He wakes up to the light pattering of rain and the low murmurs of wind on a gray and cold Saturday morning. He thinks of his childhood—Mama and Baba and four children crammed into a two-room house of hand-me-downs and frying oil. He misses home. So he makes tea…
Step 1: Obtain ingredients and materials (kettle, teabag, teacup, water, and teaspoon).
Preparation. Immigrating to a new country is not a spontaneous decision. For my father, the decision took years of planning. In 1997, he applied as a technical immigrant to the United States with the purpose of obtaining a Ph.D. at Ohio State University. He wanted to leave China and create a better future for his new wife and their prospective family. To him, immigration was a chance to make something of himself in the realm of capitalism; his Gatsby-Esque green light winked at him from the end of Daisy’s dock. Two visas and 7,117 miles later, he was nearly halfway there.
Step 2: Bring water to a boil in a kettle. Carefully pour boiled water into a teacup.
Entrance. The plane touched down at the Detroit Metro Airport, and my parents stepped onto free soil for the first time. America was a glittery, sparkly thing—just like the stories—pulsating youthful energy and boasting clean air, clean water, and beautiful people. Immigration was my parents’ new beginning, and in their wide-eyed wonder, they realized they were wildly out of place. Immigration is an awkward, absolutely unnerving rebirth in a foreign country.
Step 3: Place tea bag into a teacup and let steep for 2-3 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Assimilation. Food was a problem. Especially for my mother. She traded the savory aromas of stir-fried smokiness wafting from vendors and the sweet, sugar-crusted flakiness of street corner bakeries for sweaty, gray-colored meat suffocated by cardboard buns. There are times when immigration hardly seems like a fair bargain.
Money was also a pressure point for my family, as it is for many. My father followed the jobs, and we followed my father, which ultimately meant moving. A lot. Four states in seven years, to be exact. We lived in apartments wherever we went, for convenience when it was time to leave. The first time I ever lived in a house was ten years ago. To me, it was a castle.
Immigration is tiptoeing the tight rope of acceptance and rejection. It is a hardship. I like to think it keeps two Dobermans as pets. One is named “Thirty Days,” and the other, “Desperation.” An immigrant can reach this euphoric state of security, where it seems like everything is good and all will be all right. Then, out of the blue, he loses his job, and the Dobermans come to claw at his front door. “Now that you are unemployed, you have Thirty Days to leave the country.” Thus ensues Desperation. The Dobermans attacked my father in the summer of 2009. He resolved to send me and my sister to live in China with our grandparents, in fear that he could no longer support us. He even bought the plane tickets. But by some act of fate, he found a new job, and the tickets were returned.
Immigration has its miracles, too.
CAUTION: Allow the tea to cool for one minute before consuming. Consuming immediately may result in burning.
Regret. While my father looked to the future, my mother looked over her shoulder at what she had left behind. She drove the stake into her parents’ hearts, telling them that their only daughter was leaving the country, permanently. Her father was sick at the time, but he let her go.
My mother was a brilliant writer and worked as editor-in-chief for a local Chinese journal. But once she came to America, she had to forfeit her writing career. Her command of English was nowhere near that of her native language. She settled for accounting instead.
For my mother, immigration was a string of “What if’s?” What if she hadn’t left for America? What if she hadn’t said goodbye to her family? What if she hadn’t met my father? Would she be happier? Would her father have lived longer? She would say that these questions are useless to ask, but I can see the way her steel expression crumples. Immigration is the insidious regret folded into the hollow centers of my mother’s eyes. It is not always the American Dream. She didn’t want the American Dream, she wanted her own. I don’t know if the sacrifice was worth it for her, and I don’t think I will ever ask.
Note: Expired tea leaves or tea leaves of low quality may result in a bitter taste.
Imperfection. Immigration to the United States is a flawed process, inevitably so. Immigrants who shouldn’t enter do, and those who should enter don’t. The concept of immigration is oftentimes irrationally feared and misunderstood. Citizens fear the immigrant will be economic malice, stealing American jobs from American people and seeking asylum just to leech off of American resources. Citizens fear the illegal and undocumented terrors running amok throughout the country, letting their filthy baggage air out on American soil. Citizens fear the non-acclimates and social disgraces—“You’re in America. Speak English,” and other variations.
These immigrants exist, and they do burden the country, but they are not most immigrants. My father did not steal his job, he earned it. Same with my mother. They came here legally, my father on a student visa and my mother on a dependent visa. They have been learning English since grade school. All of the scowls, the weary glances, the prejudices, and the racial slurs will not make them leave.
People point fingers at immigration even though it is the very backbone of the country they vow to protect.
Step 4: Enjoy.
Triumph. When my father’s Green Card expired, he applied for his American citizenship. Following a two-hour drive to a Chicago interview, he became a citizen—with an American passport and everything. In doing so, he surrendered his Chinese citizenship. The cost was worth it to him. He voted in his first election. He has a voice in this country.
Immigration is pride. I am proud of my parents, who entered this country with nothing and no one but each other and braved through years of acclimation and fear of being told to leave. Now, we don’t have to be afraid of leaving. We can stay.
In the end, immigration is teary goodbyes, stepping off the airport terminal into glaring confusion, waiting in long and longer lines, offensive volumes of paperwork, apartment-hopping, night classes, Green Cards, Green Cards, Green Cards, paying the bills, loneliness, watching Jeopardy as an English lesson, college diplomas, oaths of allegiance, ten years of waiting, and finally becoming a citizen. It is hard. It is a sacrifice. It is frightening. It is a chaotic mess of tug-of-war and conformity and longing for more, always more.
But it gave me my life.
Epilogue.
My father loves his traditional Chinese tea, but he also drinks American coffee. He takes his with cream and no sugar. American coffee is too strong for my mother, but she is content. Most immigrants will be.
