you’re cautious about what you want to say in front of a group and play it in your head in English before you open your mouth because it’s not your first language..
Yes, you were raised by immigrants.
- If you remained seated at someone else’s home without saying a word as a child and even if thirsty and offered water were instructed to say ‘no thank you’, to that and anything else offered, you were raised by immigrants.
- If you can COUNT on your hands the times you went to someone’s house as a child because frequenting other people’s homes are a sign of family neglect, you were raised by immigrants.
- If you were told to never buy food on the street and came home as a child to a fully cooked ethnic meal, you were raised by immigrants.
- If when asking for money, the first response would be, ‘No, there ain’t none.’, regardless of the reason why and would be given reluctantly if the reason was school related because in the parents mind, school is ‘free’, you were raised by immigrants.
- If the first words you heard were ‘Que hiciste?’ Translation – ‘what did YOU do?’ when asked about or pleaded your case about a fight, confrontation, argument you were involved in, you were raised by immigrants.
- If you’re hyper vigilant about ‘social queues’, you look for facial expressions, body language, tones of voice to ‘read the room’, you were raised by immigrants.
Now.. I KNOW there are more ‘immigrant if’s’ as I have lived and relived my formative years on loop as a teacher.. many of my students are raised by immigrants and many of the people I count as friends have been raised by immigrants, therefore the list does not stop there.. yet these if’s can coincide with other if’s… for example, many could end with, ‘you were raised by a single parent’. Go ahead and reread some of them and end it that way.
If when asking for money, the first response would be, ‘No, there ain’t none.’, regardless of the reason why and would be given reluctantly if the reason was school related because in the parents mind, school is ‘free’, you were raised by a single parent.
Make sense?
*Now please be advised I write from my personal experience over the years as a public school teacher with single motherhood dynamics, while the amount of love felt for a child will never change, parental lessons of accountability and ownership have had a significant shift, disrupting and devaluating the mission of education. Therefore many If’s listed are no longer coinciding with single parenting
And you can also end many of the ‘if’s’ with ‘you were raised in poverty’. Go ahead and reread them and end them that way..
If you were told to never buy food on the street and came home as a child to a fully cooked ethnic meal, you were raised in poverty.
coincidence? I believe not.
As someone that has travelled and lived in other countries throughout my adolescence and adulthood, I have found 3 things to be true:
1- Only those that move from one country to another with the reality and determination of never returning do so because their lives depend on it.
2- Women are the stronger sex because only they can reproduce other human beings, populating societies.
3- Money can resolve many challenges yet will never buy genuine self actualization.
These 3 truths coexist, overlap and resonate daily..
– global powers shift and so many people flee their homes in search for safety.. not riches.. safety..
– women’s reproductive powers are held hostage by theologies of men, the sons of these same women..
– currency now exists in nonvisible form and is treated like something hoarders would drown in instead of using it like the manure it is. ‘Throw it around the garden of life and make things grow.’
I’m compelled to write about immigrants not only because I am a woman born into a family of them, I can’t help but be reminded we all are in this country, the U.S.
Though it is true that the farther you are from that generation that fled their countries in search of a better life, the more skewed your definition of the word IMMIGRANT and perception of them. Yet sadly what remains is the distortion of the why, the American Dream has become ‘a national nightmare’ for many.. and my cynicism leads me to believe it has been orchestrated by those in power. The core beliefs of what made us ‘the destination to a brighter horizon’ have been spoiled and stained and instead of inheriting a freer, fairer America, our children, the children of immigrants are being shunned.
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Emma Lazarus
The meaning of these words, synonymous with the Statue of Liberty, are fading and only the younger generations can restore it’s strength.
As a teacher it saddens me to see so many young adults unaware, careless or worse, defeated, indifferent to what is to become of their future.. it pains me because it will be as if all of the struggles, the hardships, the trials taken on by their immigrant predecessors were overcome in vain, not understanding it was all for them, for US.
Rosa Isabel Chavez 