Students' Immigration Stories

Students share family immigration stories from Pakistan, the Philippines, Egypt, Mexico, and Vietnam.

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[Music]

My mom

came here when she was seven years old

to New York.

My grandfather, my maternal grandfather

worked for the embassy.

So he was posted in New York. So they all

came to New York and she's been here

ever since.

So 40 something years, I think.

And my dad, he came here for college,

an engineer in San Jose. So

he came, he studied and he just decided

to live here.

And that's my story.

It starts off with my dad moving here

for his job

back in 2003 and

that just left me and my mom back in the

Philippines

um for about two years before we moved

to join suit with him and just join I

mean just like live

with him and my grandpa was already here

prior, but I don't really know what year

he moved.

And yeah, we we just been here since

2005.

Back in Philippines we were taught

English as a second language,

right? And I thought that coming here to

the US I wouldn't really have a problem

with that.

However, it was really hard because like

all

everybody around me, like literally,

everybody spoke fluent English and I'm

still just like I know some words that

they're saying but it's really

like more complex just trying to like

decipher what they're saying and all

that and it's

um it was hard going through that

process, but eventually I

I like learn to get along with it to

like conform myself to the society.

So my family comes from from mexico both

my mom and my dad.

And they came over in the 90s and they

met each other like

uh four years after they came over, and

they met each other at work, and then

they got together, and they had me and

yeah, both of my parents were born in

Egypt and

lived there most of their lives all the

way

until college. They got married in Egypt

and then my father decided that he

wanted to come to America because

it was the land of opportunity and

dreaming and all that.

My mother, they were both obviously like

very torn to leave their family, but they

left everything to come here so that me

and my

siblings could have a better life. My

parents immigrated from

Vietnam to here during the Vietnam war.

So my dad, he came originally from China

in Guangdong near Hong Kong and

during the Vietnam war, he escaped from

China through Vietnam and all the way

through Malaysia as a vote person.

So he went through a lot with his family

and his four older sisters and his two

parents.

My dad and the rest of his sisters

decided they wanted to go to America

and really let their kids live the

American dream

and he was very adamant about wanting to

stay in America

seeing it as this wonderful country full

of opportunities.

So he went here when he was 21

and he had to lie about his age to be

able to go to

an American high school. He went to San

Jose high school which is very close by

and he also graduated from San Jose

state and

he really took his education seriously,

because he really wanted to provide for

his family.

And after everything was great he had a

good job.

He went back to Vietnam and that's where

he met my mom.

And my mom immigrated here, left

everything she knew

back in Vietnam and here we are

with three kids and a happy family.