The final assignment for “World History:  from 1500 to the present” is an oral history with an immigrant.  It is a scary assignment for most of the students; after all, the majority take that class in the first semester of their first year.  They were in high school only three months prior.  The most frightening part is having to find an immigrant and ask them about that aspect of their life.  I do not allow students to interview fellow students.  They have to find someone older and with more experience.  That makes the assignment nerve-wracking.  How do you go up to an “adult” and ask her to talk about such intimate and potentially traumatic time in her life?  The oral history is due at the end of the term, after we have reached the twentieth-century in the textbook, with its upheavals, wars, and drastic economic changes.  The students know the context for their subjects’ lives and what led them to leave the land of their birth and their communities behind.  When it is all done, students are truly glad they did the work.  They learn so much from listening to just one person’s story.  Their single story puts a human face to the texts they read and the news they hear or see in the media.  Migration is not a sound bite anymore; it is real people revealing the reasons why they left behind everything they knew and love to venture into the United States.  What you will read here is just a sampling.  The compilers of the stories are: Marelize Meyer, Madeline Haun, Riley Drummond, Collin Kopchik, Colin Jones, and Adam Mills.  All except for Adam are first year students. 

Professor Myrna Santiago
Saint Mary’s College of California

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Boat People Story

I was part of a mass exodus from Vietnam known as the boat people.  I was born on in 1973 in Saigon, Vietnam, right at the end of the Vietnam war. I don’t remember the war since I left Vietnam and the war was before I was born. By the time I was two years old, the communist North Vietnamese had full control of the country.  My father had fought for South Vietnam, working closely with the U.S.  After the Communists gained control of Vietnam he was arrested and sent to a rehabilitation camp with a bunch of other U.S. sympathizers. I can still remember being a little kid, around four or five years old and my mother would take me, my brother, and my sister to go see him in prison. The prison had been an old U.S. military base that was converted to hold prisoners. I can still remember talking to my father through a chain link fence while he was locked away. Besides my dad being in prison, life was pretty normal.

I attended school in Vietnam and although my memory is foggy when it comes to my old day to day routine, I distinctly remember that all the kids in school had to wear matching red neckerchiefs to show support to the Communist Party. I used to walk to school which was quite safe to do. When I was six years old my father was released from the rehabilitation camp. Before the war had begun, my dad had worked as a math teacher. This was a profession he was no longer allowed to pursue because of his connection to the United States. I think that the communists were worried about his stern influence being near the kids. Because of this my father was forced to find whatever job he could, and he got a job as a bus driver.

In 1979, my father had enough.  He realized that our family did not have a future in Vietnam. He paid in gold to get our family onto a fishing boat so we could escape. I was told not to tell anybody about our plans to leave. Not even my grandparents could know because if they told anybody, we could all be arrested. We left late at night and went to a small fishing port where we rendezvoused with forty other Vietnamese people who we would be escaping with.  My family and I had to wade through mud to get to the boat. Once we got on board we were ushered into the belly of the boat, the area where the caught fish were supposed to go. I remember sitting there anxiously waiting for the captain. We waited and waited but the captain never showed up.  We would come to find out that he had been captured by the police on his way to the boat and therefore was not able to make the journey with us. So all we had was the first mate who was not qualified to be driving the boat by himself, and a bunch of civilians desperate to get out of Vietnam. Despite not having a real captain, we left Vietnam that night. I remember we had to hide in the belly of the boat for quite a long time after we left shore. We had to make it look like we were just a normal fishing boat and not a bunch of escaping civilians. For five days we floated on this boat. We had no idea which direction we were headed and we were all just hoping we would end up somewhere safe. And then finally on the fifth day, our boat ride finally ended and we spotted land.

We landed on a small Indonesian resort island and were met quickly by the police. I think they were trying to ask us questions, but I could not understand them because we did not speak the same language. None of them spoke Vietnamese so it was impossible for anybody to communicate with each other. Somehow they came to understand that we were Vietnamese refugees and were looking for help. They drew us a map which directed us to a different island that had a refugee camp on it. But we were scared, we knew that there was food and shelter on the island we had landed on and didn’t want to risk getting lost on the way to the refugee island. So instead of listening to the Indonesians and going to the refugee camp, we decided to take a different route. 

Our new captain drove our boat to the other side of the resort island. We all disembarked from the boat and promptly burned it like Columbus!  Now we had no way of leaving the island. Not too long after we burned the boat, the Indonesian police showed up shooting their guns in the air and yelling at us. I was terrified, I thought that they were going to kill me, but they didn’t. They calmed down and allowed us to stay on the island while they called the United Nations for help. We stayed on the resort island for twelve days.  On the twelfth day the UN boat arrived. I remember being shocked at the size of the boat, it was a massive freightliner. It was so big in fact that it had to anchor pretty far away from the island so as not to get stuck in the shallow water. I remember my family boarding a small boat that the island’s locals had found and being ferried over to the massive UN ship. When we arrived at the side of the UN ship, they threw down a rope ladder and I had to climb up. When I got to the top of the ladder I was pulled onto deck by one of the UN staff members. The freight ship had multiple levels. I remember the level where we spent most of our time looking a lot like a school gym during a natural disaster,  one where there are sleeping bags all over the floor and everybody is crammed together. To a young kid like me the entire thing felt like an adventure. But the fun part of the adventure was coming to an end.  The freightliner took us to the refugee camp island that the Indonesians had told us about.

The refugee camp was weird. It was definitely not as fun as the boat had been.  When we showed up there were hundreds of Vietnamese already there. This number quickly turned into thousands due to the massive influx of people. I went from being around the same 40 people for weeks to suddenly being around a massive amount of other Vietnamese. Because of the massive influx of refugees to this camp, there weren’t enough barracks for all of us. The UN paid Vietnamese men like my father to help build more barracks. He helped build barracks while we were in the camp. We were lucky enough to get a spot in a barracks quickly and that was where we lived for the next seven months. There were new people coming to the camp every day.  At its peak there were somewhere between five and ten thousand refugees. Every barrack held only 100 people, so there was a push to build housing fast.

The barracks were very simple longhouses that were built in a cross so that if viewed from above the barracks would look like a + sign.  There were four long wooden beds made of smooth wood, each long bed separated by the hallways and could accommodate 25 people. A family of five like mine was allowed a fifth of one of these beds. What separated us from the next family was a simple plank of wood. I remember sitting up in bed and being able to see everybody in our bed, laid out in a seemingly endless row. Despite the dreariness of the camp, it didn’t stop my brother and I from being kids. I remember playing all sorts of games with him. We would make yo-yos out of Coca-Cola bottle caps and would use soda cans to make small boats that we could play with. They were simple toys but we didn’t complain because we didn’t care, they kept us entertained.

During our time at the refugee camp, my father was interviewed by the UN. He told them that he was a political asylum seeker who had aided America during the war. It took the UN quite a while to background check my dad and make sure he was actually who he said he was. When they became sure of my dad’s connection to the U.S., the United States were obligated to take in my family. Funnily enough, my father didn’t want to go to the United States.  He had heard that the cost of living was high and he would have preferred going to Canada or Australia.  Neither of those countries would take our family, so we went to the United States. The UN found a sponsor for my family, a Catholic church in California.

So finally after seven long months in a refugee camp, my family got on a transport ship and traveled to Singapore. From Singapore we got on a plane and flew to SFO (San Francisco Airport). I still remember arriving in San Francisco on March 24th, 1980.The change in scenery was drastic, I went from living in the rural countryside to flying into a massive city. I had never seen so many lights in my life!  They seemed to be endless. We were picked up at SFO by a sister who was affiliated with the church.

She drove us and we were shown to the apartment that would become our home for the next couple years. We arrived at that two-bedroom, two-bath apartment with one suitcase that was being shared by my entire family. Luckily the apartment was already furnished with clothes in the closets for us. We were shocked that we had been given the place. Nobody in my family knew any English except for my father who knew a very small amount. While we were at the apartment, members from the parish would come over to help us. I remember families coming over and bringing their kids who we would play with. Being in such a new country was a culture shock. It was like I had been born again and had to learn everything new. I distinctly remember being taught how to use the toilet because we had never had one before. The Church got my father a job as a janitor in a machine shop and my mother got a job cleaning houses. Me and my siblings began to go to the Catholic school affiliated with the Church. One of the nuns took us aside for two hours a day to teach us English. My parents saved money for three years and were soon able to afford a house. My family couldn’t afford to continue going to Catholic school so I began going to public school.

It took my parents a year or two to get their green cards which allowed them to live and work in the United States, but we weren’t citizens yet. It took five years of working and living in the U.S. before my parents were finally allowed to take the citizenship test. When they passed, we all became citizens. I was eleven years old when I officially became a citizen of the United States. My dad continued to work at the machine shop. He was promoted quickly and was able to work as a machinist instead of a janitor. It was a job he had to adapt to quickly since he had no experience as a machinist. 

My mom discovered that she wanted to start her own business. She opened her own beauty salon which she ran for over a decade. When I was in middle school I worked for her every day after school. By that time, I was good enough at English that I could schedule all the appointments. My other job was to clean all the dirty towels at the beauty salon and fold them. My siblings and I never sat around, there was always something to do. My mother had a knack for being good to people and listening. Because of this she had a massive amount of clients.

It was very important to my parents that my siblings and I went to college. It was not something that they ever told us they expected from us. They never said that they wanted us to get straight As but we knew that they wanted us to succeed. I went to UC Berkeley for my undergraduate and master’s degree in engineering. My sister went to UCLA where she majored in Biology and went on to become a lawyer. And my brother got an econ major from UCLA and ended up working for the FBI. We all wanted to work hard and succeed for our parents. I believe that my family achieved the American dream. I feel more connected to America now than I do to Vietnam.

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The Immigration Story of X

The name I go by is X, but that wasn’t always my name. I was born under a different name, a male name, on August 17, 2003, in the Philippines. My story of immigration isn’t loaded with tragedy or misfortune, but it is important. My story is a testament to the expectations of the U.S. given to Third World countries, and the stark difference in its reality.

In the Philippines, I lived with my mother, aunt, grandma, step-brother, and stepfather. My life was simplistic; I would wake up every morning at 5 A.M., leave for school at 6 A.M., where I would attend nine to eleven classes, and after school activities, then go home around 10 P.M. This routine was quickly disrupted when my father, who lived in the U.S., expressed his desire to bring me into the country. I was left mostly out of the conversation as I was still a minor; however, arguments ensued between my mother, who wanted me to stay, and my father. My father wanted me to have better opportunities than could be given in my home country, especially a better education. My mother just didn’t want me to leave her.

I personally was excited at the prospect of living in America; it was completely glorified in the Philippines. For context, Manuel Quezon, the second president of the Philippines, established good relations with the United States, which influenced the representation the U.S. received in the Philippines. Most popular media followed American trends, celebrities, and culture. English was even placed into our curriculum, and spoken colloquially. There was also

this held belief stemming from our glorification of America that whiteness was greatness. In 2016, Rodrigo Duterte was elected into office and turned the tide on relations between the United States and the Philippines, and strengthened our relationship with China, which also greatly influenced aspects of Filipino culture. However, America remained idealized, prompting my excitement for emigrating. While my dad worked to get me to America, my mother was simultaneously working towards emigrating us to Japan. She had permanent residence in Japan, and my brother and I had been staying with her for a month. She was working out the details, trying to get us enrolled in school, and adjusting to life in Japan, when my father surprised us by filing a petition for me. I was set to go to America.

In April of 2021, I made my move to America in the sunny city of San Jose, California. I had assumed when I got there that my transition would be seamless, but I was very wrong.

Immigrating to the United States during COVID-19 was detrimental to my transition. At the time, socialization was at an all-time low, and despite the regulations for COVID being looser in the U.S., very few people wanted to interact with me. There was also an influx of racism towards Asians, making my transition even harder. I also struggled with letting go of the ideas ingrained in me surrounding race, a hard lesson I had to learn as someone who went to a predominantly Mexican school. I eventually adjusted, and five months after I immigrated, I came out as transgender.

Coming out changed everything. My dad didn’t accept me for who I was, and society accepted me even less. It was times like this when I missed home. The Philippines is surprisingly transgender inclusive. I attended a private Catholic school and was devoutly religious. Yet, the nuns who taught me were more accepting than my peers, even before I put the pieces together about my identity. This was my greatest shake-up in the picturesque view of America I had. I did have a sense of pride about my transness in some aspects of my life, especially being a transgender immigrant. I had also hoped my story would get me into higher education, but COVID had hit my dad and me hard financially, and with his unacceptance of my identity– which led to his refusal to pay for school– going to college just wasn’t an option. Slowly, my American dream was crumbling.

My story ends back where it started, my home. Last year, I spent a month in the summer visiting home and seeing all my friends and family. I hadn’t realized how much I missed home until I came back; it was almost like I never left. My friends and I picked back up from where we left off immediately, my family accepted me with open arms, and I was seen as me, as a woman. It was shocking to me how open and accepting everyone was, and for a moment, I could imagine my life if I had stayed in the Philippines, going to the same university as my friends, being around an accepting family. The moment I arrived in the Philippines, my mom greeted me at the airport by grabbing my face and telling me how pretty I was. I felt truly accepted then; I felt truly at home. The whole month I was there, my family tried to get me to move back, saying I could go to university with my friends and be with my mother, but I declined.

I couldn’t bring myself to completely hate my decision to live in the United States, despite the wildly skewed ideas I had gone in with. It wasn’t as free or accepting as made out to be, or really all that great, but I had built a life here with new friends and new opportunities, things I can’t just leave behind.

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The last two in this series on Monday