Apples and Oranges
It’s easy to hear the word “immigration” and mentally conjure an image of what that represents. You might think of heavy accents that belie someone’s home country or varying academic, cultural, or societal trends. Maybe you think of people whom you know — friends, their parents, neighbors, or even your own family.
There’s a distinction that exists within the immigrant community, though. As Shanthi Sekaran puts it:
“My immigrant family’s comfort is built, in part, on the hard work of other immigrants.”
Apples and oranges. Yes, both are fruits, but apply this largely to the spheres of immigration, and you can start to picture the delineation between individuals who have different financial and academic backgrounds, careers, and socioeconomic statuses within their home of the United States today.
Realistically, some immigrants are individuals coming to this country to work entry-level jobs in factories or on farms. They create their livelihood based on manual labor or service industries, whether that means women working as nannies or housekeepers or men working as construction laborers or in agricultural fields. Especially in a contemporary context, the immigrants that certain political rhetoric often illuminates are ones of specific cultures and backgrounds, specific journeys that speak to the very hardships that they had to encounter and overcome simply to get to this country, let alone survive or thrive here.
These immigrants are the people who may not have the financial, linguistic, or academic resources to seek out higher education, more renowned or technical professions, or the opportunities that may garner more financial stability than paycheck-to-paycheck employment or day-to-day vacancies. This first collection of immigrants came to this country to find opportunity, to pursue a dream at any cost. Even if they had few friends or family members to support them and their transition here, few waiting opportunities at their beck and call, or few financial resources or underlying security in their pocket to fall back upon if ever necessary, what these immigrants did (and do) have was a dream.
Another image of immigration, however, realistically comprises a second set of immigrants. This group represents immigrants who had perhaps similar challenges in their transitions to this country, whether prejudicial, cultural, or linguistic but had more — more of everything.
They weren’t escaping or fleeing — or even coming here to find opportunity; they came here to build upon what they already had. These immigrants perhaps had some degree of higher education in their native country or came here with the promise, if not guarantee, of schooling in the United States. Maybe they had support here in their new home, friends or family or a spouse, whom they could count upon for emotional or financial resources, or they already had a job opportunity, higher education, or another resource in line for them once they landed in this country. Their journeys here were more everyday, routine, if not mundane: They came here, they learned, they worked, they raised their children. Yes, the journey might have been stilted and challenging in its own right, but there was some stability. Whether academic, financial, or otherwise, certain immigrants have had more of a path to follow, a route to stability, security, and success, than have others.
There is no wrong or right.
There is a distinction of the opportunities, privileges, and resources that different immigrants have enjoyed and experienced, whether in their home countries, during their emigration, or throughout the establishment of their lives in the United States. As Sekaran writes in The New York Times, some of the very luxuries that some immigrants and their families may today enjoy derive themselves from the work and sacrifice of other immigrants.
Immigrants’ American Dreams often resemble various repackagings of the same truths, the same guiding principles that supposedly guide immigrants and their children to success, no matter where they started off: hard work, humility, economy, and investment. Put in enough, and you reap what you sow.
However, as Sekaran also points out, immigrants can and do start off on different rungs of the ladder. Yes, perhaps through hard work, perseverance, and commitment, anyone can rise to the top. That ascension, however, is much easier if you’re equipped with certain securities and opportunities in the first place, just as how her father had a degree, a visa, and a job prepared upon his arrival to this country. Just like how my parents, too had the financial security of family and college waiting for him when they got here.
Apples and oranges. At the end of the day, immigrants have faced similar hurdles in their transition to a new country and culture. Language barriers, cultural and societal acclimation, the pressure to succeed (if not just to survive), being far from home and all that they have ever known; these challenges are shared amongst immigrants, regardless of where they hail from or what they have in their hands.
But beyond these commonalities, the breadth and depth of challenges represent different facets of immigration.
There is no generalization that can be made of who immigrants are, what their intentions or livelihoods may be, and how good or bad they are, no matter how the media (or president) makes them out to be. What we can do is recognize that we are all lucky in some aspect; maybe we are fortunate in different regards or in different circumstances for how we got here, what we do today, and what immigration did for us, but at the end of the day, immigration made us.
For purportedly easier or harder, with or without paperwork and visas, employment, education, family, friends, or financial support here or not, immigration challenged all those directly associated with it, and today, we ought to recognize our own privilege in being able to reap the benefits of the changes and the challenges that were encountered by those who came before us.
That is a commonality shared amongst all of us, the children of immigrants who came from countries near and far, and one that we express in Harder, Better, Faster, Smarter.
