Immigrant

I know that Junot Diaz wrote this from the perspective of an immigrant, of the choice between being afraid of every part of existence under an oppressive regime or a society with a strict social code of conduct and dropping everything, risking everything and everyone you hold dear to try and save them and yourselves somewhere new. Somewhere safe. But that's not the way I read this quote. This quote made me think of the citizens of a host country to which people are immigrating. They too face two choices, to bar their doors, to build walls of hatred to keep their fear contained and enveloped close, like a comforting blanket, and the other even more daunting task of letting their fear out, of setting it free, under the hope that without walls they can lean to be less afraid of what they see as "other". As the child of an immigrant family, I see the struggle my family endured to get here. I am also American, born and raised, and was fed the same biases as all other children though the media and through schooling all my life. This is why it is so difficult for me to understand people who are so scared of immigration. What differentiates our thoughts? How can I be just another face in the schoolyard to you, and yet simultaneously something other?

-EB