[제 2회 드림에세이 수상작] haemin jee - 'In a Foreign Land: The Immigrant Story'

Grade: 11 / High School: Cleveland high school

The immigrant’s story is the untold and unexplored aspect of living in America. This story usually starts with a dream: the American Dream. This dream has always been an overwhelming presence in our family. As a daughter of immigrants and an immigrant myself, I have always been encouraged to be the very best that I could be, to take advantage of the multitude of opportunities in America. I might have to overcome discrimination, stereotypes, and hardships, but the opportunities, my parents insisted, were there. It is the same dream that was reiterated by generations of immigrants who come to this country. This is the ideal to which immigrants had worked towards from the very beginning of our country’s founding.

As a young child surrounded by people who did not look like me or speak the same language or eat the same foods as me, I was doubtful of my parents’ words. Could I really do anything I wanted, be anybody I wanted? It was impossible for me to reconcile the America that treated my parents with scorn and hostility to the one that would allow my dreams to come true. I resented the fact that I had to translate things for my parents, becoming way too knowledgeable about bills and government documents than any nine or ten year old should be. I was sick of being seen as this foreign, un-American presence, someone that did not belong in this country. I was tired of the stares that my parents received when they signed forms at my school, tried to buy items at a grocery store, or visited the doctor’s office. I would see the teacher, salesperson, or receptionist get frustrated, sigh, and then turn to me with a sympathetic look in his or her eye as if saying “Oh, you understand what I am saying right? They obviously don’t get it.” I would inwardly cringe, trying to place the hurt, anger, and confusion that wracked me every time this happened. I knew my parents were honest, intelligent, dignified people. Why were they being treated as if they were not? My first years, then, in America were marred by the realization that the promise of America that was so reverently preached may not apply to my own parents.

When I moved to Los Angeles, I realized that my parents’ story was not unusual. It was a common tale told in the Latino and Asian Pacific Islander communities of the multiethnic Los Angeles. Los Angeles boasted that it was a diverse community, but it was only diverse in name. I found some solace in the strong Korean community present in Los Angeles, but the problems facing immigrants were still valid. Combined with class and racial discrimination as well as xenophobia, immigrants were being largely marginalized in this city. Immigrants were given the worst jobs that nobody wanted. They were given misinformation and mistreated by the police and other institutions. Usually speaking limited English, immigrants were taken advantage of by businesses or con artists, finding nothing but suffering in the land of promise. An extreme example of this is the human trafficking that occurs in Los Angeles, targeting mostly Southeast Asian women. Immigrants were being exploited for cheap labor, without any regard for their rights as human beings. Furthermore, on a more emotional and psychological level, the many stereotypes of criminal foreigners, illegal immigrants, and unintelligent workers undermined the very goal that immigrants strive for. What was amazing to me was that even in the face of all these hardships, these immigrants were not desolate or dejected. The same spirit of hope, optimism, and promise that built this country was still alive and present in the immigrants of today. Despite the setbacks and hardships, the strong and inextinguishable light of hope still shone brightly in many of these immigrants’ lives.

Experiencing in my own family the struggle to be seen as equal and human in America, as well as hearing other immigrant experiences, challenged and influenced my own plans for the future. Thus my American dream slowly evolved into making the American Dream possible for the millions of immigrants that come to the United States each year. My American dream became the pursuit of equal rights and protection for immigrants, people who reminded me of my own parents. Immigration is at the heart of our history and culture living in America, and so it seems ironic that immigrants are viewed with such distaste. These stories and experiences of America from the view of immigrants that are not often told deserve to be viewed with respect. Immigrants make up the very fabric of our democracy and values of equality, opportunity, and justice. That is one of the many vivid and real pictures of life in America.