Advanced Essay #3: Misconceptions about immigration

On the US border in the South of California near Tijuana, you can see many immigrants crowding around the steel barriers to get into the United States. From the distance, you can see the steel beam fences standing 26 feet tall preventing immigrants from entering illegally into the United States. Barbed wires placed in front of the steel beam fences as reinforcement. On the United States side behind the steel beam fences, you can see the American flag tied to a pole flying in the wind. You can also see spotlights and surveillance cameras in the vicinity. Thousands of immigrants line up across the border near the steel fences and barbed wire. Then a can of tear gas was shot into the crowd near a mother and her two young girls. She helps pull them away from the tear gas as the girls, one without any proper footwear, and the other with sandals, started to run with their mother. This is just one of the many things that many nonimmigrant people don’t understand about the immigration process. They often don’t understand the things that immigrants experience as they travel to America and settle into American soil. Specifically, their thoughts and internal emotions are misinterpreted and/or not taken into consideration.

One thing that people do not understand is how much work immigrants have to do to come to America. Most Americans do not understand the struggles that immigrants have to go through as they make their way to the United States. We assume that immigrants and migrants just simply obtain their documentation, walk up to the border, get everything checked out and are then able to live in the United States. We fail to realize and ask ourselves what did it take for them to come to America and what drives them to come to America. Immigrants and foreigners coming to live in America all have different reasons why they came to America. Some came to America to start new lives, for educational opportunities, for family, or they are fleeing from violence. Americans only know the stories of immigrants coming in by boat or plane for a new life but the stories of the risky and dangerous journey to travel to America is not widely known. In Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario, the author decides to take this journey with Enrique to find his mother in the United States. In the prologue, she explains how she will travel in Enrique’s footsteps and manage the constant fear of gangs and bandits on the train and at border checkpoints coming to beat, rob, and/or rape her. Not only gangs but environmental factors were also dangers as anything could cause her to fall off the train and run her over. Corrupt government officials can be spotted robbing migrants as well. After the journey, she goes home with trauma and suffers from intense internal emotions. This experience shows her a different side of what it is like to be an immigrant. It is not a simple one and done story but it a complexity of different stories that we need to view in multiple lense and not only through one lens. It is not a simple one answer question but a variety of different experiences that we have to take into consideration.

Although immigrants move to America for better opportunities and a better quality of life, most immigrants often think about home. Immigrants, especially those who are older, have a strong connection to their homes. They had established a life in their home country ever since they were a kid. They know their country better than anyone who hasn’t lived and experienced it for most of their childhood. Moving away to start life in a new environment and a different culture is intimidating. It takes a lot of time to adjust to that change, but what will not go away is the feeling of being far away from where they had grown up. An example of this nostalgic feeling of home can be found in Behold The Dreamers a novel by Imbolo Mbue. From pages 37-46, the main character, Jende is driving Clark, his boss, back to the office from DC when Clark asks Jende about what his home country, Limbe, was like. Jende delivers a rich description of Limbe with a nostalgic, reminiscent tone. He describes it as he misses his home. When Clark asks Jende why he moves back to America, he had a hard time answering the question and gave very vague and generic answers. The way he describes Limbe was heavily contrasted with his details about why Limbe is a bad place. Clark also talks about his past before he came to New York. He talked about his Illinois childhood home and talks about his childhood life in Illinois and the way in which he misses his home. As you can see, immigrants also have the same feelings and emotions like a normal person being away from home. People think that immigrants do not miss their homes at all. Those immigrants want to forget their home country and where they came from. As humans, we all have a strong connection to where we all once grew up from and immigrants have that same connection as well.

Finally, people have misconceptions about the countries that immigrants have come from. We see it in the media all the time where third-world countries are in constant conflict and turmoil. When we hear and see video clips about this, we build up this stereotype that these places that people are immigrating from are just terrible places. What we fail to understand is how once these places were actually lively. In the Sea Prayer: a 360 degree illustrated film by award-winning novelist Khaled Hosseini; it shows a 360 video of a father narrating to his son on their life in Syria before the war and then to the unknown future. In the 360 films, you can see the illustrations of their farmhouse on the riverside, the beautiful old city with a mosque and a church, and the city center. Then it went into ruins and chaos where they finally ended up on a beach with a father carrying a son about to board a boat to embark on their journey to escape the violence. In the video, the narrator describes life before the war and the violence was peaceful. Olive trees blowing in the wind, the cool air and the sun in the morning at their farmhouse surrounded by livestock grazing in the fields with wildflowers. The crowded lively city with a mosque and a church where they would walk to the clock tower. The quote that stuck with me was when the narrator said: “But that life, that time, seems like a sham now, even to me, like some long dissolved rumor” (time maker 1:55). He means that those peaceful times and the beautiful landscape is hard for people to believe now when all they hear about now is war and bombings happening in their own city. Hardly anyone will believe that these places once had a beautiful thriving environment. From an external point of view, we only see one side of the story. We fail to see the other side of it.

People tend to misunderstand the experiences of immigrants. An American typically only looks at an immigrant’s situation externally rather than diving deeper to try and understand what goes on internally. We create a lot of assumptions about immigration based on one general story. We need to start thinking about immigration not as a simple topic, but as a complex of ideas and emotions. We have to learn from different people’s perspectives. By learning from the perspective of an immigrant, we can come together as people and understand how we can improve our system by learning about the experiences of immigrants.

Works Cited: Nazario, Sonia. Enrique’s Journey. Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2014.

Mbue, Imbolo. Behold the Dreamers: a Novel. Random House Inc, 2017.

Hosseini, Khaled, director. Sea Prayer: a 360 Illustrated Film by Award-Winning Novelist Khaled Hosseini. YouTube, YouTube, 31 Aug. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKBNEEY-c3s.