Mohamed Jamal's Immigration To The US

On a weathered road, a young teenager walks two miles to his high school to expand his education. When he goes to college, he lives in a dorm 120 miles away from home. When he gets his first job, he moves to Chennai, India, a populous city 200 miles in the opposite direction of his hometown. When he decides to broaden his experience, he starts off simple, by moving to Japan only a quick flight away from India. But everything changes when he makes the choice to move 9,500 miles to Houston, Texas. So far from his small Indian village, Mohamed Jamal must make a new home for him and his family. The story of Mohamed Jamal’s immigration to the U.S. is just one thread of the universal fabric of immigration. The process of immigrating varies from Japan …show more content…
To enter Japan, immigrants must “have a valid passport issued by the government of their own country” and a visa from the Japanese government (“Citizenship Pathways and Border Protection: Japan”). There are seven visa categories in Japan of which Jamal used the employment visa for two years. Japanese immigration is focused on acquiring skilled peoples and offers naturalization to foreigners once they have lived in the country for five or more years. Mohamed Jamal was one of the many skilled workers who immigrated to Japan through the “Indo-Japan Research Exchange Fellowship sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology Agency” (Jamal). His wife and one-year-old son were also taken along for the adventure, both learning limited Japanese. Jamal’s experiences in Japan influenced him heavily as he was impressed by the people’s kindness and advanced technology. For Mohamed Jamal, “every country should look to Japan as a model” (Jamal). Although Jamal wouldn’t mind staying in Japan, he ventured further away from India to the “land of the free and the home of the