| Special Report: Immigrants: Pittsburgh's Changing Face
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Immigrants: Pittsburgh's Changing Face
| Part Four: Re-establishing roots - July 23, 2000 |
Faith eases immigrants' transition
When Ashvinder Kaur Mehta and her husband, Mohanbir Singh Mehta, moved to Cranberry Township with their two children eight years ago, they didn't know a soul there.
Immigrants keep low political profile
Cranberry Township is Vikram Rawal's hometown. Never mind that he was born and raised in India.
New residents find area friendly, charming
Gioconda Vasquez doesn't mind hearing ``yinz'' and ``'n'at.''
Six months ago, Vasquez traded the turbulent, crime-ridden streets of Caracas, Venezuela, for a more laid-back life in Point Breeze and the little bits of Pittsburgh that come along with it.
Making a living outside the mainstream
Pittsburgh has been good to Gilberto and Sandra.
Gilberto has a steady job, making $11 an hour in an auto-body shop - enough to support his family and rent a small two-bedroom apartment in one of the eastern suburbs.
| The refugees - Part Three - July 16, 2000 |
Refugees find peace in Pittsburgh
For the first time in years, Edvin Music and his family can sleep through the night without fear that soldiers will storm their house and kill them.
The Musics, forced to flee their war-torn Bosnian homeland, have found peace in Bridgeville.
Today, they own a home. Edvin's father is a supervisor at a machinist factory, his mother works cleaning uniforms, and he and his younger brother are in college studying computer science.
"We can sleep whole nights," said Music, 23. "We were not able to sleep there for four years. Every night you were scared someone was going to come inside your house and kill you."
Employers open doors to refugees
Without his job as a machinist at Superbolt Inc., Edis Mahic would not have been able to buy a house for his mother and younger brother and sister in Dormont last year.
Nor could he have gotten his car or the nice clothes his teen-age sister covets.
It's a big change for the family who lived hand-to-mouth in their native Bosnia during the war, finally fleeing with a few bags of clothing.
"I'm really grateful because that is big thing they did for me," Mahic said of his employer. "I can pay bills and stuff. That's a really big plus here."
Enclave grows in Whitehall
It's not unusual to walk through the Prospect Park apartment complex in Whitehall and find young Bosnian men cruising in cars, blasting the latest rock CD from their home country.
The sharp tones of neighbors speaking Bosnian are easily heard from open patio doors. Mothers call children playing outside.
The mouthwatering scents of homemade bread and meat-filled patties, called pitta, waft through the hallways.
Welcome to Pittsburgh's Little Bosnia.
Refugee benefits
Refugees are people who have left their native countries because of persecution or fear of persecution as a result of race, religion, nationality or political beliefs.
Reunited in freedom
Petar, Suncica and Tea Milanovic are finally a family.
Separated for almost three years because of the Bosnian war, and later living as unwanted refugees in Germany, the Milanovics are basking in all-American suburban stability in Castle Shannon.
"It's the first time since 1997 that we are settled in one place. We are one family," Petar Milanovic said.
| The professionals - Part Two - July 9, 2000 |
Foreign professionals drawn by economy
A century ago, immigrants, mainly from Europe, came to Pittsburgh to find a better life working unskilled mill jobs. Many of today's immigrants, however, are professionals attracted by the region's evolving economy.
``There is a considerable amount of immigration into southwest Pennsylvania and the city of Pittsburgh,'' said immigration lawyer Robert Whitehill. His firm, Deasy & Whitehill, specializes in immigration law.
``This area, of course, has universities that do result in the import of a great deal of talent, which in turn has led to the creation of spinoff corporations and local businesses,'' he said.
Government can't keep pace with demand for visas
High-tech companies here and nationwide found themselves scrambling for workers this spring after a national cap on the number of temporary foreign professionals allowed to work in the United States was reached.
As the computer industry boom continues, American companies say they've been struggling to find qualified software professionals in America, so they're importing temporary foreign workers using a pass called an H1-B visa.
Residency process often consumes time, money
The road to getting an employment-based permanent residency visa in the United States is arduous, and sometimes costly.
Just ask Jan Grudziak, an orthopedic surgeon trained in Poland. He and his family moved to Pittsburgh nine years ago after his wife received a one-year medical scholarship.
Absorbing one culture, preserving another
Rashi Venkataraman is used to being "the only one" in her Murrysville school classes - the only one of Indian descent, the only one who is a vegetarian and the only one of a different religion.
"People used to think, `Oh, she's brown,' " said Rashi, 14. "But it's not a subject anymore. Nowadays, it's fashionable."
| Turn-of-the-century Immigrants - Part One - July 4, 2000 |
Reasons for coming diverse
Edis Mahic will never forget the day Serbian soldiers stormed into his house in Bosnia and dragged his father away. It was May 20, 1992. Mahic was 17 years old. It was the day he became a man. Mahic is one of almost 60,000 immigrants cultivating roots in western Pennsylvania. Their reasons for coming here vary as much as their native languages and cultures.
An unlikely path to a dream
Jamnian Jackson is used to working hard. In her homeland, the Thai immigrant worked long hours for construction companies that paid her a mere $5 a day for backbreaking labor. Today, Jackson is still working long hours, but now she gets to call the shots: She's her own boss. Jackson, 45, and her husband, Marvin, 49, realized their dream of running their own business when they opened the Little Bangkok food truck this spring near Carnegie Mellon University.
Industrialism brings influx
At 17, Jose Garcia left his hometown of San Luis Potosi, Mexico, in 1924 in search of work. He arrived in Pittsburgh alone and barely spoke English. By the time he died in 1989, at age 82, he had been retired almost two decades from the steel mills, where he worked for more than 30 years. Her father, like thousands of others from around the world, contributed to the wave of immigrants who landed in western Pennsylvania in the early 1900s, drawn by the burgeoning steel industry.
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