Chicago is one of the biggest cities in the USA that still attracts many immigrants every year for work or school. It’s the home town of many international companies like Motorola and one of the biggest schools in the country, the University of Chicago. It is an international city that hosts many ethnic groups from all over the world. The dominant community among immigrants is the Hispanics, and then the Polish. These two communities are present and active in the public life of citizens and are very well organized. Being an Algerian that has lived in Chicago for a few years pushed me to question myself about the Algerian community in Chicago. Most educated Algerian immigrants in Chicago went through a rigorous education system in Algeria, and when they come to Chicago they confront even more steps to be considered educated in the USA. They go through these steps because they are a small community that wants to grow through education. They already have a degree from Algeria, and they want to pursue their path; also, most of them are young and without family responsibilities.

The Algerian education system is copied straight from the French educational one that the Algerian government has continued to follow since the independence from France in 1962. Basically, children start their elementary education when they are six. They go through six years of school; then they move to the middle school where they spend three other years of general education; it ends with a final orientation decision that sometimes works against the students’ will. After that, they go to high school already oriented to one of the fields: science, humanities, or technical studies. During that period, students get put in a field which they follow all the way to the university. All these years of studies are basically in Arabic, at least for my generation, with French as a second language from the fourth grade. Most likely, students start English in the eighth grade and continue it all the way to the university as a third language. When students go to college, French become the language of technical and scientific studies; all other humanities and social sciences are continued in Arabic. On the contrary, Algerians who attended school just after the independence were basically using French as their first language and Arabic as the second. This Algerian educational system seems very different from the American one which prepares all students with the same general education till they reach College. Then, they decide which field they want to specialize in. after being educated in this Algerian educational system, Algerian students confront difficulties adapting to the American system because of the language and also the evaluation of their degrees that is basically based on credential hours of study, not on the grade point average of the whole academic year, as it is in Algeria.

            Motivation is very important for people to proceed in their lives and even to exist and reach their goals. In Algeria at least three languages are officially spoken that linguistically are very far from English. Because of that, it doesn’t seem too easy for any Algerian to integrate in the American way of living at all, but sometimes it’s one of the biggest motivators. I noticed that language is one of the biggest obstacles for many communities to build themselves. Lots of people from large communities like the Polish or the Hispanics are less motivated to learn English than people from other nationalities, like the Iranians or the Algerians, that definitely will find themselves isolated if they don’t work on their English skills first. Hispanics and the Polish can shop in Spanish or Polish stores using their native tongue without any problem. They can get a job even without speaking a word of English. On the other hand, Algerians don’t have this opportunity, so they find themselves forced to learn English, which makes their decision to continue their education easier. They usually start with an ESL program (Jeff Libman xii) that most of the city colleges of Chicago offer for free.

In fact, those Algerians who are already holding a degree from Algeria confront a lot of problems of evaluation due to differences of the educational systems. Furthermore, The Algerian and the American education systems are not quite similar, which makes life harder for those Algerians that hold a degree from Algeria. That was one of the questions that I had to ask an Algerian medical doctor that moved to Chicago recently about four years ago. He had gotten his degree evaluated after going through several exams within a three year period of full time preparation.

 Most likely, people who came from Algeria to Chicago recently are legal immigrants that came under the diversity lottery program, which is a government program that offers permanent residence for persons from countries with low rates of immigration.“In 1998, 1378 Algerians were winners of the DV-99” (miller 3). Most of them have recently graduated from college. They are seeking a better opportunity, which for them starts with school. During the first year, educated Algerian immigrants accept unskilled jobs to cover the expenses that life in the city imposes. All the pressure of Chicago, the fast moving city, might hold their horses back; especially for those who do not have much ambition and their field of study was the humanities. Others keep going breaking down the language barrier which for some others is a language complex. All these people are basically science or technical majors; Algerians that hold humanity degrees will most likely switch to a technical or science major without using their credits from Algeria. The nature of the degree they hold mostly deals with culture and values rather than science and technology.

            Being a single adult was a great help for most Algerian immigrants in going back to school. Arriving to the USA from another country where the language of study and work is not English and having a family doesn’t help recent immigrants go back to school and work in their field later on. That’s exactly what happened to most Eastern European immigrants some of whom hold a Ph.D. degree from their native country, but after a few years of being in the USA they can’t start school again. Supporting their families was their only concern, but on the other side, most Algerian immigrants are single have part-time jobs, just to cover their expenses and invest the rest of their time in school.

            Algerian families evaluate education and respect educated family members. Being a doctor or an engineer in a family that doesn’t have educated members is a big honor. Most likely the generation just after the independence was not educated because of the French colonial policy that kept them away from school. That’s why having a son or a daughter in the family, who holds a university degree, is a big deal, especially when you have that degree from a university that has a good reputation, or from a country which values science and education like the USA.

Other Algerians stay far from school. They just work unskilled jobs, even if they hold a university degree from Algeria or from another country; many obstacles separate them from their educated background.