Immigrant. It is a bad
word. It sounds foreign even though it is an English word. When Americans hear
it they think of the Mexican landscaper who is in their front yard every other
week, the Indian man at the gas station register or the Asian woman who
politely smiles when we pick up our Kung Pao take-out order. Some even think
the immigrants are enjoying a privilege and, therefore, should be thankful to
Americans and the American government for allowing them to be here. However, only
a few actually recognize what hardship these immigrants might have fled or
hardships they still endure. Here is a snippet of what an immigrant goes
through:
The typical immigrant
starts their immigration process as early as the childhood, either because
their parents are migrating or because they feel alienated in their own
society. The typical immigrant knows someone who ‘made it’ abroad, went to
collage or married a foreigner and they themselves want to ‘make it’ too - abroad.
Partially, out of need to go- leave everything behind, survive and provide a
fresh start for their children and partially out of admiration for the ones who
‘made it’ abroad. The TV shows promised them a flourished country with clean
streets and clean government which comes with a big price tag – the immigration
fees of couple of thousand dollars and the emotional toll to leave your family,
neighbors, childhood friends and colleagues behind. In return, the typical
immigrant expects a prosperous life without fearing poverty, institutionalized
injustice, corruption, governmental or mafia persecution, religious or racial
discrimination.
After arriving to the
flourished land, the fear of poverty, injustice, and discrimination is still a
constant companion of conscious. They feel lucky to find a modest accommodation
to live out of the one or two bags they entered the new country in with. As
they overpay for virtually everything while not having any credit at all, lack
of information makes things harder as well. The status in the new society is
low. Even well-educated immigrants fall into the bottom half of the society
rank. The language and custom is cryptic making the new immigrant isolated and
alienated immediately. Some may never be able to acquire the new language as
they are crushed under the daily grind to provide for their dependents. ‘Legal
Alien’ reads their new status.
As the immigrant
evolves from ‘Legal Alien,’ to ‘Permanent Resident,’ or even ‘Citizen’
something changes; not just the immigration status, but his/her psyche as well.
During their evolution, the immigrant learned (half-condemning his/her own actions)
to camouflage, disguising their former images to imitating the new façade.
Their former cultural traditions, customs and behaviors are bleached down to
just a few core entities, which are easy to align to the new society, such as
food and religious practices. The immigrant has the real urge to fit in to
‘make it’. More than likely, the immigrant only associates with other
immigrants from the same former region and possibly even form a sub-cultural
entity in the new country because to the native people they are not more than
the gas-station-Arab or the Korean-pedicure-lady. Then upon visiting their
former homeland the immigrant feels another overwhelmingly emotion - alienated
by their own former culture or society. As they gain in one country they lose
some in the other. As they ‘made it’ in the new country, they catch themselves
sitting between two stools where the quest for their real identity just begins.
Identity Crisis?
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