for the class.”

Rebecca then spent a few minutes venting some of her frustrations about how this agency “works the system” to get the most funding they can, whether or not the refugees are getting the services and support they need.

“This is really two classes,” she explained about the group of nineteen or so who are usually in her Tuesday/Thursday group. “Half are pretty good and already have some kind of work. The other half, well…”

The “other half” are more like Lindu: older, less skilled, hardly fluent in English at all, not realistically capable of being employed. And yet, by placing them in a Vocational class, the agency can bill the government for a lot more money than if they were in, say, a Basic Life Skills class.

“This is a country of documentation,” Rebecca explains to the students as they struggle with the forms. “We have to fill out a lot of forms and document everything here.”

Once the forms were done, Rebecca spent the second hour of class teaching that “other half” about how SSNs are arranged (3-2-4) and helping them memorize their respective numbers. Meanwhile, I worked with the three more advanced students on directional phrases, like next to, across from, and in between.

Rebecca is leaving this class in two weeks to start a new job with an immigration law firm in town.

“When I go,” she said to me, “I’ll recommend you for the position!”

She said this with enthusiasm, as if it were a gift she was giving me. I responded coolly.

Both Susan, the teacher of the International Institute class I help in, and Rebecca have shown me how difficult, demanding, and taxing it is to make a living teaching ESOL. Susan tells me how hard it is to maintain a household budget when she gets paid for six weeks of teaching, then not for two weeks between classes. Rebecca tells me how she’s been struggling for six weeks to teach this one class made up of two distinctly different learning levels—and how she has asked repeatedly for an assistant, with no response until I showed up this week.

I don’t think she realizes how back-handed her compliment of a recommendation is.

Why would I want to take over a job that demands so much physical and mental energy, that offers very little in the way of administrative or material support, that pays below minimum wage (per hour), and that offers no long-term security or benefits?

The answer is Pabi’s face when he could finally recite his SSN back to me at the end of class without looking at the scrap of paper it was scribbled on. His deeply tanned and creased skin beamed with pride, much as mine had so long ago when I recited my own SSN to my brother, then to my mother, and finally to the principal at school who noted it in my permanent record.

Yes, we are a country of documentation, of numbers and forms and bureaucracy. But we are also, more importantly, a country of people, of faces and names and stories.