(Written for English 1010, Fall Semester.)
Some
people think of their grandmothers. Others think of their parents or their
friends. Some people even remember their own journeys as emigrants from their
home countries. When I think of the word “Immigrant”, I think of the students I
work with at my college’s English Skills Center.
They are all bright and quick to laugh,
and they are all married, most of them are Mexican women with children to take
care of and homes to clean. One is a married man with a job; he often has to
leave early so he can go to work. A lady from Saudi Arabia attends as well; her
husband is a Business student at the college. In addition to all of these
people in my life right now, I also think of the little Mexican girl who lived next
door to me when I was four. All we could do together was count, and say hola
and adios.
To Jodie in the November 2008 issue
of SUN Magazine’s Readers Write, Immigrant meant a colleague, Maria, who worked
hard and gave back to everyone around her, but wasn’t allowed the same
opportunities as many other people because she was living as an undocumented
immigrant. Maria spoke Spanish and translated for visitors to a nonprofit
associated with AmeriCorps, where Jodi was volunteering. Among the credentials
given by Jodie, Maria also worked as a waitress while attending college full
time and helping out with her siblings. Maria, had lived in the US for ten
years, but she wasn’t a recorded citizen. Because of this, it was challenging
to get her on a plane for a convention, but they eventually decided to show
Maria’s student ID, and say that she hadn’t gotten her driver’s license yet.
The plan worked, and Maria was able to attend and speak at the convention. After
Maria graduated from university, she continued working at the same restaurant,
getting paid under the table. Because Maria was undocumented, she wasn’t able
to move on to Medical School.
Judy Chow wrote about her experience
growing up in Philadelphia after emigrating from Hong Kong with her family. She
was two years old at the time, so her identity hadn’t been cemented as Chinese.
After becoming accustomed to being surrounded by white people on her block and
at school she would forget she was Asian as a child until she caught a glimpse
of herself in the mirror. People would ask where she was from, and she would
have to explain to them that she “was originally from China”. After moving to
Virginia in her late thirties, she realized “‘Home’ may not be a place but a
state of mind”. She writes that she has
begun to speak with a southern accent, and she forgets that she looks different
from her Caucasian neighbors. Finally, she says, “There are days when my
neighbors forget that I look “foreign, and I become just another person,
colleague, friend.”
Being an immigrant often means struggling
with feeling different, possibly learning a new language, and becoming
accustomed to a new culture and environment. Sometimes all of this can be very
difficult, especially for school age children. Oliver French emigrated from
Germany to Switzerland in 1933in the wake of the Nazi takeover of Germany and
the boycott of Jewish businesses. At boarding school, Oliver didn’t speak the
language, and found the other children’s customs strange. Because of the
language barrier, the other children would try to get Oliver and his brother in
trouble with dirty words and double entendres. In spite of the difficult period
of assimilation, eventually the boys learned the language and became generally
accepted by their classmates. As Oliver writes, “Some of the kids would still
refer to us using slurs for Germans, but we no longer felt German. We were
refugees from the Germans. We were
immigrants.”
The people who exemplify the word
“immigrant” are often running away from turmoil or oppression in their home
countries, like Oliver and the people involved in our modern Syrian refugee
crisis. Just as often though, immigrants are moving toward something, a
brighter future for their children or more opportunities than they are afforded
in their home country. In doing so, they face a lot of hardship like the peril
of traveling across a closed border or a wide ocean, or the difficulty of
adjusting to a new culture and language. Most immigrants do their very best to
make a living and a life in their new home.