Immigration Program Builds Understanding of our American Indentity

Dirk Ten Brinke of Eugene, Oregon, has a facility with Dutch, the complicated language of his ancestors, even though his parents - both immigrants from Holland - didn't speak that much Dutch in their home.

"They spoke Dutch when they didn't want the children to understand what they were saying," laughs Ten Brinke. "But I could generally pick up on the conversation."

His parents came separately through Ellis Island to the United States. His mother was just a young girl when she left with her family from a town near Amsterdam to make the journey to America.

"I think my grandfather came here for a better life, for greater personal and religious freedom," he muses.

Ten Brinke ventured back to the homeland of his parents as a young man, meeting one of his grandmothers. He's seen the names of his parents on the manifests of the ships that brought them over and read letters from his grandfather, describing the experiences of the family to his relations back in Holland. Still, he wanted more insight.

"There's such a degree of bias regarding immigration, especially today. I'm interested to what extent did my parents experience that bias when they arrived," he says. He found some answers by enrolling in a course at OASIS.

"The Immigrant Experience: A Journey to Becoming American" is a national education project on the history of immigration in America. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the project explores the story through five core courses in history, literature, film, food, and culture.