Essay About Immigrant Challenges

Being the child of an Ethiopian immigrant was often difficult and forced me to confront certain challenges not regularly faced by most children. First there were the economic difficulties. From the time that I was an infant until I turned eleven, my family lived in Section 8 housing.
Despite the challenges of being an immigrant who could not speak English well, my mother worked very hard to provide for my brother and me. I remember becoming her translator after I had first learned to read. I read and emails and other important documents for her, translating from English to Amharic and vice versa. I would also go accompany her outside the house, to the doctor’s office or the bank for example, in order to help her with the language barrier.
But as I became older, I grew frustrated with my mother and my situation because I was not able to do the things that I saw other kids my age doing. I felt that it was unfair that I was forced to mature at a young age. I envied my peers at school who spoke of their trips to Disneyland while I was dumbfounded that a place like that even existed. Rather than taking family vacations, I had to stay home and carry out the responsibilities that come with being the child of a poor immigrant. My frustrations as a young teenager could have led me to make some bad choices. Too many people …show more content…
For this reason, after high school I volunteered for Habitat for Humanity and worked with people in low- income settings. While working for Habitat for Humanity, I encountered many families who experienced challenges due to homelessness or over-priced housing. These encounters spurred my desire to help families going through economic struggles such as struggling to pay for over-priced housing, being homeless or living in slum housing. I came to realize that I could help such people much more efficiently if I pursued a degree in Urban Studies and focused on community development and