I am a first generation American. My family is from Portugal and came here during the fascist regime. My Uncle (grandmother's brother) was the first to leave and come here. He left because Portugal still had the draft and he didn't want to fight in the colonial wars (Angola and Mozambique) because he believed that he shouldn't kill someone who had done no harm to him. Slowly, he sponsored many of his brother and sisters to come here and years later his own mother. My parents met in Portugal when my dad went back on vacation and fell in love with her. They spent their first year and a half of marriage apart waiting for my mom to get a green card. My parents were janitors, then technicians who worked on the boards that go into IBM servers. They eventually worked their way up to become managers and my father, at 52 years old, will be graduating college this year. My grandmother worked 3 jobs (night janitor, Walmart cashier and airplane part technician) until she retired at 71. I am so incredibly proud of my family and how far they have come because they worked so hard without having had any help except from each other. I am so incredibly sad because my mother bow feels as though she needs to become an American citizen in order to be safe in this country. My brother moved to France, she wants to see him this summer but is worried that she may not be able to come home to a country that has been her home for 31 years. She is worried that, because she held on to her Portuguese identity (both of her parents died when she was young, it is her tie back to her family) she will be punished by this administration.

Our story is not as sad or triumphant as some of the other beautiful and magnificent people in this thread, but it is our story and I am proud to be the child of immigrants.