an interview on immigration

1. Why did you immigrate to the United States?

Most of my extended family was already here and my parents wanted my sisters and I to have the best opportunities. (I have two younger sisters, Sarah who is 22 and Daphne who is 15)

2. Which country did you immigrate from?

Cebu, Philippines

3. Did your family come with you?

Not exactly. My sister and I (I was 10 and she was 6 when we came to the US) were left in Philippines while our parents worked here in the US to save up so that they can send for us.

4. What was your native language?

Tagalog and Visaya (two dialects in Philippines)

5. What was your life like when you lived in your native country?

It was simple. I can’t really explain how but it seemed a lot slower and easier.

What did you eat?
A lot of rice, fish, pork..same as what I would eat here. The only type of food I really miss because I cant have them here are the exotic fruits (they only grow in that hot climate)

What were your daily activities?
I went to school, helped my nanny (she was in charge while our parents were in the US), did my chores.

What was your occupation?
I was a student. I left when I was in third grade.

If you were a child, what was school like?
Short! I only went for half a day but that is also because we started school so young (I went to two kindergartens!). School there was also really hard..we learned to read English and write in script in the first grade.

6. Durring the time you immigrated, what was your country like?
It was pretty much in the same political climate as it is now. It’s a third-world country so there are a lot of corrupt policies, unemployment, etc. When I returned in 2006, the biggest change was transportation and the expansion of the city into the suburbs.

7. How old were you/ how long ago did you immigrate to this country?
I was ten, that was 15 years ago.

8. How did you feel about leaving home?
I honestly can’t remember knowing that I was leaving home. It felt to me like I went from one place to another without really realizing what I was doing (since most of the arrangements were handled by adults, we were pretty much packed and shuttled off). I’m not even sure I can remember saying goodbye to my friends. I do remember being told in the weeks before we left how lucky I was to be leaving and being really confused about that.

9. What to you then, was the hardest part about leaving?
Not seeing familiar faces anymore (like my nanny and her family) and wondering what happened to them.

10. What did you want/ expect when you came to America?
I was looking forward to getting to know my parents, since I was very young when they left and for a long time, I only knew their voices.

11. Map out your journey, where did you stop, how long did it take?
My aunt and my sister were with me, we left our little island called Cebu in Philippines for the big city, Manila, on a passenger boat (like a ferry but you slept on it too). Then we boarded a plane to Seoul, South Korea (I think it was a 16 hour plane ride). From Seoul we flew to JFK (that was a 30 hour plane ride).

12. What did you think when you first saw America?
How cold it was! We came in March so it was still chilly.

13. Did you like living here or did you REALLY want to go home?
For the first few weeks, it was strange so I wanted to go home and I remember wishing I was back at school, practicing my handwriting. After awhile, especially when I started school here, I learned to like it. The best part was being with my parents and being a family again.

14. What were your first priorites when you got here?
I didn’t really have any. I didn’t know what to expect.

15. What was your life like when you first came here?
Hard, in hindsight. We lived in a tiny apartment in Brooklyn with my grandmother. My little sister was born soon after we came so we had to fit a total of 6 people in two bedrooms. My parents had to sleep in the living room, on a pull-out couch.

16. What did you like most about America and what did you not like at all.
I loved that the school I attended in Brooklyn had so many kids who were like me, recently immigrated, didn’t speak much English so we understood what the others were going through, even if we didn’t speak the same languages. I did not like that when we left our little neighborhood in Brooklyn, people looked at us and treated us differently because we didn’t speak English and because my parents had accents.

17. What is your life like now?
I think it resembles the life my parents wanted me to have— I graduated college with honors and am working hard in a job that appreciates my work. I live in my own apartment, pay my own bills and essentially, making my parents proud of the person I’ve become.

18.In one or two words, discribe what the total experiance of immigration was for you.
Scary and just the beginning of my life.

19. What was the process you had to go through to immigrate here?
It was a pretty long process that began even before my sister and I came to the U.S. We came on dependent visas and didn’t become permanent residents (what people call “green card holders”) until many years later.