Community Essay : An Immigrant’s Tale of Economic Justice

I came to Southern California just after the fireworks of the July 4, 1971, celebrations had cooled down. I came to get a higher education which was available in my mother country of Pakistan but only to a limited number of students. Never did I dream that my sojourn was to be a permanent voyage to this “foreign” land.

When I got a job at the K-Mart in Fullerton, many of my friends were concerned that I would stand out as a foreigner. They feared that an immigration inspector would recognize me or a complaint about my work would spark an investigation by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Because of this fright, most of my friends worked as bus boys or as janitors in Disneyland at night.

Some people think it is illegal for foreign students to work. The INS would grant us a permit to work part-time if we maintained our full-time status in school and could show a need to earn some money to pay our way if circumstances had changed since we came. Hence it was easy for us to get the permit, but it was subject to renewal yearly and had a 20-hour-per-week restriction. Imagine telling your boss that you could not fill in for the Christmas rush over midterm break, that you couldn’t work more than 20 hours per week. I assumed that as long as I did my minimum schoolwork there would be no reason for denial of the permit. Hence, if you could work 30 hours a week and still carry a full load at school more power to you. But you were still under the gun if you went to 21 hours in any week as you had violated your permit and had broken the law. Hence, once being in this vulnerable position, the last thing that you would have the courage to do was to try to exploit the system, even though there are a small number that will, which is so unfair as they get the media attention.

When I went back to Karachi a couple of years later, the country that I had left was gone. The spillover from the oil wealth had made it a very materialistic nation. We had a brief shining moment of a people’s government, but the prime minister was hanged despite the appeals of President Jimmy Carter and other world leaders. The dark cloud of militarism took over and the country became the conduit of arms for the Afghan fight with the Russians.

Once you get used to living in a land where the air may be polluted but you are free to yell about it to the governor without fear of reprisal, it is pretty hard to live in a land where the news anchor is fired for not starting with a broadcast featuring the military dictator. Once you are used to living in an open society where you are innocent until proven guilty, there is due process and you have the Bill of Rights to guarantee your freedoms, it is too suffocating an experience to go back to live in your motherland until it is free also.

But I have paid a price. My children cannot even understand my mother tongue, hence they can never speak with my mother. I have lived all my adult life away from my loving siblings and parents, who cannot afford to live here with me because of high medical costs. I am forever subjected to live where Christmas is the dominant holiday and very few people will ever know of the joy of Eid Al Adha, the Muslim holiday after Ramadan, the month of fasting.

But this land is the best there is in this wretched world in these trying times. We all know the price of freedom is eternal vigilance: We have demagogues who exploit the weakest among us whenever there is an economic downturn. It is not enough to do good; we have to stop evil. We cannot be content in just paying our taxes and not being involved in the civic duties to keep this land true to its ideal and sharing in the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.

I ask that others remember that not all of immigrants are economic refugees. Many of us are here because of tyranny in our homelands. Thank you, America, for being the home of the free and the brave and letting me be part of the salad bowl, this great and noble experiment of mankind.