Tales From a Privileged Immigrant
Transcriber: Ngoc Tran
Reviewer: Leonardo Silva
America was a big deal.
I knew because there were
a million names for it -
“global superpower,”
“land of the free” …
As a child, I idealized these phrases.
My favorite, however, was “melting pot.”
I imagined a great multicultural stew.
If I close my eyes, I can still taste
my first steps out of LAX,
relishing in the color
and beauty of my new home.
About a year ago, however,
the memory ran sour.
Social unrest in Latin America
serves as justification
for racism towards Mexican migrants.
A slim number of fundamentalist terrorists
has ignited xenophobia
against the Muslim community.
Chinese immigrants are blamed
for an already out of control pandemic.
Sure, I myself was an immigrant,
but unless you consider
the occasional joke
on how you say the word “sorry” offensive,
I never faced discrimination of any kind.
Suddenly, my position
as a white immigrant became apparent.
Why has our treatment as immigrants
so often been determined
by our skin color or economic status?
The answer is one ingrained deep
within the American psyche -
the idea that the ideal immigrant
is white and at least middle-class.
Since second grade,
we were told the myth of
the heroic immigrant Christopher Columbus.
It was only in my freshman
year of high school,
in a tragically new textbook,
that we were told who he truly was -
a brutal coloniser.
We were not taught these things;
not really.
They’re embedded within us.
Later, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882
barred Chinese immigrants
from entering the United States.
White workers claim
they were stealing their jobs.
During the Mexican repatriation
of the early 20th century,
much of the white populace
believed that jobs should be reserved
for true Americans,
aka white people.
Admittedly, the concept
that the white immigrant is more deserving
or somehow superior to the immigrant
of color or poor immigrant
is ingrained in our identity as Americans.
I know because I see this pessimism
of immigrant faith,
immigrant ambition in our world today.
I feel it in the rolling
eyes of a neighbor
when a Hispanic family
joins our community.
I hear it in my peers as they mock
a driver or server’s accent.
I witnessed it when our former president
banned well-meaning Muslim people
from this country.
And most of all, I see it
in the fields of California, my home,
where migrant workers
labor for barely anything.
There are over 11 million
undocumented immigrants in this country,
but we tend to villainize that statistic.
Today, about 60% of agricultural
laborers are undocumented.
While we welcome the work
of the undocumented,
we reject actual undocumented immigrants.
This mindset works
in sometimes insidious ways.
Immigrants pay an estimated
400 billion dollars in taxes every year.
Forty-four percent of our medical
scientists are born elsewhere.
We don’t consider these statistics
because we consider America
to be the savior of immigrants.
We all want stability.
We all want better lives for our children
and our children’s children.
So why are immigrants
minimized to their skin color
rather than their ambition?
Why are we judged
on the content of our wallets
rather than the content of our character?
I’m not afraid to tell you
that I love America,
because I do.
It’s a place that’s paved a way for me
and millions of other dreamers
across the globe.
We can’t be blind, however,
to a history of immigrant alienation,
a narrative of whiteness
and, most importantly,
the untold benefits
of immigrant diversity.
Today, I reflect on the phrases
that struck me most as a child.
I think of that bright-eyed Canadian girl
stepping out of Los Angeles airport.
Yes, I tell her,
“America is alive and well.”
But let’s look beyond ourselves.
Thank you.