What does it feel like to be an immigrant?

Not an answer but don’t women in Russia work at every kind of job? I am 2nd generation Irish Canadian, farmers, on one side and 3rd generation Irish on the other with an Englshman thrown in there somewhere, farmers as well. Did you make an effort to not have an accent?

@faye Yes but the assumption is that they don’t want to work, they have to work and that American women want to work even if they don’t have to.

Rainbow is still the shit, whatever.

I’m not one, I was the first person in my family to be born in America though. And my parents are both fluent English speakers, so I’ve never actually thought about that before…

I have a friend, Carlos who snuck over the Mexican border, at night, with his family, when he was like 8 years old. His father, Martin, was South America’s top Trapeze performer. He was stronger, higher and faster than anyone else. They come from a lineage of circus performers, going back I think 4 generations, and everyone in the family performs. Mom dad, son, brother. What happened was Martin did the “Getting shot out of a cannon” trick. But the cannon wasn’t aligned correctly, and he shot out of the cannon, off to one side, completely missed the net, crashed on the ground, and broke his back. Right there his circus career was over, and if they ever wanted to do eat again, they had to leave Mexico. They were lucky to have family who could help them. Martin’s wife, Jessica, had a sister who was already living and married in Florida. She was married to a successful Tae Kwon Do instructor, and Martin became the new after school supervisor, Jessica too. Carlos and Martin Jr grew up, and applied their natural inherited athletic skills to become Tae Kwon Do black belts, and they lived here for about ten years, with their own nice home and everything. Then one day my best friend Carlos decided to follow his dream and be his own man, try an opportunity, and work for his uncle, who owned his own circus. Martin left too, on a different circus, where he belongs, not at some after school program getting kids to sit down, but at the circus as a manager. All in all, if they didn’t live here, their kids would not have graduated, and they would not have made it where they are today.

The whole family is involved in the circus again today

I’m not an immigrant but my parents are, or I should say were since they are both US citizens now. They came from Mexico about 40 years ago. From what I know it’s always been tough to be an immigrant but even with all the obstacles the U.S. just has a lot more to offer than a third world country. I really sympathize with them because I can’t imagine how hard it must be to leave your home to go to a place where you are not wanted in order to give your family a better life. I don’t know how my life would have been if my parents would have stayed in Mexico 40 years ago but I can’t imagine it being better than it is here in the U.S.

not really immigrant status, but i know how being in another country can be dangerous to your health:
Once in a Indian village that i walked into, all of the kids ran out and started throwing rocks at me keeping me from entering their village.
Once crossing through a border guard crossing in India, the Guard whacked me in the head with his rifle butt. They tried to get $ out of me.
Once in Kabul Afghanistan, we were set up and held for ransom for two weeks in prison, but they couldn’t get anything so they let us go.
But at the same time i have been in countries where people have run out and invited me for dinner….

It’s different. In some ways, it’s like a very long overseas vacation, long enough that the vacation-flavored parts wear thin in places and real life shows through.

I got to be an immigrant to Italy once, when we moved from our Bay Area home to a little town in Northern Italy in November of 1999. (So little that our arrival had a significant impact on the local economy: the baker had to make one more loaf of bread each day.)

Leaving everything that I’d ever known was kind of stressful. And Northern Italy is a lot colder in the winter than is Northern California.We were the center of attention in the little town for months; we joked that we were the first Americans to visit the place since 1944 and even today, I wouldn’t be surprised if it were true. Everybody was nice and accommodating, and between them and our church we soon had a working household. The neighbors – the landlord’s parents and siblings – were wonderfully helpful, answering questions, lending us things that we hadn’t bought yet (like bicycles), offering advice, and helping Mom keep up with the trends in balcony flowers.

We didn’t have a car for about three months or so, and thus we would get around on foot, by bike, or by train. Since most of Italy was built around limited private transportation, this worked out pretty well, though grocery shopping was awkward. As was buying dishes; the only store that sold them was in the next town, and we only had backpacks to carry them in.

We would spend a lot of time as a family, working on our language skills, reading out loud to each other, traveling, playing games. My dad would often get out his guitar and a songbook, and we’d have sing-a-longs. Homework was a group effort as well, as we were rushed through subjects like Italian history and geography. We attended a lot of church functions in those days, too, that being our primary social outlet.

I was twelve at the time, so my POV is largely academic. The teachers (middle and elementary, respectively) tackled the challenge of teaching me and my sister Italian with gusto. The English teachers would routinely call us out of class to let their students practice on us; since we were still at the “dangit, where’s that dictionary?” phase of language acquisition, the normal lectures weren’t worth much. In return, they would call the English teachers whenever a concept took more Italian than we had. Break in the schoolyard would teach us things that wouldn’t come up so much in class; social norms and whatnot. Thanks to all of them, my sister and I were both passably fluent within five months and passably Italian in nine.
I learned that comic books were effective learning tools

Italy gave me my first experience with bureaucracy. Every so often, we’d have to take the train to the city and visit the main police station to have our paperwork checked out. The Italians do not think much of queuing; accordingly, the hundreds of people waiting outside were more of a herd than a line, and nobody’s place was guaranteed. Getting your permesso stamped was long, tiring (and in the winter, cold) work.

Once we were settled in (and the weather improved), the hardships weren’t so hard and the customs weren’t as strange Line-waiting never improved. And shortly after we moved again, this time to Lucca (a proper city instead of a small town), Italy began to feel like home.

I came here with my father in 1969, having been born in Canada, my parents having escaped from Communist Romania to get here, my mother dying in childbirth with me.

So, I guess being born in Canada and being that young does not put me in the same boat as most immigrants.

However, it always reminds me that I have it good and I thank my parents for having gotten out of there before having me or I would be dead now considering what is being done to my people in that part of the world now. My life would, most certainly, have been miserable because my people do not have it good there.

So, while I bitch about things like every American, I am extremely grateful to be here.

From my experience of living outside the UK for 10yrs while growing up I found that it felt exactly the same as living anywhere else. It really didn’t have any sort of conscious impact on me in any way.