by Lulete Mola
Nobody wants to be an immigrant.
Nobody wants to be a refugee.
Nobody wants to seek asylum.
Nobody wants to leave home.
Nobody wants to bury their mother over the phone.
Nobody wants to be an immigrant.
We don’t choose to leave the soil our ancestors touched.
Leave the neighbors who helped birth us.
Leave our aunts who braided our hair, gave us food, and then hid our troublemaking from mom and dad.
We love the land we were born on.
We love the home we grew up in.
The games we played with the neighborhood children.
The village it took. Stories from elders.
We love the old man who named us.
We love the cornerstone where we saw our first love for the first time.
Remember? You didn’t have enough money for two bottles of Fanta so you only bought one for the lady and said you weren’t really thirsty? Then you fell in love.
Nobody chooses to leave love.
Leave teenage memories.
Nobody willfully turns their back on the land of their father.
Nobody turns their back on the land of their mother.
Nobody turns and leaves their father and mother never to see them again.
Then hear they’re sick
But you can’t go back
You’re not a citizen
You don’t have a green card
You can’t afford the flight
So you worry sick
Send the little money you have
You get a phone call in the middle of the night
The connection is bad, so you talk louder, are they okay?
Tell me the truth
They’re gone.
You didn’t say goodbye.
Or tell them your story.
You were supposed to go back.
You bury them over the phone.
Then you mourn.
Mourn your parents. Mourn your homeland. Mourn the promises you made
Nobody wants to be an immigrant
Nobody chooses to leave home
We left because we couldn’t survive.
We left because we couldn’t thrive.
We left because we were pushed out.
We left because we were pulled in.
We left because of false advertising.
False promises.
False diversity.
We left seeking refuge.
We left because you spent years creating conditions that made our own land unlivable.
We left because of war.
We left because of dreams.
We left with the plans of returning.
We left with nothing but faith.
We were desperate.
Some of us never made it to the new land.
Some of us are in the middle, in the water.
It wasn’t a bag packing trip.
It wasn’t to eat, love, and pray.
It wasn’t for cultural awareness and exposure
We paid our lives, our dignity, our family, our history
Just. To. Be. Here.
So we immigrate.
We seek refuge.
We fill out paperwork.
We work any job you let us.
We humble ourselves.
We pay our respects.
We bury our people over the phone.
We integrate.
You force some of us to assimilate.
A melting pot that burns.
Still, we hold on to parts of our culture.
We find community.
We open businesses.
We give to you.
You take from us.
We make ourselves believe this could be home too.
We raise our children who now share the same nationality and country of origin as you.
Then you call them terrorists.
You are scared of them.
But often, when we come together, we remember home.
We remember the land that was once ours and we of the land.
You see, nobody chooses to be an immigrant.
So when you tell us that you don’t want us here
We wonder if you know
If we could have, if our very lives didn’t depend on it, we would have stayed home.
BroadyELT 