A NATION SERIESMigrant Voices
NANCY/CHINA
A Better Life?
“The move to the US changed my dad a lot. He used to be
an architect. And it’s been really hard for him here. He now
works in a window factory six days a week, long hours. He
started drinking. My mom had to go back to China for a little
bit, so now it’s just me and my dad. I have classes, and I
work, so I barely see my dad. When I get home, sometimes
he’s already asleep.”EDAFE/NIGERIA
Fleeing Persecution
“The last attack was in 2016. They dragged me out of my
apartment. They beat me on the street. They had found out
that I was gay, and they were going to kill me. I blacked out.
You see this scar on my head, this scar on my hand. When I
woke up in the clinic, I found these scars, because they were
beating me with sticks, and they were clapping and singing
that I’m gay.”B
orders don’t just cut across international boundaries; they also increasingly stretch into the
interior of nations—into our homes, communities, courts, and everyday interactions. About a
year ago, we began a project designed to tell some of the stories of people affected by these
borders, in their own words. We’ve heard from people from all over the world who have fled or left their
homes and are looking to find or keep their place in America. —John WashingtonOMAR/MEXICO
A Life in the Fields
“The first time I came as a guest worker, in 2005, it was
really hard. I was thinking, ‘I want to go back.’ But back to
what? I had rent, had to pay for electricity, gas. I would have
had to find work again. I thought, ‘OK. I’m already here, I
gotta keep going. If the other workers can do it, I can do it,
because I have two hands like they have. I can use them, just
like they can.’”KARINA/STATELESS
No Place to Call Home
“I feel sometimes that I inherited a problem, like a Greek
tragedy. And learning how to live with it and learning how to
accept it and being angry about it and being empowered by
it—you know, being humbled by it but also being hurt by it.
Sometimes I think about how I don’t know what it’s like not
to have this problem. I don’t know what it would be like, one
day, to be like, ‘Oh, my God, I’m not stateless anymore.’”i Find more stories online at: TheNation.com/MigrantVoicesBATOOL/SYRIA BRINDA/NEPAL ANANYA/INDIA RFM/DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
ILLUSTRATED BY KRYSTAL QUILES March 30, 2020 | 5