Emiljana Ulaj recently took the oath as a member of the Westchester City Council in New York. Ulaj arrived in the United States at the age of ten. Her family was persecuted during the communist regime in Albania, and they left the country in 1997 following the crisis caused by pyramid schemes.
A few days ago, the Albanian-American politician from the Democratic Party, Emiljana Ulaj, was sworn in for the post of a member of the Westchester City Council in New York.
Mrs. Ulaj is the fourth immigrant and the second of Albanian origin, after Vedat Gashi, to secure a place in this 17-member city council. She is the first Albanian-American woman to take on this role in Westchester.
“It was a big and exciting day, very meaningful for me as an immigrant, a refugee who came to this country at the age of ten without knowing English, and later entered the race for a city council member and was elected to that role. This means a lot and speaks to how wonderful this country is, offering these opportunities to immigrants. All the oppressed in the world can attest to this. I think America is a beacon of light, that if you are persecuted anywhere in the world, your dream is to come here. Because this is a country where your family name and your past don’t matter. If you work hard, you can succeed” says Mrs. Ulaj in an interview with Voice of America.
Mrs. Ulaj’s family left Albania in 1997 when the country was plunged into a deep crisis, a few years after the fall of the communist dictatorship. She and her family stayed as refugees in Italy for almost a year before gaining asylum in the United States.
“One morning, a relative of my mother knocked on our door at 5 am and told us that a ship was leaving for Italy. He said if we wanted to leave, we had to go now. The family decided to leave that morning. We left suddenly. It was a time when everything was scary. Schools were closed. There were tanks in the streets. People were buying weapons to keep others away from their homes. It was an uncertain and frightening time” says Mrs. Ulaj.
Although years have passed, Mrs. Ulaj, who came to the United States at a young age, continues to remember the sufferings of her ancestors during the communist period in Albania. She says the stories she grew up with have influenced her ambitions and her formation as a politician.
“My mother’s family was severely persecuted during communism in Albania. They killed seven men from her family. My grandfather was imprisoned for ten years and then lived in an internment camp almost all his life, until democracy came to Albania. In the internment camp, he met his wife, my grandmother, whose family was also persecuted. I have always heard these stories from my mother, their sufferings during that political regime. All these experiences, my mother’s stories, are in my mind. I hope there is life after death, so my grandfather, who suffered so much, can see his granddaughter in America, who has become part of politics and is helping others” she says.
Mrs. Ulaj sees her tenure on the City Council as an opportunity to improve people’s lives. Some of her key priorities are affordable housing and renewable energy sources.
“Most people who rent are burdened by high prices. The elderly and those with fixed incomes have a hard life. Young people, after finishing their studies, cannot afford an apartment. Rent used to be a sacrifice one made to save money to buy a house. People can’t save, and this brings other problems. A house is an investment for the future, for your retirement. In addition, we have a planet that we must protect for future generations by building renewable energy sources. Expanding public transport is another issue. I also want to see opportunities for young people to engage in processes, to hear their voices, because they will inherit our decisions, so they should have a voice in the decisions we make” she says.
Mrs. Ulaj says that young people in the Albanian-American community, especially those who want to engage in politics, are at the heart of her first mandate.
“One of the biggest challenges when growing up as a first-generation immigrant is that, when you are interested in something, you don’t know what to do, you don’t have the right connections. My parents didn’t have the connections for me to find a job as an intern, or if I wanted to get involved in politics, I didn’t know who to turn to. I didn’t know who to talk to, to guide me in that field. Therefore, I want to be a resource for them, through civil society groups, so they have someone to turn to, to connect with the right people if they want to get involved in politics, to show them the concrete steps they need to take.
Although the exact data are not known, according to Mrs. Ulaj, about 15,000 of the nearly 1 million residents of the Westchester municipality are Albanian-Americans.
The Westchester municipality is the seventh-largest in New York, with a budget of $2.8 billion./VOA
