Immigration is a common topic within the Hispanic community in the Rio Grande Valley and is in no way a discussion that is off limits. But what is never brought up is how it affects our families’ lives and sense of self in the long run.
Most families who immigrate to the United States only have in mind how much of a positive impact moving to the United States will have on their future.
As a member of an immigrant family, it is normal to find myself questioning if my actions and decisions are worth my family’s sacrifice to come live in the United States. It is difficult to stray from the collective belief that we must stick together in order to succeed because if you mess up, the whole collective will be affected by it.
I question if my career pathway will satisfy my family’s needs. Is it even the right career pathway? Am I doing enough for the people in my family? Will my efforts ever be enough? Getting stuck on these questions causes a lot of stress for immigrants who have to build a future, not only for themselves but for their families as well.
I am just a 21-year-old. There’s probably some 12-year-old in middle school worrying if he or she is doing good and will have a future in this country, or a parent who just got home from work and tomorrow will repeat the same thing and every day after that and will question if this is the life he or she expected on arrival to the United States. But it is OK if they are miserable, hate every aspect of life, have no drive other than work because at least their kids are happy, right?
Maybe there is even a pregnant immigrant woman hiding in the tall grass on the riverbank of the Rio Grande on the way to the United States without knowing how many problems she is going to have to put up with once she reaches her destination. As for the child, it is not even born yet and the family has already put the weight of their entire future on the kid’s shoulders.
So many expectations and responsibilities are placed on the shoulders of immigrants, young and old, sometimes not even born yet. And if we want to do better as a community, we must speak up about how we feel about these problems. We tend to forget that we are individuals and that although we must deal with issues of the collective, we must first resolve our internal problems in order to perform better as a collective.
Hispanic Heritage Month is a special time for our community. We celebrate our roots and traditions, but we should also take time to consider how these ideas that make up our persona have affected our sense of self and understand that we are not our problems, but rather what represents us is how we overcome them. I thought that by the end of writing this, I would have figured out how to overcome the pressure of these problems and perhaps provide a solution for other people to overcome them, but I do not have it nor do I think I ever will. But if you know someone who you think is going through the same stress of immigration, talk to them and, maybe, then the path laid down for us by immigration will not feel as draining and frustrating.
