Immigration/Refugee

Crisis, Religion, and Globalization and the Post-Colonial State

Rev. David Vsquez-Levy, President, Pacific School of Religion
Dr. Hatem Bazian, Co-Founder, Zaytuna College & Faculty, UC Berkeley
Dr. Karla Suomala, Professor of Hebrew Bible and Judaism, Luther College

RSHR3060 Paris Summer 2016
JSTB -Alejandro Bez
# 3 Reflection Paper

2 Field Trip: AMERICAN CHURCH IN PARIS, FRANCE
7.12.16
6-Personal stories about their experience with immigration.


Where is home?
Whom am I? Am I an American? Am I a Mexican? Am I a Mexican-American?
Where is home?


After listening to a panel of six presenters about their story of migration, I was able to clearly
nd

related to one of them. I dont recall her name, but she was middle age 50s year old American
woman who left America more than half of her life. She has been living in Paris for perhaps 30
years. What was unique about her migration story stayed with me?

Our tall, white and well-articulated woman expressed that being an immigrant is difficult.
Although she didn't have all the difficulties and struggles that they other presented had when
arrived in France, she said that she has always been part of the group that gets distinguished as
"Not American anymore and Not a French citizen yet." She admits that she has some "accent"
according to the French citizen. Thus, she is not a French and perhaps a Parisian yet. When she
visits America, she feels strange in a place that she no longer lives. In fact, one time, one
French friend told her, "Don't you miss home. Don't you want to go home." What she replied
was, "I'm home."

This total resonance with me and my experience in the last several years. I left Mexico
permanently when I was only 18 years old (after high school), and I have been in the USA ever
since. It is now 19 years and counting. Although I have visited Mexico several times throughout

these years, it has been a challenged to hear over and over again the same questions. "Don't
you miss Mexico." Are you already accustomed to the USA? Where is home?

Listening to this now French-American woman allowed me to feel and admit my feelings. It has
been an internal change of perhaps identity. Not so much legal but of my understanding of who
I am. How do I see myself? I feel that I am allowing myself more freedom and I don't feel
ashamed to say that I am from Mexico, yet an American citizen. It was if an invisible burden was
lifted up from my being. I am still not sure what I was hiding or feeling before. It was a feeling of
admitting to being an immigrant it was a feeling of not admitting to being an American which I
feel part of it. I wanted to stop proving myself. I am an American and I though I have an accent,
I am equal to anyone.

Among the many gifts from this course summer experience, it has been the listening, sharing
and the tremendous opportunity to identify me with the migrant or refugee community. Either
Lebanese, Nigerian, Pakistani an, Sudanese who are trying to become British or France citizens
or as well as the Latin Americans who try to become USA Citizens, our migration story of
discrimination, racism, profiling, and lack of opportunities ties our stories.