Writer | Saumya Sharma

Estimated Reading Time: 14 minutes

At face value, I was the quintessential American girl, craving a bite at the big apple and wanting nothing more than the picture-perfect lifestyle that comes with achieving the elusive American dream. On the inside, however, I was just a child, festering in the insecurities and struggles that came with being an immigrant. While the world is slowly becoming privy to the plight of illegal immigration, not many people understand that the pathway to citizenship as a legal immigrant is just as tumultuous and scarring. Whether legal or illegal, being an immigrant is nothing short of a curse.

Of course, I was aware of my immigrant “condition” from a very young age. My parents decided to immigrate to The United States from India when I was eight years old, and at that age, I had no choice but to tag along. I went from a privileged child who strutted around in fancy cars, studied at an elite school, and easily got everything she wanted, to a confused and apprehensive child, helping her mother carry groceries in buses and babysitting her younger siblings in a one-bedroom apartment while her mother figured out the visa situation (I’ll take this opportunity to mention that both my younger siblings were born in the United States because this is important for later in the story). 

I soon realized that figuring out this impending visa situation would be no cup of tea. What started as a promise for a better future and endless trips to Disneyland quickly turned into a nightmare. My mother, who already had a master’s degree in Political Science from one of the best universities in Delhi, was reduced to studying all over again just to maintain legality in the United States. She braved through as an adult international student to get her teaching credentials while I struggled at being the weird new “curry eating” girl with a funny accent in a new school. Children often don’t understand how hurtful and traumatizing their words can be, and parents need to teach acceptance. Almost immediately, I was considered an outcast and bullied for everything, from the way I spoke to what I ate to how I carried myself. 

At the age when young children are supposed to start building an identity for themselves, I had already lost mine. Endless lunches and recesses were spent hiding in the bathroom and wandering around the school grounds wondering what was wrong with me. Each minute spent at school felt like I was being punished, and becoming the punching bag of elementary school children wore me down. When I would go home, I would see my mother struggling to make ends meet and applying for job after job, hoping someone would sponsor her H1B working visa (one of the few long-term ways to establish your pathway to permanent residency). Needless to say, I grew up very quickly for my age but devoid of a sense of self. 

This dichotomy continued for years, and by the time my parents had stabilized themselves in the country, I started reaping the consequences of their decisions. While my parents were able to build a life for themselves through my mother’s working visa (she became a special education teacher since this is one of the few career options that allowed sponsorship), I was never able to obtain any form of permanent citizenship in the United States.  It wasn’t as though my parents didn’t try but, eventually, they realized that they had, unintentionally, put me in a never-ending loop of problems. My dilemma became that until I turned 21 (a legal adult according to the United States), I could be on an H4 dependent visa. What this meant was that I could legally live with my parents and be educated in the United States until I became an adult. What this visa also meant was that I would never be able to work in the country without sponsorship, never qualify for healthcare that wasn’t private and expensive, never qualify for financial assistance, never be allowed to vote, and would always be deprived of the rights and privileges that my friends and siblings took for granted. 

The least life could offer me would have been a great childhood to offset my immigration issues, but that wasn’t the case. Due to being bullied from an early age, I grew socially anxious, wanting to assimilate to my American life and uproot any part of me that was tied to my Indian roots. To make matters worse, my father, a determined yet culturally conservative man, sought to bring his children up with the exact Indian roots I intended to cut off. This led to a clash of cultures, and I bore the repercussions yet again. While he valued hard work, perfect grades, obedience, and sucking the opportunity out of every situation, he detested activities and behaviors he thought would make me into spoiled a American child. His expectations consisted of a rigorous schedule of school, sports, and studying, with no room for “fun.” Fun was for children who were spoiled and didn’t want to become something in life. 

Unfortunately for him, I believed in balance. I wanted to have fun. I wanted to go out with my friends to the movies, have sleepovers, trips, after-school hangouts, go to school dances, etc. This didn’t sit well with my father. To him, that meant that I didn’t care about my privilege of being in America. I was the definition of the rotten tomato he didn’t want in his basket.  Thus, I became the black sheep of the family. I learned that being an immigrant meant hard work and only hard work for the rest of your life. For my father, turning me into the cream of the crop meant fixing my immigration status. If I was perfect, focused, went to the best schools, had the best grades and outstanding extracurriculars, then maybe, just maybe, I would end up a citizen of the United States. Everything else to him became nonsense aside from this goal. I grew up an unhappy girl who always had to put her visa status before herself. I resented him for the pressure and his rigidness against accepting American traditions and norms.  My immigrant father craved perfection and obedience while I craved a normal childhood. 

It was when I was sixteen that things really hit the fan. By this time, Indian conservatism and ideals were overflowing into my life when all I wanted was to be a normal teenager. I wasn’t allowed to go out with my friends and was extremely sheltered and limited, despite my outgoing and adventurous personality. As if I couldn’t be more frustrated, I also felt the first full-face impact of my visa restrictions when I applied for a job as a lifeguard. I had grown up as a competitive swimmer (something I luckily enjoyed) and excitedly got my lifeguarding certification alongside my friends when I turned sixteen. I knew I was fully qualified for this coming of age job and eagerly applied. The result was a rejection, based not on my abilities but because lifeguarding wasn’t a job that could be sponsored, according to immigration laws. I was crushed. 

From then onwards, I made it my mission to fix this immigration issue myself, so that I could be free to live the American dream. I thought that if I did it my way and give it my all, I would fix my immigration status. I was naive, believing hard work, sacrifice, and perseverance would ensure me the future I desperately sought. Nonetheless, I persisted. I learned from a classmate that I could test out early from high school after my sophomore year, start going to community college, get my Associates’s degree, and then transfer to a university at eighteen. I saw this path as an opportunity to stand out on college applications while saving my parents tons of money since international students have to pay so much more to attend college. I took the test and spent the next two years at my local community college, perfecting myself for my university applications. It worked out for me too, but not without sacrificing the rest of my childhood. I lost tons of friends, didn’t get to go to prom, didn’t have the typical graduation ceremony, and didn’t get to create the very memories that people grow to cherish. 

However, I rationalized my sacrifices with the notion that graduating early had allowed me to save tons of money, get me into the University of California, Berkeley, the number one public university in the world, and one step closer to an independent and successful life I had always envisioned for myself. Since immigration had forced me to become mature beyond my years, I kept compromising with life so that I could have the options and privileges that other people my age didn’t even have to think twice about. What I didn’t realize was that while being an immigrant had made me into a determined young woman, it had deprived me of the time to build myself as an individual and was tearing away at my mental health. 

UC Berkeley was an extremely rewarding and eye-opening time of my life. Growing up sheltered and over-protected, the time I spent at Berkeley was when I truly got to spread my wings. I soaked up every bit of the independence, the adventures, the excitement that came my way. The undergraduate experience made me feel as though I was on top of the world. It was at UC Berkeley that I found a small sense of self. I realized I was more than an enigma. I was a beautiful, confident, resilient young woman who had a lot to offer the world. I thrived during this period. I’d almost forgotten my immigration woes, at least until they came creeping in my senior year. It was around this time, as I watched my peers attend recruiting fairs and secure jobs, that depression and anxiety kicked in. I was twenty years old, on my dependent visa, and the prospects of entry-level employment had evaded me.  

I was frightened, panic-stricken, and overwhelmed, and it came out in different ways. At twenty, I didn’t know how to proceed, so I jumped on the law school bandwagon. Law school would surely be the perfect way out of my messy situation. Deep inside, I knew that what I really wanted was an entry-level paying job and some real-life experience, but I didn’t have any option except to hurtle myself towards law school. The anxiety that came with always making calculative decisions to maintain legality in the country decided to reveal itself around graduation. Right after graduating, I had my first anxiety attack. However, I dusted myself off and suppressed the incident, because, as usual, I had bigger fish to fry.

I moved to the big apple with my big dreams, sincerely believing that going to law school would fix my life and my future. New York City quickly became my favorite place in the whole world. I relished being on my own and saw my move across the country as a step forward, even though I was still, not by choice, very much financially dependent on my parents. I didn’t want to be dependent on anyone, and eventually, this caused me extreme turmoil, as I saw my friends and peers making ends meet by themselves, making their own choices, building their credit scores and lives. I had also graduated with great grades and even gotten into law school. Yet, because of my immigration status, I couldn’t even make a quick buck. I had limited options and continued to compromise with my life by joining law school. What I didn’t realize was, by the time I started law school, I was already dancing on a thin wire with my mental health. The constant compromises, sacrifices, lack of options, and watching others around me move forward made me feel increasingly stuck.

Law school was perhaps the single most blow to my self-esteem. I hated it. What I had envisioned as the perfect stepping stool towards a new life and a shot at a job that would sponsor me, backfired completely. Law school was a full circle right back to the hell I thought I had escaped. Once again, somehow, I found myself bullied, isolated, and treated as an outcast. The reason? As a student senator, I had helped address an issue about sexual harassment that was brought to my attention instead of just minding my own business. The very same people who had elected me as their senator turned away from me and refused to get “involved.” I became the scapegoat. Sometimes, I feel that I should’ve just let people handle their own problems; it would’ve at least spared me. But isn’t the point of law school to advocate for those who can’t advocate for themselves? And isn’t it American law to hold due process and to bring injustice to light? Who knew I’d end up reliving my worst nightmare instead?

The turmoil, coupled with the constant stress of battling immigration, impacted my mental health and work.  After my second year, I decided that law school was not the best fit for me, at least not at that time. This was the first time I had chosen myself and my well-being over my visa, knowing full well what the consequences would be. This single decision became a catalyst for my student visa to get canceled and for my relocation to India, a country I did not remotely remember and had not called home for 15 years. My parents and siblings stayed behind because the United States is their home, of course. For me, the worst had come to pass.

While the culture shock and initial adjustment were extremely challenging, I now see my coming to India as an opportunity to reflect, grow, and realign to a more suited career path. Being a citizen of India, I have been able to capitalize on opportunities that were inaccessible to me in the United States. Moreover, the move back to India has been a testament to my strength and resilience. It has been two years since the shift, and I can honestly attest that I do not identify as an American or an Indian. That’s what being an immigrant does to a person. Immigration is nothing short of a curse because it uproots a person, changes their dynamics, and transplants them into places where they might not necessarily belong or thrive. Immigration is a gamble. It’s full of uncertainty and doubt and jumping hoops that are set in place as “rules” to deter people, to exploit them, all in the name of a bigger, better, brighter future. Immigration is a loss of identity. It’s a constant state of chaos that most people can’t even begin to understand. Immigration is an experience where there are those who are on the inside and those who are not. Immigration is a search for a forever home, a place to re-root, sometimes in vain. 

I believe someone wise once said, “if a flower doesn’t bloom, you don’t change the flower, you change the environment,” and that is just what I intend to do. Today, I may not have a certain path, but at least now, I am no longer living a life in shackles. Instead of trying to fit myself into a place that maybe wasn’t meant for me to begin with, I have the liberty of picking a new dream and destination. I no longer have to make do with a life or circumstances that were chosen for me. This time, I’m back to square one and get to figure it out for myself, and there is just something so liberating about that. I have given up living according to the expectations of other people and making unnecessary compromises. 

Life isn’t fair, but I was naive to think that it would be. What life has taught me is to put myself and my mental health first, to capitalize on opportunities as they come, and to adjust the sails whenever needed. I can’t wait to find out who I am meant to be, although I’m starting to get a clearer picture. I am more than an immigrant. I am more than an enigma.