Cultural Study

Cultural Study

Brief 1: EDF 515

Egyptian Muslim Culture

Meet Nour El Din!

From: Alexandria, Egypt

Born: Oct. 10, 1984 (Age: 33)

Immigrated to the US: 2016

Currently in California

References

Nour is currently on a 2 year immigation status. So his immigration will expire in 2018. Three months before the expiration he is to apply for the Green Card which lasts for 10 years.

Immigration

Nour immigrated to the US on July 6th of last year. I met him for the first in person on July 10th of last year.

Nour immigrated due to his wife having a job in California. He previously was working as an accountant in Kuwait and now is an accountant for a school district.

The immigration process is exceptionally long and complicated. The first step is to have the I-130 Petition filed and then it's a waiting game with a lot of moving pieces. See the flow chart below from the U.S. Department of State website:

Din, N. (2017, September 15). Interview with Nour El Din (Email)

Education for All 2015 National Review Report: Egypt. (2015). Retrieved September 13, 2017, from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002299/229905e.pdf

Report of the Visa Office 2016. (n.d.). Retrieved September 17, 2017, from https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/law-and-policy/statistics/annual-reports/report-of-the-visa-office-2016.html

The Egyptian education system described and compared with the Dutch system. (2015, January). Retrieved September 20, 2017, from https://www.nuffic.nl/en/publications/find-a-publication/education-system-egypt.pdf

The U.S Department of State 2016 Fiscal Year Immigrant Visas Issued table shows that from Egypt, there was a total of 7,309 visas issued. The family preference issuing count was stated to be at 1,106 and the immediate relative count was at 3,262. Egypt ranks third in Africa for visas being issued. Egypt falls behind Nigeria (8,988) and Ethiopia (9,913) respectively.

Education

Education in Egypt as been free at public institutions since 1962. The school week in Egypt is from Saturday to Thursday compared to Monday to Friday for the States. Admission to higher education requires a General Secondary School Certificate, a Secondary School Technical Diploma with a minimum score of 65%, or a Diploma of Advanced Technical Studies. Final grades are what are required for admission and some career pursuits require higher grades than others. https://www.nuffic.nl/en/publications/find-a-publication/education-system-egypt.pdf

Nour attained his Bachelors degree from Alexandria University in 2006 for accounting and auditing. He chose to study the American Commerce System instead of the Arab Commerce System. After graduation he acquired the International Certification for Computer Science from New Horizon in 2007. This certificate mainly deals with office and professional computer sciences and the courses to attain this system was completely free.

After graduation the government, the president's son launched a campaign for fresh graduates to get free courses for computer sciences and different advanced subjects for their degrees this is where Nour attained the Certification for Computer Science.

Nour said that the education system is completely different over in the Middle East when compared to the U.S. Education in Egypt is completely free, there are not any fees to be paid. He talked about some of the fees for schools here in the States and was astounded at how much everything costs. He said maybe students in Egypt would have to pay $5 for something but when he asked me about my fees for school, he was speechless and still doesn't understand why there isn't free education in the U.S.

Language

Nour learned English through school and progressed to learn French during his secondary education years. He is fluent in English and Arabic and when I asked him if learning English was difficult. He said it's the most complicated language that he's learned. He still has some issues with grammar but from when I first met him up to now, his English has improved so much. Talking to him on the phone, he auto-corrects himself when he speaks in the wrong tense. The linguistics of English and Arabic are both very different and complicated.