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 had been lost, and did not have a clear goal for my future. I did not know who I want to be, or who I could be. So I decided to try everything that was available, so I could find the right thing for me. No one knows what he can do till he tries. I found things that were not right for me, but more importantly I find the
Coming to America as Immigrants and having nothing to your name can be a very intimidating situation. Many people face this obstacle and my parents are a clear example of it. I grew up watching my parents work and making sure they had no debt to their name. I remember being a young child and mom taking me to work because she didn't have a babysitter. My parents always provided me with the best and even spoiled me, sometimes when you don't work for your objects you forget to say thank you. .
“What was it like?” I asked, scrambling to keep up with my aunt. She paused, her tall thin frame standing in the doorway. Dishes lay scattered around us. Dinner had ended hours ago, and everybody was upstairs..
I can remember it like it was yesterday. My parents left me when I was fifteen years old to go to America. I thought to myself for one year, they left me here to starve, live, and die alone in eastern Europe. When I was sixteen years old I got ready to move to America and start a new life.
Growing up I always knew my mindset was far past my years. The way my mind worked was different and older than those kids around me, so it was no surprise for me to be on my own right from the get go after turning 18. For as long as I can remember I have always done everything by myself especially school related. My parents are Hispanic and speak little English, making me the first person in my family to attend college. My parents brought me to the United States from Mexico at the age of four and I have lived in Oklahoma ever since.
My life took an interesting turn when my mother told me I would be moving to a different country, fear took over my body because that meant I would have to start from zero. On January 1st, 2011 my mom gave me the exciting news that her fiancée, now husband, had started the process to bring her to the United States so she could become a permanent resident, live with him, form a family and start a brand new life. I remember her face blighting up to every time she spoke a word but that smile faded once she told me I could not come with at that time because of the expense of the process. I understood why she could not bring me with. We had economic and emotional issues going on.
When I moved to America, I was never accepted. People looked at me like I was dirt. They loathed my honey colored skin. This is my story; you will learn the chainman’s side of the exclusion act. White people believed we stole their jobs.
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.
This story about almost six years ago, when I came to the USA. Before I came to the USA I thought everybody will be different than me. For example, I thought that all people in the USA are white with gold, white, and brown hairs. When I land at the airport and I saw a lot people with black hair and not everyone were white.
Growing up in an immigrant household in America, was difficult. I didn’t live, I learned to adapt. I learned to adapt to the fact that I did not look like any of my peers, so I changed. Adapted to the fact that my hair texture would never be like any of my peers, so I changed. Adapted to the fact that I was not as financially well off as my peers, so I changed.
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.
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.
I lived as a foreigner in America for 15 years. The day I became an American citizen was one of the easiest, yet hardest days of my life. The process itself was quite simple. My parents had already been naturalized, so all I had to do was take the Oath of Allegiance and sign the Certificate of Naturalization. However, in that short one-hour ceremony, I had relinquished my Indian citizenship, losing something I had from birth, and had pledged myself to “the home of the free and the land of the brave.”
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.
I remember spending twelve hours on the airplane without getting any sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about my new life I will face in America. I felt as if time had stopped and I didn't know what to think. After spending nine years in Egypt, I moved to an environment that was totally different from the one I came from. The first day of school came by so quickly, and I remember going to school not knowing anybody or anything.
There are plenty of times in our lives when we all feel alienated and your teenage years are the prime for that. There’s plenty of instances I can recall being female and an immigrant, mostly earlier in life, but one specific time stuck out. It wasn’t a single event, but rather an experience. My experience of going to elementary school after I moved to America was definitely one of the first times when I felt separated from the larger group. I moved to Michigan from Pakistan in the June of 2005, when I was eight years old.