SPANISH FORK, Utah — Rebecca Merrill met Sulemana Issah when he first came to Utah from Ghana.
“Sulemana is the hardest-working person I've ever met,” she said. “I've watched him over the last seven years go from riding his bike to work every day, he rides it to Springville every day, whether it was snow, rain. He's never been late. He's never missed a day of work, and he goes to school full-time, so he works the graveyard shift and then works full-time. He's about to graduate from UVU with his degree.”
After years of working hard and finally buying a house for his family, Issah has been diligently navigating the immigration process to bring his wife and five kids to Utah.
“Education is the backbone of everything,” he said. “That is the reason why I decided to go to school: to improve, or to better, my life and my family.”
However, three of Issah’s children are still in Ghana, living with their grandmother due to the drawn-out immigration process. Seeing Issah stress about paying for plane tickets from Ghana for the kids and how to come up with the money to buy a car, Merrill shared the family’s story with Dickerson Automotive.
“It just really pulled on my heartstrings,” said Todd Dickerson, owner. “You see people trying to get into this country the right way, and they want to be here, and they want to be a productive member of society.”
The auto shop has donated multiple cars over the years through its ‘Wheels with Heart’ program.
“I was very, very happy,” said Issah. “Any time I thought, I open it and see the car, I don't know what to say. They know anybody who doesn't have, and you have, you need to give the person.”
Grateful for his community, and relieved of a major burden, Issah is just hoping he can soon bring the rest of his children to Utah.
“I am not an immigration lawyer, and I don't have anybody, I didn't ask anybody to interpret it for me, but I kept waiting for them to be scheduled, only to be told that the kids are not part of their mother's case,” he said. “So the immigration, if they could do something about those with the legitimate cases, I would be very, very happy.”
