Last night I was at one of my favorite hangouts, CaraBar, with my aunt (from my Mexican side), and my friends Tony from the Bahamas, and Jason.
My aunt doesn’t speak English and so I spent a good deal of the time doing simultaneous interpretation of our conversation. We talked about missing food from home countries, and cultural differences of people in our lives in the US compared to back in Mexico or Bahamas. Then my aunt asked, what Tony’s document status was, and what was it like for those in the Bahamas to immigrate to the United States.
Tony explained, which I had never known, was that his mother was a US citizen and although he was born and raised in the Bahamas, he was a US citizen via his mother. According to Tony, it is pretty easy as a Bahamian to get a tourist visa to the United States. While there is poverty in the Bahamas it is not as bad as the rest of the Caribbean. There is less reason to come into the United States and stay. And then Tony said something that had my aunt and I nodding our head in agreement “Why come to the US? Why come to suffer? We know at least back home we won’t go hungry. We take care of each other, of our neighbors and we all make sure everyone is eating. Why suffer?”
It is that idea that I think many don’t understand about immigration out of economic strain. It has to be so bad, that you leave your home country, your language, food, culture, to go to another country unsure of what kind of standard of living you will have; why suffer through that?
Elena Mary, what’s the best way to get in touch with you? Could you email me at kyle at citizenorange dot com?