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.