Student’s Name
Instructor’s Name
Course
Date
Migration, Relocation, and Settlement
I was born and spend my early life in China. I am the eldest son in a family of five, including my parents, a brother, and a sister. Currently, I am a student at the University of Washington, United States. Honestly, pursuing education at this level was never my dream growing up. Even so, my parents expected me to work hard in school and get a good job, emphasizing the need to go to college. In fact, my parents had saved a great deal for me to pursue a quality education. I came to the United States when I was only fourteen years. I lived with a guardian and attended high school back in San Francisco. When I first arrived here in America, I felt helpless, especially the first time I attended school and interacted with other people. I knew very little, different cultures, and a difficult language to communicate. Nevertheless, over the years, I have adapted and, with the help of valuable friends, found a home. I am so excited that I can relate to the different cultures speak different languages, and have two homes.
As I feel privileged to be part of an understanding environment, having gone through personal struggles to become who I am today, this does not reflect stories of migrants that we see on television and read in books. Over the years, immigration has always been a story of sacrifice. I read and watch so many stories of people, population, and even generations who have had to make a lot of sacrifices, giving up everything from the places they first called home. I have heard about migrants, refugees, and even asylum seekers fleeing their country, pursuing homes in a new country they know nothing about. Richard Blanco, in his poem “Mother Country,” indicates that “I imagine as if standing in her place- one foot inside a plane destined to a country she knew only as a name, a color on a map… taking only what she needs most…” (Blanco). I think what he is saying is that migrants sacrifice like everything, including their family, friends, and even property as they move to new environments, new cultures, different people, and even different languages.
I used to have generalized thinking about immigrants. I always thought of them as people who might have escaped persecution, wars, or asylum seekers from poor countries with lesser economic opportunities. However, I have realized that the real reasons people migrate ran rather deeper than just these specific, relatable experiences, especially in my country, China. I feel lucky to have moved the United States to gain a different experience but found a lot of opportunities that I decided to stay and pursue my studies here. I was not forced to flee or escape but came here voluntarily, accompanied by my guardian, who is family to me. Initially, when the school closed, I would go back home and spend most of the time with my family, only coming back to the United States when I school resumed. However, after four years of going back and forth, I decided to settle here.
I still remember my first day in high school. Away from China, and away from my new home in America, I was now in school. It was one of my hardest experiences in life. I felt alone I hardly talked with anyone and I felt out of place. It was a culture shock, and I knew no one in class. I agree with Jon Lee Anderson and Valeria Luiselli that being away from people you know as a young person can prove so difficult. Luiselli and Anderson, in Tell me How it Ends, and referring to Mexican kids who cross the border into the United States, indicate that “These kids have been through the worst. They arrive to find an unfamiliar country and a new language, but also a group of strangers that they must call their family” (Luiselli & Anderson 23). I found it challenging to interact with children in my new school. I could not speak English fluently, the food tasted so different, and at that moment I felt I missed home, and a yearned to go back. Even though I could hear some English words, talking was really a problem. I had learned English back in China, but I had practiced talking with someone to whom English was their first language. I could only speak a few words and rarely spoke to anyone.
I felt helpless, missing my family, my old friends in china. Nevertheless, I held on and found solace in friends. I enrolled in an English class to improve my language skills, sometimes even blocking Chinese media from interfering with my mastery process. I spend a lot of time reading and listening to English media. Having limited language skills, I decided to strive and make friends. I found two other Chinese students in the school with whom we spend together in English class lessons. I this with a line in Blanco’s poem where he says, “reading picture books over my shoulder at bedtime, both of us learning English, sounding out words as strange as the talking animals and fair-haired princesses in their pages” (Blanco). It was really challenging to learn English. According to Luiselli and Andersons, migrants really feel the pressure. They indicate “… but they told him his English wasn’t good enough and that he needed to take language classes first. Other schools said he didn’t meet the eligibility criteria…” (Luiselli & Anderson 23). I found strength in friends both at home and school, swiftly navigating the harsh realities, learning otherwise a language that I had so little knowledge about.
My guardian came to America by himself in the mid-nineties. He sometimes narrates to me the difficulties he had to go through during those years when there were no laws in the United States to protect immigrants. However, things went well for him, and many others like him established themselves in the country and started to explore its opportunities. My guardian runs a grocery store across the streets where I sometimes helped clean or arranged things on the shelves. I was not allowed to sell because most of the people spoke English, which I knew so little and could hardly converse well with the customers who rather preferred the language. He was good and sometimes gave me some allowances. In the store, orders were made every day, and extra profits banked. Also, my guardian made sure he sent some money back at home. In “Refugees,” Vietthanh Nguyen indicates that “my parents kept some of their profits in the bank, donated a portion to the church, and wired another percentage to the relatives in Vietnam, who periodically mailed us thin letters thick with trouble, summed up for me by my mother to the time of no food and no money, no school and no hope” (Nguyen 57). I think this is also what he did because his thoughts were always home, constantly in communication with his people over there.
In the hood, theft and robbery were so rampant. People devised ways to ensure they kept their money safe from buglers and robbers. My guardian made sure he did not stay with a significant amount of money in the house. He made sure he banked extra profits in the bank, having only little that we could spend every day. Instead, like Nguyen’s mother, who it is said, “to distract thieves, she devised decoys, placing a large glass vase heavy with coins high on a bookshelf by the front door, and a pair of gold bracelets on top of her dresser” (Nguyen 57). My guardian preferred to bank extra money. In Tell me How it Ends, Luiselli and Anderson indicate that “the United States is a country full of holes, and Hempstead, in particular, is a giant shithole, but it’s a place full of individuals who, out of a sense of duty toward other people, perhaps, are willing to fill those holes… there are students who, though not privileged, are willing to dedicate their time to those even less privileged than themselves” (Luiselli and Anderson 20). Despite all the bad things I have heard about the United States, my experience has been really good, especially at the University of Washington.
I feel excited to have learned about new cultures and a new language. Even as I applied for college, I was not discriminated against or given lesser treatment. In school, I always feel treated equally. I have formed new friends, and at times I even forget those at home. I have come to understand what Mohsin Hamid says in his book, “Exit West” “When we migrate, we murder from our lives those who we live behind” (Hamid 94). It has taken four years ever since I visited China again. I think even my former friends are slowly giving up on me. I have decided to spend the rest of my life in America. I wish to establish my life in this country.
Despite what I have read and heard over the years about immigrant issues in the United States, I think people are slowly changing their mindset about refugees and migration. On-campus, I attend class with people from different diverse backgrounds, and our working together is inevitable. As I look back to the struggles and pain and suffering migrants have gone through over the years, all I can think of is a history that should never recur. Hamid indicates the possibility of people adapting as witnessed in the University of Washington “Nadia watched the young people of this city pass, young people who had no idea how bad things once were, except what they studied in history, which was perhaps as it should be (Hamid 228). Most young people, including me, do not know what immigrants went through, which I agree with Hamid is good for acceptance, co-existence, and mutual-humanity.