What’s your immigration story?

In my years of experience as an immigration attorney, I have realized in so many ways that I learn more life lessons from my clients than they do from me. True. I assist them in going through the hurdles of the complex immigration system and I enjoy such challenge, but more often their individual immigration stories put everything in proper perspective as to how I should appreciate life.

Lately, I had the pleasure of assisting a client in his application for naturalization. Typically, this kind of application is pretty straightforward, except for complicated marriages based applications, those with prior criminal convictions, the elderly, and those who have bare proficiency in English. More often than not, after passing the interview and during the naturalization ceremony, clients expressed a sense of relief, excitement, and hope as they venture out in this new chapter in their lives as an American citizen. But for this present client, I saw something new that I did not see in other previous clients. My client, a full-grown, middle-aged adult man, wept. Not tears of joy that I have seen in others or tears of sadness over the feeling that they abandoned their land of birth. My client cried not because of any of the more common and usual reasons but he cried because he felt that finally he has a country. His sense of belongingness to a country that accepted him and provided him with opportunities that he and his family never thought could happen. If we want to understand why he wept, we have to know from where he came.

My client was a refugee. He came from a war-torn country where violence, mass torture, and genocide were not only allowed but also state sanctioned. Due to the carnage, while he was still a young boy, his parents decided the family would leave the country and risk their lives crossing the border of a neighboring country. Once they were in the other country, there were segregated and were restricted from going out. Depending on the changing situations, their refugee camp was often moved from place to place. He practically grew up in the refugee camp where he received primary education, got married to another refugee girl, started a family, and had children. As the war dragged on, he had given up hope of seeing some of his family and friends alive. Going back to their country and tilling a little farm was more of an unreachable aspiration than an achievable reality. When the first opportunity to come to the US for resettlement was available, he immediately took the offer and off he went to the US with only a dollar and a dream.

Settling in the US was not easy as he expected. He had to acclimate to the culture, values, language and the way of life, follow the laws, and know that hard work is appreciated and rewarded. He often learned things the hard and expensive way. He had a few minor run-ins with the law. He was then able to obtain his greencard, bought a car and a house, worked two full-time jobs, sent his kids to school, took vacations --all ticked-off boxes in the checklist of a realized American dream.

But more than all the above-mentioned, it is the generosity of the American people and the opportunities that the US opened up for him that made him cry. That he is accepted for what he is, that he can practice his religion though how eccentric it seemed for others, that he can speak freely and openly in public without fear of reprisals, that he can criticize the government and its officials without worrying about being sent to jail. He now feels that he belongs and that he is no longer a refugee in search of an identity, a nationality, a country, and a culture.

We all came from different origins in this immigration journey. We have our own stories to tell. Some may not be as hard as the others, some may be bordering on life or death situations. We just have to remember that each immigrant story is unique and that if we only listen to these stories, our life could change for the better.

What’s your immigration story?