To you, future Amerikano

Shakira Sison

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You work too much for usually less than you'd hoped, skimping on yourself to send more back home

Shakira SisonYou there holding that US Visa application or looking for US job prospects online. You with the fervent St Jude prayers and the long shot dreams, I feel you.

I feel you because I’ve been there with my throat feeling like I swallowed 15 polvorons before my visa interview. In the cold US embassy in Manila, there was a woman who was sobbing after being rejected a visa to see her dying father, and an old man presenting lot titles to prove his wealth so he could see his great grandchild.

With my armpits soaked in sweat from nervousness but cold from the wintry AC, I sat behind my fellow interviewees because I didn’t want to draw attention to myself as belonging to their red denial bracket — 20s, single, college degree. At that moment, I couldn’t risk being denied.

I was fearful of the consular officers, especially the infamous Asian woman who was reportedly trigger-happy with the denial stamp (she already denied me a visa a few years back). They sat there expressionless behind thick glass, spending the day deliberating our fates.

Who gave them so much power, I wondered, mostly in my bitterness about being evaluated based on a few documents over just a minute of their time. How dare this country block my entry when I was pretty much an American child?

Like you, I was raised on Sesame Street, Nickelodeon, and every other imaginable American television show. English was not a second language, but a status symbol. “You’re so American” was a compliment, and it was necessary to be familiar with every “stateside” salt-sprayed, yellow snack food and overly sweet high-fructose corn syrup candy bar.

Everyone and their mother had a relative who sent home an occasional Balikbayan Box filled with goodies that were a glimpse of  the shiny newness of America.  

Belonging

Because of these factors, I thought I’d belong. I didn’t doubt my English, I practiced it with an American accent once during a trip to Disneyland. I thought Manila made me snappy, resourceful, and worldly — I was perfect for the country I was going to make my new home. 

I didn’t even want to go. Like you, I loved my country and vowed not to be one of those overly ambitious people who deserted the homeland. But also like you, for money, family, or in my case — love, I was called to make the move to the other side.

The fates conspired and I got an approved visa stamp. I bought my ticket and flew towards my fate and the rest of my life.   

They paint it so colorfully, this life abroad. I caught glimpses of it in my cousins’ yearly school photos, Christmas studio shots, and pictures of uncles’ and aunts’ new homes and cars.

When I saw something I liked in a magazine, my mother would tell me to write my Ninang a letter and ask for it, and I did: Chuck Taylors, Boss guitar pedals, Avocet bike computers, a paisley Pop Swatch watch.

I had no concept of the cost of living in the US (just the exchange rate), not that it mattered. To me, like to many Pinoys, America was a place where everyone bought what they wanted willy-nilly. It was a place that was far from the constraints of my developing country. America was where want could always equal have. 

You see, our overseas relatives don’t burden their loved ones with their difficulties. They don’t mention the thousands of dollars in annual spending for immigration lawyer fees (just to be able to stay), or the dead-end limitations of the TNT (undocumented) life.

They don’t mention the stress of working so hard for the possible eventuality of being sent home. They don’t talk about the lonely silence of being away from loved ones, the ache for the tropics and the home-cooked meals, or even their slightest difficulty in their adopted tongue.

Making it

For one, it was embarrassing to admit that after 18 years of school with English as the medium of instruction, and 26 years of American television, my new immigrant self often stared obliviously at the person I was talking to, unable to decipher the garbled New England, Southern, or California accent.

The rhythm of American English is different from our melodic one. They don’t teach you this in school (although maybe they do now in Manila’s call centers, where they teach you how to speak Ameri-cuhnnn). I learned, the way I did for many things, that I had to step away from The Pinoy Way, to even come close to assimilating into American life.

But these things aren’t reported home to those left behind. One does not hear about the shared 4-person room your Auntie stays in because she became a nanny instead of a business manager like she was in Manila.

You don’t regale them with stories of your life as a janitor in a hospital when you topped your Philippines nursing class. You don’t talk about the constant fear of not making it, of failing your family, of not being able to send money home. You never talk about hardly being able to live the hammered-on, painted-in idea you have of the American Dream.

Instead you buy stuff you don’t really need. You spend too much time at the mall looking at things you think your family would love, picturing a dress on your daughter, and a Lakers hat for your dad.

You work too much for usually less than you’d hoped, skimping on yourself to send more back home. Or you fall into debt because someone got sick, or you got a little carried away with shopping, or on that new car, or a house that you couldn’t really afford.

Or you make it. You land a great job that pays the bills, with more than enough to go around. You meet the love of your life, marry and have baby Americans. You get your papers, you sponsor your family, and they all come to join you in the States.

You watch your dollar, put money away, and appreciate a society where you can live on what you earn, and where your children can be free to make up their own minds. Either way, no matter how much you blend in now and how little you left behind, there is still someone left behind. 

So you always send pictures, always happy ones, because nobody needs to know that it’s not as picturesque as it sounds. Without you, lives and homes are being built in the homeland.

Children are being schooled and are growing so fast. You see it everyday on Skype — the world that goes on without you but is sometimes funded by you, by your toiling in the secret silence of being in another land. That’s when you realize that this is the less than perfect version of what we’ve often called “a better life.”

So yeah, you — the one reading this on a laptop in a quiet room while waiting for your noisy family to go online. I feel you. And I want to give you a hug. – Rappler.com

Read: The Smell of America

Read: In faces and voices, a search for home 

Shakira Andrea Sison currently works in the financial industry while dabbling in several unrelated projects and interests. She is a veterinarian by education and was managing a retail corporation in Manila before relocating to New York in 2002. Follow her on Twitter: @shakirasison



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