Why touch such a hot topic? Because I was a legal immigrant twice. I don’t talk about the details much because my melodrama is no more interesting than that of others but it is my melodrama, so much so that it’s most likely made a substantial contribution to the anxiety disorder I’ve lived with most of my life.
My parents and I emigrated illegally. Countries behind the iron curtain didn’t issue visas and passports. Traveling papers are the prerogative of the free. In fact we escaped at gunpoint, late at night, after hiding in a farmhouse near the Austrian border. We had little money because earning money was selfish capitalism, almost no belongings because you couldn’t look like you were leaving. Caught trying to leave, you’d be arrested. Not arrested and then face a judge and then be tried. No. Arrested and then disappear. The farmer had to be paid to hide us. The farmer’s son had to be paid to carry me to the border. The mud was too deep, I couldn’t run fast enough, and we had to hurry. My father in his panic gave the farmer’s son ten times the promised amount, almost all our tiny pot of money. I pounded that boy’s shoulders, screamed in his ear to slow down, afraid my mother would have a heart attack from trying to keep up. I was 8 years old.
In Vienna my father stood in line every day to get 3 visas to the US. They didn’t just hop on a boat and arrive with their child at a foreign border without any papers. The US line was too long so we ended up with Canadian visas. Then a train to Genoa and a ship to the port of Montreal. The Italians were kind, generous, brave, bringing us across the ocean on a vessel too small for the worst storm on the Atlantic in 20 years. We came close to capsizing.
Montreal in January was freezing cold, buried under feet of snow. We had no winter clothes except the coats the wonderful Italians gave to the children. We had little clothing of any kind.
We had to spend some time in an immigrant camp where we were sanitized, vaccinated, quarantined until the Canadian government was sure we were disease-free. I take no issue with this process. Of course the government had to protect its citizens. For me however it was the first of many brain-squeezing notions that the place we came from, and therefore also I was dirty, unacceptable, something nice people avoided. Once released from the camp we moved into a room in a rooming house.
My father already spoke 4 languages fluently and had book knowledge of English and French. He was the interpreter on the ship because he spoke Italian. In Montreal, unlike most immigrants, with his passable English and French and his Ph.D. in Chemistry he got a job right away. It was entry level but at least some money started coming in. My mother and I spoke Hungarian and German, not a word of English and French. I watched my parents, who had left behind a country, a culture, 2 languages, a home, friends, documents, jewelry, baby pictures, the things that capture a life, turn themselves inside out to master 2 new languages and assimilate into Canadian culture. I struggled too but it’s easier for a child, although not that easy for a child riddled with anxiety. Despite my gratitude for my parents’ sacrifice, I remember it like a nightmare. A school with kids and teachers I couldn’t talk to, some of whom made it clear that I was not one of them, not enough money to start a new life, nervous parents who engaged in volatile, screaming arguments and who seemed to their terrified child ready to crack at any moment.
As soon as they could my parents applied for Canadian citizenship. We had to study Canadian history, had to pass the citizenship exam. In English. There was no Hungarian and German interpreter. There were no materials printed in Hungarian and German. We had a choice of English or French. We passed and as soon as the process allowed we became citizens. The judge welcomed us in every language represented at that citizenship ceremony. That memory still brings tears to my eyes.
Some years later my grandmother joined us in Canada. She spoke 8 languages fluently so until her death 5 years later she had a little home business teaching immigrants to pass the citizenship exam. She was 80 years old when she started a new life in a country most people knew nothing about. Canada was not a popular escape spot on Radio Free Europe to which we listened frozen in fear of being found out.
My parents and my grandmother never asked their new country for help – no welfare, no food stamps, no free anything. My parents never ended up in court and then demanded a Hungarian or German interpreter. When my mother had to make a phone call there was no option to press a number for Hungarian and German. The only option she had was to muddle through in her broken English and French and learn to speak those languages better every day. She also got a job right away, My mother, who had been a child star and wanted to be a lady of leisure, worked as a waitress at a restaurant owned by a Hungarian acquaintance. Eventually my mother, who dreaded math, got a job as a bookkeeper, a job she kept until shortly before her death.
After graduating from McGill University I moved to New York to enter the Masters program at Columbia, majoring in Education of the Deaf. As soon as I could I applied for US citizenship. As soon as the process allowed I became a US citizen.
Now I work in court multiple times per week – not in one courthouse but in all the local courthouses. And every week I watch as hordes of spoken language interpreters run from courtroom to courtroom to interpret for those who claim they don’t speak English. I’m told many of these people request an interpreter because they know the interpreter cases are heard first.
I often interpret jury duty and watch as hordes of prospective jurors ask to be excused because they don’t speak English. Most judges excuse them. One judge, a hispanic man, won’t excuse them before he asks how long they’ve been in the US and how many English classes they’ve taken. The answer is usually upwards of 9 years and not one English class. In those cases he makes them stay as long as every other juror. Good for him.
Do I know what it’s like to be an immigrant? Oh yes. And so I welcome all immigrants who like my parents and my grandmother try to learn English instead of demanding that an entire country speak to them in their language, who try to make room in their lives for our culture instead of demanding that an entire country move aside for theirs. But like that judge, I have ZERO patience and compassion for those who take ZERO responsibility to contribute to a country on which they heap demands but to which they offer nothing in return. ZERO.