Are We Taking Care of Immigrant Elders? – America is No Country for Old Men
What lessons can we learn about the lives of immigrant elders from the tragic mass-shootings in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay? Uncharacteristically, the hand that clutched the weapon in two recent mass shootings in California was that of an elderly man. Most mass shooters are young men. The real reasons behind the shootings still elude authorities, but society is still reeling from the tragedy.
This is a demographic of our population that is largely invisible – not just AAPI elders but many immigrant elders from all backgrounds – who keep their stories to themselves. Invisibility reinforces their sense of isolation and with the isolation comes fear.
More often than we realize, elders are the targets of violent crime. According to the National Council on Aging, suicide rates are high among this group: they comprise 12% of the population but make up approximately 18% of suicides.
Although many find ways to break through the isolation on their own, like the people killed in the Monterey Park ballroom, there’s no quick fix – not mental health care, nor gun control, nor ballroom dancing salons. This is about us, our society. America is no country for old men.
At an Ethnic Media Services briefing, Feb. 3, experts – Helen Zia, Asian American author, journalist and activist; Rita Medina, Deputy Director of State Policy and Advocacy at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles (CHIRLA); Laura Som, MAYE Center for healing of survivors of trauma, systemic racism, oppression, inequity, Long Beach; Dr. Brett Sevilla, Medical Director of the Asian Pacific Counseling and Treatment Centers, Los Angeles; and Linda Yoon, Co-founder of the Yellow Chair Collective, culturally responsive Asian American therapy – explored what we can do to serve our elders better.
Helen Zia shared her personal perspectives, a personal testimony on the invisibility of immigrant elders, through a video call.
“My most recent book, ‘Last Boat Out of Shanghai,’ I interviewed a few hundred elder Chinese immigrants in their 70s, 80s, and 90s, and over and over again, I would ask them about their lives and the things they experienced as children, as migrants, as exiles, growing up in times of war and trauma,” said Zia.
“Many of them talked to me and said, ‘I’ve never told anybody this. I never told anybody how I walked to school and I saw dead children in the street, with dogs chewing on them, or how they saw people being beheaded, or how they had to walk hundreds of miles, not knowing when they would get another meal,’” said Zia.
“This wasn’t just the people I interviewed. This is the vast majority of Asians in America [who] are immigrants, and to come from where they came from, they went through a lot. So many have gone through war, starvation, civil war, great trauma, witnessed terrible things, and so these people I interviewed they would say ‘I’m telling you this for the first time, I’ve never told anybody,’ and I would say to them ‘you didn’t tell your children, your adult grown children?,’ and they would say, ‘No, I don’t think anybody wanted to hear this. I don’t think anybody wants to listen. You’re the first person who ever asked me.’
“It is no surprise that within our communities there are people, elders, who have been made invisible, treated not even as human beings, who feel isolated and experience mental health issues.
“You can see the fear of so many people who heard about what was happening in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay, and so many other places in America, where seniors have been attacked. They are immigrant seniors, and too many of them have been killed, or terribly injured, so when Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay happened, people just recoiled.
“It triggered all of that fear; all of that isolation, and none of that is good for anybody’s mental health,” said Zia.
“’The Vincent Chin Legacy Guide’ has a whole section in it about people who have been attacked and hurt. So many of them have been our immigrant elders, 84-year-old Vicha Ratanapakdee, or when you look at the women who were killed in Atlanta, three of the six Asian women who were killed were over the age of 60, and they were working, or the FedEx workers in Indiana, the Sikh workers who were killed, several of them were over 60.
“We have so many of our elders who are still working, who with the Asia, the stereotypes, if they’re not invisible it’s also viewed that ‘Oh! They all must be laying back eating bon bons,’ or something like that, but it’s just simply not true,” said Zia.
Rita Medina of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant and Refugee Rights spoke next.
“This question of why were people still working in their 70s, this is something that at CHIRLA, we are turning our attention to in the next several years,” said Medina.
“For the last decade or so, we’ve been working and organizing to expand access to a variety of benefits in California for undocumented individuals. We’ve talked about children. We’ve talked about families, mothers, but where we still see a gap is in the telling of stories, the spotlight on a population that is really with our senior population.
“It started to pick up a little bit in the last couple of years with the fight to expand, and now implement, access to Medi-Cal, for folks who are 50 and over. There’s the discussion of food benefits, but really what is California doing as a state to shine a light on this population that is only going to continue to grow and grow undocumented because of the absence of any real solutions at the federal level.
“Why folks continue to work into what should be their golden years?
“They have to as they don’t have access to social security benefits, a retirement in a real formalized way, so they have to continue to work,” said Medina.
“According to the 2019 American Community Survey, it was spotlighted that there were about 16,800 undocumented seniors, and seniors in this sense when we looked at it through the Center for Migration Studies, was 65 and over, so we’re looking at it up almost 17,000 folks in 2019 who were undocumented and 65 and over in California.
“We know that this is followed by a large number of folks who are 50 and over, getting close to that 65-year age, the age where typically people think about access to retirement, and for our folks that is not something that is necessarily coming.
“Looking at that same data take you to another data source the Migration Policy Institute looks at that 2019 moment and they note that individuals who are 55 and over, also undocumented in California, is about 239,000.
“It’s many folks that we’re talking about, people who continue to age in the absence of any kind of immigration reform, waiting in some cases, over a decade, because they’re not able to adjust their status, and in different levels of employment.
“We are talking about everything from domestic workers, farm workers, street vendors, construction workers. Their bodies are physically breaking down because of the work that they’re doing, knee problems from bending and construction, back problems from working as a domestic worker, and we’re thinking, how do we turn our attention to uplift their stories,” said Medina.
“It’s hard to find good data on our immigrant seniors for a lot of the reasons – people don’t want to talk about it unless they’re asked; they put their head down; they are doing their work; they’ve been doing this work; and so we just feel like there’s this moment, this opportunity to lift up this fact that there is no retirement, there is no nesting, there’s not a concrete monetary support that is available for our undocumented and immigrants.
“Folks are paying taxes, but they are not able to access Social Security benefits because they are undocumented. Even if somebody does reach the point where they can adjust their status, do they eventually have access to benefits?
“It could be that this person has worked jobs that are low wage, or inconsistent, for most of their life.
“California is working on their master plan for aging. Please be on the lookout in the next couple of months, we are going to be launching an education campaign, uplifting stories of our individual cheered members, and just really looking at their journey from entering into the United States, working, and where they are now, what they see as their prospects as they’re getting older, and then what their hope for the future,” said Medina.
Laura Som, founder-director of MAYE Center, spoke about how she came to Los Angeles when she was about 10, among hundreds and thousands of other Cambodian Chinese, escaping the genocide.
“During the genocide, many had and have PTSD, including myself. Our community has struggled with mental health for many decades in America since then. As of 1.5 generation, I grew up in America witnessing my elders and my community’s mental health deterioration from the aftermath of wars, extreme violence, and neglect by the mainstream community.
“Some of the symptoms of these traumas are hatred, violence, rage, and depression. Little has been done to shield young children from it.
“As a young child I had hoped that by studying hard I could heal myself and bring healing resources to my community because I couldn’t afford to wait. Today, I’m the executive director of the MAYE Center also the founder of a trauma healing center in Cambodia Town in Long Beach, Calif.
“The MAYE Center provides an organized, culturally appropriate means for mental health wellness for refugees and immigrants,” said Som.
Dr. Brett Sevilla of the Asian Pacific Counseling and Treatment Centers spoke next.
“We’ve been supporting our clients and community through the wave of anti-Asian hatred and violence of recent years.
“While other agencies were stationed at the community center in Monterey Park, our bilingual staff went into the nearby schools assessing and supporting about three dozen students identified as struggling with their emotions.
“After seeing videos of attacks on Asian elders many are afraid to leave home. The elderly who have not been exposed to trauma still experience multiple stressors that jeopardize their mental health.
“Monolingual elders are typically dependent on family for transportation, translation, and assistance. They may be unable to communicate with their grandchildren, or their in-laws, or their traditional authority in the family may not be respected.
“When younger generations move away for work or education, the elders may feel disrespected, abandoned, or become isolated due to limited acculturation and lack of assistance.
“Illness tends to increase with age, as does disability, and death, resulting in the loss of family members; of status; of professional identity; of ability and mobility.
“Many cannot access health care because of language, transportation, insurance, and financial hardship, and while these barriers apply to mental health care as well.
“There’s an even bigger barrier that we face, the stigma of mental illness. Any psychiatric condition, no matter how wild, is equated with being crazy and is considered shameful not just for the person with the symptoms, but for the whole family.
“When confronted with behavior changes or psychiatric symptoms, families will first try to contain the problem, and the person at home, if they struggle, they might seek support from clergy in an ethnic church or temple, if that isn’t enough a primary care physician might be consulted, but primary care providers may not recognize the psychiatric issue because the complaints are more often physical than psychological.
“In addition, the doctor may hold stigmatized beliefs about psychiatric illness and fail to diagnose an underlying depression or anxiety disorder. If they eventually do see a psychiatrist the person is often severely impaired, angry about being accused, of being crazy, and the family is exhausted medications may be rejected or not taken consistently, as Western medication is believed to be too strong or even a cause of mental illness.
“Psychotherapies are unfamiliar and counter-intuitive given that one should not talk about personal problems outside of one’s family.
“Our agency’s approach to overcoming these barriers include locating our offices in Asian enclaves; placing staff in local schools; providing culturally affirming services in the client’s native language; linking families to community resources for practical support; offering vocational rehabilitation housing and psychosocial recovery programs; conducting community outreach education and prevention programs; and negotiate in a common understanding of what may be causing their problems and what can be done about it through a culturally respectful dialogue,” said Dr. Sevilla.
Next up was Linda Yoon, co-founder of the Yellow Chair Collective, a culturally responsive Asian-American Therapy Center.
“After the Monterey Park shooting, since we’re located in Los Angeles, we have responded by providing pro bono services to those who have been directly impacted,” said Yoon.
“Asian immigrant population are very vulnerable, but seniors in America are vulnerable as well. They’re very invisible and the resources are very limited.
“A lot of young graduate social workers graduate without education or awareness that this is a population in need, and can be served,” said Yoon.
“There are many in the community that would prefer to deny the existence of mental health issues within our Asian Community because they feel that it’s shameful; that it makes our community look bad; so I realize it’s an uphill struggle to bring these stories to the public but I think ultimately that’s probably going to be the most inspiring,” said moderator and executive director of Ethnic Media Services, Sandy Close.
