Personal Narrative: My Return To The United States
Day 2 Immigrant. That word gives me a label here. I am crossing the border to the U.S because my parents think it will give us a new beginning and a better life. I think they’re wrong. Our life in El Salvador was fine: We had a nice house and we were healthy.
Challenge Essay Moving into The United States that has a different language has been the biggest obstacle that I have ever faced, especially with the fact that there was a time where I didn’t understand a single word of that language called English. This was a big obstacle in my life since I was raised in Mexico where the prime language, there is Spanish and that was the only language I knew back then, it was until the day had come where my family and I had to move into the United States due to the violence that has been happening in Mexico. I consider those times the most difficult ones of my whole life because I had to work triple than what I normally did in school in order for me to learn a huge complex language.
The American experience is not unfamiliar to me, I have been visiting America since I was a child and as a child I always wanted to move to America. My first visit here I fell in love with the culture specifically the freedom of expression. However the opportunity did not emerge for me to move to America legitimately and as promising young child, I did not want to damage my future by moving to a country illegally where I could not live to my full potential. I stayed in Jamaica and I completed my University education as a registered nurse and had become comfortable with my life in Jamaica. I started working the spring of 2013 and upon receival of my first paycheck, I was reminded that this is not the place I wanted to be.
My identity has always felt inextricably linked to what Miami is. A city that is teeming with immigrants, a city with dreams stacked and slopped atop each other, and a city that is living proof of the failed American dream. I say so because of my early observation that generation after generation of immigrants often seemed to stay trapped in dead end jobs; I saw this within my own family – within my grandmother, my aunts and uncles, and even my cousins. Here it was even within my own family tree the deep implicit message that there was no way out of our socioeconomic level. When I made it into an Ivy League college, it was a message that was slowly re-enforced by the fact that my demographic was the most represented in the custodial staff rather than within my own classmates.
July 4th, America declared independence from Britain. Ironically, on July 4th, 1997, my parents came to the U.S , declaring independence from their own country. Christians in Egypt were beaten up, wrongly convicted, and killed. My parents did not want to raise their children in such a corrupt society and desired to come to America to pursue a better way of life . On November 26, 1999, I was born and my parents knew that this would mean a worse financial crisis.
I used to have this grudges in my heart when everything go hard that would made me wanted to blame my parent. But I can’t because I was not raise to think that way. When I come to America, I was eleven years old and no one asked me if I wanted to come it just happen in a second. I was in a cold place with extended family that I never met before and that one person who raise me and made me feel secure was still back in the country. I had to lived months without her and next thing you know I adapted and convince myself they are doing this because the wanted the best for me.
One of the hardest days of my life was when I first moved to America. I studied in Canada for one year, but it was totally a different situation that there were teachers who specifically teaches ESL classes, and a host family who was really close friend to my mom. There were people cared about me when i was in Vancouver. But when I moved to America, there was no one that I knew. I had to start everything fresh all by myself.
I was raised under a belt held by my father. To this day I can still recall the days I witnessed my father 's abuse to my family physically and emotionally. My family was tightly gripped by my father; which resulted to my sisters and I fearing him as we grew up. As a child, I was the one who got hit the most.
Not in a million years would I have thought I would ever move from my neighborhood in India to another house, let alone another country. If you would have come up to me and said I was moving, I probably would've just laughed at you, blinded by my obliviousness. But sure enough, one day, and I did not see this coming, my mother told me we were moving to the USA. Just out of the blue, no warning, just bam! Luckily for me, I was near a sofa when I heard this news, so I fell down on the sofa, not the ground.
In January 20, 1961 the famous words, “My fellow Americans ask not what your country can do for you- ask what you can do for your country,” were spoken by John F. Kennedy at his inaugural address. Fifty years later we see hunger, suffering, violence, tears, and a life full of sadness that many countries offer their people, but then we also see the many things some countries offer their people. America offers a lot to its people. We are offered a safe environment, access to the latest technology, free public education, some of the best foods, beautiful landscapes, some of the best colleges and universities in the world. There are many people in the world who wish to live in a country like America, for this reason America is considered the land
I had a considerably traumatic early few years of my life. At the age of 11, my Mother decided to take my brother and I back to her home country of Palestine after the death of my father. As you can imagine having lived my whole life in the United States this was a tremendously traumatic proposition. Not only had my father just died but I was now faced with the prospect of having to leave my friends and home to move to a new country.
It was a cold winter day. There was fresh snow on the ground as I walked out of the Philadelphia International Airport. I had lived in Fiji for the past nine years with only one or two short trips back to the U.S. in summer months to visit family. Everything in America seemed different from my previous home. The air smelled cleaner then in Fiji where the streets were filled with diesel busses that puffed out clouds of noxious fumes.
My mind takes me back to a time when I woke up to the aroma of food from street vendors through the homes that sit in a tightly compacted neighborhood. I remember growing up as a young boy in an area referred to as “La Laguna” in Mexico. This city was dry in rainfall levels and hope, my family were in the pursuit of an improved standard of living when they decided they wanted to move to the United States. Temporary living on the border made it tempting to go across a bridge and never come back. I saw America as elysium and Mexico as fool’s paradise, where the violence was rare and financial stability was so common.
The first eight years of my life, I spent in India where I was born. Growing up I was constantly reminded by my parents that I needed to make them proud by getting a good job and living a good lifestyle. They told me this because they did not want to see me live a hard life like they did. When I was nine years old, I moved from India to the United States of America. The reason why I moved to America was not because I was living a bad life in India, it was so that I could have a better education and more opportunities in life.
As a teenager moving to a new country with a different culture, different language, and being thousands of miles away from everyone I grew up with was not an easy change, however, that was precisely what I did in January of 2013 when I came to the United States with my father. My whole world changed since, and shaped my way of thinking. From learning English, adjusting to a new culture, experiencing my first snow and finding my way in my new country, my life has been an exciting adventure. My parents brought me to America almost 5 years ago to have a better life, and to get a better education.
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