As an immigrant, I have had many personal experiences associated with discrimination. My family and I came to this country in 2009, when I was just 5 years old and my sister was 3. However, my parents were both 37 years old. I think about that a lot because by the age of 37 your home has already been established and it’s much harder to learn a language when your brain is already fully developed. I came here when I was very young, so my home has become New York, and I grew up as a New Yorker, but I often forget that my parents had to leave their home, the place they loved most in the whole world, they had to leave all of their friends and family to give my sister and I a better future. I don’t remember my journey to America exactly, I remember being in my country one day and waking up in America the next day. My family and I did not have a dollar to our name, we could not afford to live anywhere, however we were lucky enough to already have family in America and we stayed with them before we could afford to get our own place. My dad could not manage to find a job for a very long time and my mother just recently told me some of the jobs she had to work to get as much money as possible. Immigrants don’t take Americans jobs, in my opinion, immigrants are just more willing to work jobs with very low wages because they must take every opportunity they have to earn money for their families. We finally had enough money to afford a small apartment in Queens, however, due to financial issues my parents had to send my sister and I back to my country for a few months. I don’t remember this but my mom told me that was the first time she ever saw my dad cry. After some hard work, my parents amazingly could afford for all of us to live in Queens. School started out and I had a hard time adjusting to the language, for a little while I was bullied for not being able to speak English properly, however, my ESL classes and my parents who couldn’t even speak English themselves helped me, and now I am completely fluent in English. My parents both have great jobs that they both earned with hard work and dedication, and they are pretty good at English as well even though they struggle a bit with grammar. Immigrants make America, America. The whole country is built on immigration, and founded on immigrants. So many immigrants have accomplished so many amazing things in this country. Immigrant or not, undocumented or documented everyone is a human being and has human rights, so we should all be treated as so. So many immigrants today have to live and work in fear because of their status. No person should live their everyday life in fear. No human being is “illegal”. Immigrants are so strong and everything they do is for their families and for a better life, so I believe they deserve more respect and way less discrimination. Anonymous '22 (BHSEC Queens)
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