Immigration Interview Research Paper

Going into this interview project I was curious to learn more about the experiences that immigrants had to go through. My interviewee, Mario, is an 18 year old immigrant that migrated to America from Bolivia at the age of 10. I have known Mario since middle school and we’ve been friends since then. We have grown up around the same area too and now we both attend the University of Maryland. Being a 1.5 generation immigrant myself, I was interested to see if we shared similar experiences growing up in America especially since we’ve grown up around the same area. My interview with Mario has given me deeper understanding of the difficulties and challenges immigrants have to go through in their first few years in America. Through Mario’s experiences,

they did not move around at all. He still lives in the home he first arrived to. After he had arrived he tells me that it was hard to accept the reality of having to fit in to American society. However, the diversity of the neighborhood made him feel more welcome. The area in which they settled was full of many people of different backgrounds. He was one of many of the immigrants that lived there. The challenge of going into a new territory without family or people of the same ethnicity can be intimidating and so many immigrants migrate into ethnic enclaves or place where there family is nearby. This can reinforce culture and make the transition into new land more comforting. The Hmong refugees settled into America in a manner where they are supportive of their own ethnicity and they built a community of Hmong in America to help other Hmong settle into America (Vang 2010:57). Contrary to how the Hmong settled into America, Mario settled away from people of his ethnicity and family and so adapting to the new surroundings was difficult at first but with little ties to his culture from Bolivia it made it easier for him to assimilate into a new culture.

Living in a diverse community has many benefits when it comes to fitting in. With so

Interviewing a friend did take off the stress of making mistakes and we had a great time. The whole interview went well aside from taking too long to take notes. The interview was interesting for both Mario and I. We thought that it made us aware about the struggles that we had to go through and at the end we realized the positive impact that migrating to America has made on our lives. However, we both feel that our experiences were not as difficult as how it was portrayed in the books and movies about the challenges that immigrants face. I did not feel as though this experience was an eye opener since Mario’s experiences were similar to mine. Perhaps if I had an interviewee with a much different background I would have more insight on the experiences of immigrants. What intrigued me the most was when Mario asked me “I wonder what more life has to offer if we migrated to more places. To think that simply moving to America can change us so much, think about what life would be if we moved to japan or something, would be become more Japanese than American after a few years? How would our background affect things like education or assimilation? It’s crazy that migrating has such a powerful impact on a