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Immigrant struggles in america
The immigrant experience in the united states
Living in another country effects
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One of my earliest childhood memories was my maternal relatives, my mother, and I embarking on the process of leaving our homeland; waiting for hours in lines that never seemed to conclude everytime we go to the American embassy, hiding from the check ups and formidable butt shots that my older cousins told me about, and experiencing the thrilling first flight during the typhoon season. I was born in the Philippines which is recently known for its greatest export: its people. More than a million filipinos leave the Philippines every year for employment, usually as: seamen, nurses, domestic helpers, etc. During my younger years, I hated having to move back and forth between the Philippines and some place else. On the other hand, as I grew older, I began to understand my parent’s perspective and that emigrating from the Philippines was more advantageous than disadvantageous for my family. To start with our first move to the …show more content…
At the time, I did not know and speak a word of English. At home, my family would only speak Tagalog, so I never learned English at home except from television; they wanted us to preserve our culture instead of assimilating to the ideas and beliefs they found unbecoming from what they have observed such as: talking back to our elders, not following what our elders commanded, and other rebellious behaviors. I think, my grandmother hoped I would learn as soon as I began attending school and she agreed with the idea of my cousins and I not completely assimilating to American culture. One day, my older cousin, Kevin, forced me to talk to a neighborhood girl playing outside because he did not want to play with cry baby Kate, but I did not know how to communicate other than ha gestures. My grandmother and my dad would not be impressed by my cousin’s behavior. Luckily, after that encounter, that neighborhood girl became my friend and taught my cousins and I how to speak English by
My husband and I will show her where she's from. She's a beautiful mix of South East Asian and Puerto Rican. She has her whole life ahead of her and she will see it from many different perspectives. I will teach her Hindu, Creole, how to cook curry and about my favorite Bollywood movies. I will dress her in Sarees and take her to religious functions. She will be covered from head to toe in Indian gold. My husband will teach her Spanish, play her his favorite songs and teach her how to dance. I will teach her how to cook Spanish, food (dad is great at making breakfast). We will take her to Puerto Rico, one day. We'll also visit Asia. She will know the two beautiful worlds she comes from.
In my younger and more vulnerable years, my parents and I immigrated from the Philippines to America in search of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It wasn't until I started maturing did I notice the obstacles I overcame, the accomplishments I achieved, and the objectives I set for myself that significantly contributed towards the achievement of my dream.
I am an undocumented student at UC Davis. When I am asked a simple question such as, "describe your personal experiences", I ask myself: Where do I begin?
When my family and I got in the plane that would take us to the U.S., I was very excited. It was as if I had butterflies in my stomach. I was also nervous because I had heard of people that were turned away when they got to America because the government was not letting as many immigrants into the U.S as they had in the past. Therefore, my whole family was a little anxious. Two things could happen when we arrived at the Washington, D.C., airport. We could either come to the United States to chase after “the American dream”, or we could be turned away which meant that we would have to return to our country of origin.
I was born and raised in Vietnam, so I naturally observed my culture from my family and my previous schools. I learned most of my culture by watching and coping the ways my family do things. My family and my friends all spoke Vietnamese, so I eventually knew how to speak and understand deeply about my language as I grew up. At home, my mom cooked many Vietnamese foods, and she also taught me to cook Vietnamese food. So I became accustom Vietnamese food. I also learned that grandparents and parents in my culture are taken care of until they die. At school, I learned to address people formally and greet higher-ranking people first. In Vietnamese culture, ranking and status are not related to wealth, so they are concerned with age and education.
What is culture? Culture is the idea of what is wrong or right, the concept of what is acceptable within our society. Culture serves us as a guide, taking us to the "right way" and helping us to make sense of things that surrounds us. There are many different cultures around the world. A lot of them are similar in specific ways and others are just completely different, this difference explains why we think that people from different backgrounds are "weird".
McNamara, Keith, and Batalova, Jeanne. "Filipino Immigrants in the United States."migrationpolicy.org Migration Policy Institute, 21 July 2015. Web. 23 Feb.
As an immigrant you cannot expect everything to be right in front of you. You have to work hard and achieve what you want. My whole family came here to the United States to seek a better lifestyle. Being an immigrant, and a child of immigrants is not easy. You are stepping into a whole new world, where the people and language is unknown. Every question you answer with a yes or a no. As you live on, you began to fit into the new lifestyles. But, life was not easy when we first came here. My family struggled to find a job and a house that we can possibly afford. My family tried to not focus on those issues, instead decided to focus more on education opportunities.
It has always been my firm belief that a man is defined by his conquests, his experiences, and the environment from which he came. I come from a war torn country that struggled for thirty years to earn independence. I was born amongst a resilient people that have endured oppression at the hands of both supposed friend and foe. I was born in the Asmara, Eritrea. Unfortunately, it is suffocated by the whims of a tyrannical regime. My parents fled to the United States in hopes that the land of opportunity would truly be an embodiment of its namesake. As a child, I knew the harsh realities that many of my people still had not escaped. It was due to this that I became obsessed with both civil and human rights, normalcies that my birthplace wouldn’t
Pick up any newspaper today and look no further than the front page headlines. What you will read is a story about hundreds, if not thousands, of men, women, and children who have been scared away from their homes and stripped of basic human rights, like healthcare, security, and education. All over the world, people are reading this same story of families in Syria being uprooted by civil war, or schoolgirls being kidnapped in Nigeria-or migrants searching for freedom in a foreign land. As Americans, we tend to forget about the journey we all share together, regardless of race, gender, creed, or nationality. So when I think about where I am going, I can’t help but think about the events that have made my story part of a greater global narrative.
I was fifteen when it all began; the laughing, taunting, teasing, the confusion. It wasn’t always like this. I used to be happy.
My rosy pink, baby cheeks lay against the chilling cold window instantly cooling down my burning face. My dark, dull brown eyes stared blankly out into the gloomy blue sky. I saw autumn approaching fast with the multicolored leaves flying wherever the strong blowing wind decided to take them. I started recapping the goodbye’s I had to say to my friends, family and my childhood “boyfriend.” I grew an irritating anger towards my father, for, at the time, I was too young to fully understand; it was not his fault. After seeing my heated glare at him, my father promise me that we would never move again. He assumed that I would make friends in no time.
Perhaps my most gratifying research experience was also my biggest research obstacle. During my early undergraduate research in Professor Paul Sternberg’s Lab, I had grown to learn how to communicate science, determine the important experiments to conduct and obtain the necessary laboratory skills. These experiences came from my project in engineering C. elegans to express a photosensitive archaea proton pump in the mitochondrial membrane to explore how we can engineer a more efficient strain of C. elegans. In this process, I learned to construct plasmids using molecular biology and learned to introduce these genetic changes by injections and genetic crosses. Each successive step, I learned to troubleshoot and optimize. The hardest task to
I came from a first generation Hmong family whose parents knew minimal English. I was three years old when we immigrated to America. I hardly remember anything at the time. My parents and older sisters were unfamiliar with the English language, so help was always needed from others. As we settled into our lives in America, things became more familiar and my sisters and I were able to help my parents out more. We went to school and learned the English language and were speaking a different language other than Hmong in the house. Eventually, my parents decided to learn English and they were attending classes from a Hmong community in Sacramento. Though, this was not for long, my father did not want my mother to attend classes anymore and to
I am by myself wearing my blue jeans and an old flannel shirt. It is cool outside but I decided to leave my gloves at home, feeling comfortable with my warm shirt and my sturdy boots.