I was born in a town called Namiquipa in Chihuahua, Mexico.  When I was a year old, my dad migrated to New Mexico to find work in the fields.  He didn’t have enough money to bring the rest of the family with him, but had to move because he had a hard time finding work in Mexico and was in need of an income.  After working for a few years, my dad saved enough money to bring the rest of my immediate family to live with him in America.  I was four years old when I migrated to the United States with my mom and other siblings.  My dad had been living in Phoenix by that time, so that is where my family moved to.  I was pretty young and don’t remember much of the move, except that it was the middle of the summer.  I couldn’t believe how hot it was in Phoenix!    

Learning the English language was the hardest barrier for me while growing up in America.  My parents only spoke Spanish at home, and the majority of our neighbors also spoke Spanish as their first language.  My parents still cannot speak English to this day.  Except for school, I never had a need to speak English.  This became problematic and caused me to have a lot of difficulty in school.  I was failing all of my classes, and by the time I was supposed to be in 7^th grade, I was still in the 5^th grade.  The school had to assign a bilingual teacher to me to help me improve my Spanish, but I still found it very difficult.

Growing up in Arizona, I never really socialized with Americans.  My parents did not have their citizenship and were always afraid about going out or associating with other people.  My parents were very private and rarely had visitors over to the house.  Once my brother brought a friend over from school one afternoon and my mom became really concerned.  She did not like us to have people over at our house.  I lived in Arizona with my family until I was fifteen years old.  Then my entire family was deported back to Mexico for not having legal papers.  This was really hard for me!  I was four years old when I moved away from Chihuahua, and had not been back there until we were deported.  I knew nothing about life in Mexico.  Yes, my family still maintained their cultural identity in America, but it was really hard to move to a completely new place as a teenager.  I was like a migrant in my own homeland.

I lived in Chihuahua until I was eighteen years old.  Then I decided I wanted to move back to Arizona.  I wanted to move back to the U.S. so I could have a career.  The gender roles are different in America than they are in Mexico.  Women in Mexico stay home with the kids and cook and clean.  I wanted something else than that, so I decided to move back.  No one else in my family wanted to move back to America, so I went by myself.  I still had difficulty with my English at that time, so I became determined to learn it fluently.  Before when I lived in Arizona, I was always around other Mexicans and didn’t need to learn English.  This time I was going to make sure to find a job working with a lot of Americans so I could learn English.  I preferred to be around Americans when I was trying to learn English, because they would always correct me if I made a mistake.  They truly wanted me to learn English and were extremely encouraging.  It was not like that with other Mexicans that knew English.  If I made a mistake around them, they would make fun of me and make me feel really bad about trying to learn English.

I met my husband when I was twenty one.  He migrated to the U.S. by himself as well.  He’s from Peru and that is where all of his family still lives.  Americans assume that my husband and I have similar cultures, but our countries and cultures are completely different.  My husband and I now have a son and a daughter together.  My first time back to visit my parents was when my first child turned five months old.  Now I go back all the time since I gained my U.S. citizenship.  Becoming a U.S. citizen has been my best experience since living in America.  I felt so proud of myself because so many people try to become citizens and very few actually do become citizens.  I don’t think people realize how hard of a process it is to attain citizenship.  It’s very expensive and a really long process.  You have to pay for things like fingerprints and lawyers, and the test is extremely hard.  They ask questions about the history and government of America.  Honestly, they are questions that most American born citizens would not even know.  How can they expect other people to pass the test when their own citizens can’t even pass it?  A lot of people miss more than three questions and then have to go through the whole process again.

Now that I have my citizenship, I go back to Mexico every couple of months to visit my family and see the doctor.  I go to Mexico for medical care and medication because it is a lot cheaper there than it is in America.  I used to send money home to my family, but now I just wait to give it to them when I go and visit.  They are dependent on the money I give them.  They would not be able to live without that money.

For the most part, a lot of Americans are really helpful and nice to immigrants.  However, there are still a lot of racist people that make you feel like nobody because you are an immigrant.  They judge immigrants without even taking the time to get to know them.  I don’t get how people can be like that.  It’s like saying you don’t like a certain type of food dish before you even try it!  Sometimes I feel like people judge me when I go into stores.  They hear my accent and automatically start judging me.  This makes me mad because I’m no different than the other paying customers! 

It took me a long time to get to know my recent neighbor.  She’s an American woman.  I think it was more of a cultural difference than her not liking me.  In Chihuahua, people are very close with everyone in their town.  It’s not uncommon for people to make dinner and share it with their neighbors.  I have tried to do that here, and every time my neighbor acts so surprised and tries to make me take the food back home.  I guess that’s just a difference between the two cultures.  People in the American culture are so private and don’t really take the time to get to know anyone outside of their family.  Despite all of the challenges faced as an immigrant, I still love it here in America.  I plan on staying here the rest of my life, but also plan on frequently visiting my family in Mexico.