With the renewal of the immigration debate in early May, I observed many of my peers at Willow Glen High School walk out of classrooms in protest of the immigration bill in Washington that threatens to punish many of their undocumented friends, relatives and even them. While I objected to rash and unorganized protesting, I admired their passion for the issue. It had never occurred to me that in the same schools and neighborhoods walked teens who may share my ambitions, but not the same legal opportunities to pursue them.


A new perspective had come to light. It initially seemed too subjective for my often rational way of thinking -- which would in any other case prompt this kind of response: If you are illegal, you have no legal rights. But a re-evaluation of their cause provoked me to recollect memories of my own experiences with immigration and helped me shape a better perspective.

For the first seven years of my childhood, I lived in a province on the outskirts of Hue, Vietnam. I was rarely perplexed with the problems that were permanent facts in the daily lives of my family. I never realized that for every day I played, my parents labored in sweat and tears. Summer days were when my dad spent countless hours in the sweltering crop fields and my mom, in her fragile health awoke, at the crack of dawn to sell household items in the village market. School days never inspired individualism, but preached impossible goals centered on the good of the community, or rather, the good of the Communist Party. The regime and undemocratic traditions it fosters are responsible for the misguided progress of my country, the harsh lives of my hardworking parents and the unpromising futures of my friends. Yet my country has not strived for democracy since the tragic Vietnam War. My parents never spoke out their complaints and my peers never showed signs of individualism.

All this I did not realize, until my family legally immigrated to the United States with the help of my father's role as an officer in the South Vietnam coalition during the Vietnam War. It was a turn of fate I now value more than ever.

It was not easy. My siblings and I struggled to learn English to help ease the culture shock while my parents continued to overwork to pave paths for our futures. We lived in a one-bedroom apartment in downtown San Jose where airplanes flew so close that they seemed almost at arm's reach. I remember always wanting to jump high enough to grasp their wings, fleeing hardships and returning to the familiar Vietnam.

Yet daydreams like these were impossible and, as I later learned, not true dreams to begin with. I realized that my ambitions and dreams extend beyond the limited opportunities of Vietnam and the expectations I grew up with. Living in the United States has given me both knowledge and opportunities to pursue passions and dreams.

This experience connects me directly to the immigration debate and to the people potentially affected by the bill. I share with many illegal immigrants, especially youths, a desire to pursue dreams and achieve what our homelands could not offer us. But the law sees us only as two kinds of individuals, legal or illegal. Two letters make all the difference. I was lucky, and they were not. I came to realize how much people tend to forget that the immigration debate is more than just a yes or no on HR 4437. The heart of the debate lies with the people.

It is so easy for critics to cite unemployment and crime rates when they argue against illegal immigration. And I can only say that not all illegal immigrants are deserving of the opportunity to pursue their dreams in America.

But what's not so easy is becoming a victim of human trafficking -- suffocating in ships and boxcars and wilting in the barren deserts of the Southwest, in pursuit of unfulfilled dreams. Such an experience is beyond me, and perhaps even beyond the toughest critic.

What I end up with is an uncertainty, but a good kind of uncertainty. I find peace in knowing that the understanding I have now is a result of a deeper introspection into my life as well as theirs. Some may never come to realize what I have, and I don't have the power to change this. But I do urge open-mindedness.


(As published in MO**ic-June 30th, 2006)

Picture courtesy of uprisingradio.org