Lucia Lozano is still processing experiences that she lived through six years ago when her family moved from Colombia to the United States. She remembers packing all her belongings in one suitcase.
Lozano, a sophomore at Elon University, always grew up with the expectation that at some point in her life, she would leave Colombia and live abroad. Her mother lived abroad when she was young, and she wanted to expose Lozano and her brother to the new perspectives, values, and advantages that one gains from living in different countries and coexisting with people from different cultures. Lozano moved when she was 12 years old.
“There was never the right time to do it [immigrate to the United States] because it was gonna be a huge sacrifice; but when we did move, my brother had finished his first year of college there, and I was starting eighth grade. He didn’t want to leave, he was happy in college with all his friends from school that he had known for 14 years, and I was in middle school, so it was just an awkward time,” Lozano said. “It just worked out that way. My parent’s jobs were not going well, and they just wanted to leave.”
Carla, a senior at Elon, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, moved to the United States from Mexico. Her eyes still fill up with tears when sharing her story of how she and her family immigrated to the United States 19 years ago.
Carla and her family moved when she was only three years old. When they came to the United States, Carla’s family started from scratch, owning nothing and working hard to find the better life that they hoped for and that inspired them to leave Mexico. Carla and her family moved into a trailer park. Her parents worked prolonged hours for little money. Her mom worked mostly in the fields, and her dad had different jobs; he worked in restaurants for some time and then in a slaughterhouse.
“My family’s story for me is an emotional one, even though there are many parts of the story I don’t know about,” Carla said. “When I was younger, I guess I didn’t understand a lot of things, but I just knew that my life was different than other people’s. I could see the difference sometimes with teachers between us and other students in school. I learned English pretty fast, because my siblings taught me, but in school we spoke Spanish and sometimes our teachers would tell us ‘don’t speak that language, you’re in America’ and things like that; so I always knew there was something different about who I was and where I came from.”
Adapting to life in the United States
Both Lozano and Carla moved to North Carolina with their families, a state where, according to the Migration Policy Institute, 7.8 percent of the population is foreign-born, and 48.8 percent of people in that group are Latinos. Lozano and her family moved to Raleigh, where they had extended family and planned to stay with them for a year. However, they ended up moving to Chapel Hill since it was closer to her mom’s job. Carla and her family moved to Snow Hill.
Carla and Lozano have very different stories. Lozano’s family came to the United States with more securities. Lozano’s mother found a good job in Chapel Hill as a teacher before they moved to the United States. They all entered the country with J-1 visas, while Carla’s family didn’t come into the country with legal documents or job security. However, both families had to make a lot of sacrifices in order to leave their home, adjust to a new culture and environment and restart their lives in a place where they didn’t live before.
“I had to grow up really fast. I mean, it’s not a bad thing necessarily, and no regrets, it’s been worth it. But I think that what I want to emphasize that even a family like mine - we made a very conscious choice of wanting to move our lives here. We are a family that had that choice and had securities of coming to stay with family members and my mom having a job, us having papers. In other words, we’ve had it so much easier than other people who have come here with less of a choice, with less securities and things waiting for them,” Lozano said. “But even then, it’s really hard. It takes a toll, and it’s a lot of sacrifices. And even in the best cases, even in the places that you have the most waiting for you there, it’s just always hard.”
Since Lozano moved when she was 12, she was fully aware of everything her family and herself had to sacrifice. She loves to learn and loves going to school. However, she struggled in her school in the beginning to the point that she didn’t want to go. She just wanted to stay home, watch movies, and tune everything else out.
Lozano and her family went through periods of anxiety and hardship, and periods when they felt depressed. They did have some family in the United States, but most of Lozano’s family was still in Colombia. She didn’t have the luxury to take the time and analyze her feelings. She knew she just had to make it through, adapt, study hard and make her family proud. Lozano is still processing some of these feelings today.
“I’m the type of person that when big emotional things happen, I don’t process in the moment, I process like a month later,” Lozano said. “So going I was kind of like, not like numb, like I was excited but it’s just incomprehensible, so it’s just kind of numb in that way that I can’t comprehend and it really hits me so long after.”
Carla moved at a very young age. As she grew up, she discovered more parts of her story and of herself. She realized that she had different lifestyles at home and at school. She would go to school and be an excellent student, only thinking about her studies and how she could give back to her parents for all the sacrifices they’ve done for her by being a good student. Then, she would go home, where she only spoke Spanish and had to sometimes speak on the phone with relatives that she had in Mexico that she had never met. It’s like she lived in two worlds at the same time. In one of those worlds, she was encouraged to speak Spanish and embrace her heritage; in the other world, she was encouraged to fit in and speak English.
Carla had to grow a very thick skin. She saw her parents work in jobs that were not worthy of their abilities. They have had to work in places where people don’t treat them right and in conditions that aren’t healthy. Many times, people took advantage of them, and her parents couldn’t say anything because they were afraid of losing their jobs - something they could not afford.
“Being here is amazing, but I always have this feeling of just being really tired to keep seeing my parents go through things that they don’t deserve to go through,” Carla said. “Especially with everything that is going in the U.S. currently. There are a lot of stereotypes about immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants, and so it’s hard to see those things happening because not only does it attack me as a human but it attacks my parents most of all.”
Challenges and overcoming obstacles
One of the roughest time periods for Carla was her senior year of high school. Carla said that is when reality hit her and when she could understand what her parents had been living through during their time in the United States. Senior year was such a challenge for Carla because it was time to apply to colleges. Due to her status, it was extremely difficult for her to apply to colleges. She was about to be a first-generation college student and didn’t have a lot of guidance.
“Primarily what made it really difficult is that we identify as undocumented. So I knew it was hard because I had kind of seen my brother go through that but he was able to get a scholarship for international students in chapel hill and when I applied for the scholarship I didn’t get it and I was like ‘what am I gonna do now? This is all I’ve ever wanted’ and even beyond myself, I guess for my parents,” Carla said. “I didn’t want to fail them because they had literally given everything up for us and so I kept trying applying to colleges and places that I could go, but due to my status, there are not many options. So it was really stressful, I didn’t know what to do.”
Her college counselor helped her as much as she could but it was an exhausting process. Several of the schools she could apply to and did apply to didn’t give her enough scholarships, so she couldn’t afford them.
Both Carla and Lozano applied to Elon University and received scholarships that cover their full tuition every year.
“When I found out, honestly, I just kind of froze, I didn’t know how to feel, I just couldn’t believe it. All I kept thinking about was: I’m going to be able to go to school, I’m going to be able to do this, I’m doing this for my parents, I’m doing this for my family,” Carla said. “I was really happy but at the same time it was so surreal to me that I just couldn’t believe it.”
Education is really important for both of their families. It played a big factor in why Lozano’s family decided to move in the first place. Academic achievement is also salient for Lozano and Carla. Carla believes that by fully immersing herself in her studies she can let her parents know that their sacrifices were worth it.
“Our parents are the original dreamers, they are the real people, they are the ones that first created a dream for us to have a better life than theirs and if it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be dreaming to have a better life, or to do better. I wouldn't’ be here, and wouldn’t have done anything that I’ve done so far,” Carla said. “In reality, they are the ones who have made us the people that we are today and currently we’re just trying to do our best - to keep going but also to end up doing something that ends up benefiting them because they deserve more than what they receive; especially from a viewpoint of people who don’t really understand or are informed a lot of what it means to take such decision, especially because it’s not an easy one, we’ve been here 19 years and we’re still struggling."
The present and the future
Carla and her brother are both studying in good universities - just as their parents wanted. They both have full rides and are succeeding in school. Carla is an Education major, and Lucia is an Honors fellow who is studying International Studies and French with a minor in Latin American studies.
Lozano and Carla now consider the United States their home or one of their homes. They are both activists who stand up for immigrant rights and educate people about the subject. They are successful and have made their families proud. They truly admire their parents and are thankful for the lives they have given them.
However, their story will always be a part of them and deep inside they do think about their journey and their families’ journey to the United States. They have overcome many struggles and challenges that life in the United States has thrown to them. Nevertheless, these challenges keep appearing as time goes by and they each deal with these obstacles in their own way.
Lozano still tries to comprehend and to digest what it meant to leave her country, her family her friends.
“Today, right now, I’m facing and processing things that were hard from the past six years that I haven’t,” said Lozano. “It has been really hard processing them in the past, so I have collected them somewhere inside of me and literally today, I’m thinking like, ‘okay, so three years ago…’”
Carla, on the other hand, is constantly thinking about her future.
“I’m in school now, but I don’t know what will happen in a year, I don’t know what will happen in a few years, so it’s just the idea of everything going to waste and not knowing what’s going to happen next,” Carla said. “I think being in college has educated me a lot with the traumas that come along being an immigrant in the U.S. and it’s just kind of like, your life's meant to feel this way all the time. So you think that it’s just normal, but then, when you realize that everyone’s else life is not like that, is when you’re like, ‘so wait, I could be feeling differently, it’s not that I’m not happy, but there is a lot of pain that I feel and that I have that I never knew I did.”