immigrant interview essay

What To Expect at Your Green Card Interview: The Process, the Questions, and What To Bring With You

Your green card interview will take place at a USCIS field office or U.S. consulate or embassy closest to you, depending on whether you applied from inside or outside the U.S. The interviewing officer will ask you questions about what you put on your application and whether anything has changed between the time you filed and your interview date. This article explains what you need to know about the interview process and how to prepare for it.

Written by Jonathan Petts .  Updated September 21, 2022

What is a green card interview, and when does it happen?

A Green Card interview is the U.S. government’s way of meeting the Green Card applicant in person to verify that the applicant is eligible to become a permanent resident and that all of the information on their application is valid. This interview is usually the final step of the Green Card application and normally happens 7 to 15 months after filing.

For more information about the timing of your green card interview, check out our  Green Card filing guides . You can also check out the  USCIS interview guidelines  and the  National Visa Center interview guidelines  on their websites for detailed information about the Green Card interview process..

Who  needs to  go to a Green Card interview?

The Green Card interview will be held at a local USCIS office or at the U.S. embassy or consulate closest to the address you listed on your application. Whoever’s name is listed on the interview appointment notice must attend the interview. 

In some family-based Green Card applications,  both the petitioner(sponsor) and the beneficiary(applicant) must appear  for the interview, unless they both live in different countries. This is usually the case for marriage-base applications, because the government will use the interview to determine if your marriage is authentic and needs to speak with both of you to do so. 

If you live in the U.S. and are filing for a Family Green Card for your parent, child, spouse, or sibling who lives outside the U.S., you do not need to accompany them to their Green Card interview. 

For employment-based Green Cards, only employees must attend the interview. 

Sometimes, depending on your immigration situation, you may not be required to attend a Green Card interview at all. Asylees, for instance, may not need to have a Green Card interview. The U.S. government will let you know if you need to attend an interview.

Who can you bring to your Green Card interview? 

Can you bring an interpreter .

If you are not fluent in English and will need help to understand what is happening at your interview, you can bring an interpreter with you to your Green Card interview. According to  interview guidelines , the interpreter must strictly translate what the interviewing officer asks, without adding their own opinion, commentary, or answer to their translation. The interpreter must bring their government-issued I.D.and complete an interpreter's oath and privacy statement at the interview. If the USCIS officer is fluent in your language, they may choose to interview you in that language, and you may not need an interpreter after all.

Can you bring a lawyer? 

Yes, you can bring a lawyer with you to your Green Card interview if you would like. If you have some criminal or immigration issues on your record, it may be a good idea to attend your interview with a lawyer so that they can help you explain these issues. Your lawyer must complete and submit  Form G-28, Notice of Appearance as Attorney or Accredited Representative  so they can go with you to the interview.  Check out usa.gov for free or low-cost immigration lawyers .

Can you bring friends or family members who are not part of your application? 

In most cases, the only people who should attend the Green Card interview are those whose names are listed on the interview appointment notice that USCIS or NVC sent, interpreters, and lawyers. If you have a disability, you may attend the interview with a legal guardian or friend.  Call the USCIS office  or  U.S. embassy or consulate where you will be interviewing  ahead of time to make these preparations.

‍ Will you be able to interview with your spouse?

If you apply for a marriage-based Green Card, both you and your spouse must attend the interview. The interview process can go a couple of different ways when you and your spouse arrive. You may be interviewed together by the same interviewer at the same time. You may also be interviewed separately, either by the same interviewer but at different times, or by a different interviewing officer at the same time or different times

After you and your spouse have interviewed, the interviewing officer will compare your responses for any inconsistencies. Sometimes after your initial interview, the officer will call you and your spouse back for a second separate interview. The interviewers for these kinds of interviews are often officers from the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Fraud Detection and National Security Unit. Their goal is to resolve any inconsistencies in your answers and make sure that you and your spouse have a legitimate marriage. You can learn more about these follow-up interviews with your spouse by checking out the  National Visa Center's interview guidelines  if you're interviewing outside the U.S. and  USCIS interview guidelines  if you're interviewing inside the U.S.

What should you bring to your Green Card interview?

There are some documents that you must bring to your Green Card interview, and others that would be helpful to have with you, depending on your case type. This section outlines the documents you’ll need in two separate checklists: one for interviews inside the U.S. and one for interviews at a U.S. embassy or consulate outside the U.S. 

To learn more about the documents you should bring with you to your interview, and about the interview process inside or outside of the U.S., checkout  USCIS' interview guidelines  and the  National Visa Center interview guidelines , respectively.

If you are applying from  inside  of the U.S. through Adjustment of Status

You must bring the following documents to your Green Card interview: 

A government-issued I.D. like your passport or driver's license

A copy of your Form I-485 interview appointment notice (Form I-797C, Notice of Action)

A complete copy of your adjustment of status application packet. In addition to Form I-485, your packet must include any of these forms you may have submitted: 

Form I-130A

Your passport, unless you applied under asylum or refugee status

Other travel documents like advance parole if you traveled out of the U.S. after submitting your application and before your interview

Original copies of the supporting documents you submitted with your application. These include documents like birth certificates, marriage certificates, divorce decrees, death certificates, etc.

Form I-693 completed with the doctor's report from your medical examination if you did not submit it with your original application.

A letter from your employer on letterhead showing continued employment and salary if you're applying for an employment-based Green Card.

Original copies of documents showing proof of your married life if you're applying for a marriage-based Green Card. These include any children's birth certificates, joint lease and mortgage statements, joint bank account statements, joint credit card statements, etc.

Learn more about applying for a Green Card through Adjustment of Status in our  detailed filing guide .

‍ If you are applying from  outside  of the U.S. through Consular Processing

A copy of your DS-260 interview appointment notice (Form I-797C, Notice of Action)

A complete copy of your adjustment of status application packet. In addition to Form DS-260, your packet must include any of these forms you may have submitted:

 Form I-130

DS-261              

Form I-693 completed with the doctor's report from your medical examination if you did not submit it with your original application

A letter from your employer on letterhead showing continued employment and salary if you're applying for an employment-based Green Card

Original copies of documents showing married life if you're applying for a marriage-based Green Card. These include any children's birth certificates, joint lease and mortgage statements, joint bank account statements, joint credit card statements, etc.

Learn more about applying for a Green Card through Consular Processing in our  detailed filing guide .

What other documents should you bring?

In addition to the required documents above, it's a good idea to bring a few other supporting documents whether you're playing inside the U.S. or from abroad. At the interview, the USCIS officer or Embassy official will ask if you have had any life changes that may have affected your application and may have caused an answer on your application to change since you applied. They are looking for things like a change of employer, change of address, birth of a new child, etc. It’s a good idea to bring documents that reflect these changes with you  to the interview. You should  speak with an immigration lawyer  or law firm before your interview if you have had  any run-ins with the law or with U.S. immigration officials since you applied, as these could cause the interviewing officer to deny your application. 

What questions will the interviewing officer ask at your Green Card interview?

Your interviewer will either be a USCIS immigration officer (if your interview is in the United States) or a consular officer (if your interview is outside the United States), who is specifically-trained for your application type. For all application types, the goal of the interview questions is to make sure that the information that you provided on your application is consistent with your answers at the interview. 

The interviewing officer will also have a secondary objective that will be different for each application type.  If you are applying for a Marriage Green Card, your interviewer will ask questions to make sure that your marriage is the real deal and not just an attempt to get a Green Card. For other family-based Green Cards, the interviewer will ask questions to confirm that you are related to your sponsor in the way that you claim. For humanitarian Green Cards like those issued under VAWA or Asylum laws, the interviewer will ask questions to make sure that you actually need a Green Card to get the safety and protection that you are asking for in your application. In all cases, your interviewer wants to know if you are truly eligible for the Green Card you are applying for and will ask you questions to that end. 

You should be ready for questions that can get very personal. The interviewing officer may dig into the circumstances surrounding your entry into the U.S., your previous immigration history, and any past arrests.  You should be as honest as possible . If the interviewer asks you a question that you don't know the answer to, it is better to admit that you don't know the answer than to make something up.

Here are some sample Green Card interview questions to give you a sense of what you can expect:

Questions about you

When is your birthday?

What side of the bed do you sleep on?

How do you start your day?

Questions about your kids

What are your kids' favorite foods?

How do your kids get to school?

What sports do your kids play?

Questions about your spouse and your relationship

What medications does your spouse take?

Where did you go for your honeymoon?

Where was your first date?

Questions about significant events and celebrations in your life?

What is the most important holiday in your household?

What religion do you practice in your home?

What was your wedding like?

For more information about the types of questions, the interviewing officer will ask at your interview, check out  USCIS's interview guidelines  or the  NVC's interview guidelines  ahead of your interview.

What are some Green Card interview tips?

The Green Card interview is a big deal, and so you should arrive for your interview well prepared. That is true for anyone who must attend the interview. If you are interviewing for a marriage green card, for example, you and your spouse should prepare for the interview together. This is so you don't contradict each other in your responses and make the interviewer suspicious that your relationship isn't legitimate.

The Green Card interview may feel intimidating, but with a little practice, you will be able to ace yours! Here are a few tips to help you prepare.

Getting ready for the interview

When preparing for your interview, you should assemble copies of the forms and original documents that you included in your application, as well as any documents you need to show changes since you applied. 

If you are applying for a Family Green Card, gather everything you need to prove your relationship with your sponsor is real and legitimate. Include any marriage certificates, birth certificates, joint bank account statements, holiday itineraries, phone records between you and your spouse, wedding photos, proposal photos, etc. 

If you're applying for a humanitarian green card, bring any documents that help prove that you need protection and safety in the US. In all cases. 

In general. the more documents you bring to prove that your claim to a Green Card is legitimate, the better. 

It’s a good idea to arrange your forms, photos, and documents in chronological order for your easy reference during the interview. You could arrange any photos in a photo album, and any other documents in a folder - whichever works best for you in terms of organization. The more organized you are, the easier it will be for you to answer the interviewing officer's questions in a way that supports your case.

If you are applying for a Marriage Green Card and you and your spouse will be attending the interview together, set some time apart to review your relationship memories and be on the same page about your love story and relationship. People remember things differently, and even the best of us forget important things. It’s very important to iron out any inconsistencies in your shared story ahead of the interview so that your application isn’t derailed by a simple mistake.

During the interview

The biggest tip to take with you to the interview is to  be open and honest with the interviewing officer . Answer each question the officer asks you truthfully and completely,  no half-truths . Your goal is to present yourself as honestly as possible. You need to be open about any mistakes, struggles, or difficulties you've faced in your life and relationships, even if it is uncomfortable or you are worried that honesty will hurt your application. Dishonesty will hurt it even more and may ruin your chances of living in the U.S. 

Be prepared for some very personal questions. If you're applying for a Marriage Green Card, for example, the interviewing officer is trying to get a sense of what your relationship with your spouse is like. That may lead to some uncomfortable questions. The office may ask you about your reproductive health, the contraceptives you use, or a tattoo that your spouse. 

If you find that a question is too intrusive, you can let the interviewing officer know. It is okay to speak your mind because that shows the officer that you are being honest. They may still require you to answer the question, but at least they will know that you are trying to work with them. 

No matter what, though, you should answer their questions honestly. If things get awkward, remember your goal, take a deep breath, and tell the truth!

The Green Card interview is your time to shine, and we can help you get there with a rock-solid application.

What happens after your Green Card interview?

Five different things could happen after your Green Card adjustment of status interview:

The government approves your application

If the interview goes well, the U.S. government will approve your Green Card case. In many cases, the interviewing officer will let you know that your case is approved at your interview! You can expect to receive your Green Card in the mail some 2 to 3 weeks after your case is approved.

The government asks you to come back for another interview

The government may decide to invite you for a second interview if they believe there's more to verify in your background or your relationship with your spouse or family member. If that happens, you will receive a new appointment notice from USCIS or your local U.S. embassy or consulate in the mail.

The government asks you for more information

Instead of a second interview, the U.S. government may send you a Request for Evidence (RFE). An RFE asks you to provide additional information so that the government can make a final decision on your case. If you receive an RFE, it will tell you what you need to submit, and by what date. Some common things that the government will request are additional supporting documents like proof that your family relationship is authentic, birth certificates, criminal records, and financial statements. It is very important that you  submit everything the RFE asks for before the due date . If you don’t, the government will probably deny your application.

The government takes some time to review your application in more detail

The interviewing officer may let you know that they need to review your application further, and so you will not be receiving a final decision just yet. If that happens, the government will notify you of additional steps for your application, or their final decision, by mail within a few weeks.

The government denies your application

If the interviewing officer determines that you are no longer eligible for a Green Card, they will often allow you to provide extra information to make your case at a later date. However, they may also deny your application on the spot.  

If they deny your application you may have a chance to appeal their decision. But it’s not a good idea to file an appeal on your own if you can avoid it. You can  find a skilled immigration lawyer  to guide you through the appeal process at USA.gov. Many can even help at low or no cost depending on your ability to pay! 

The best way to be ready for your Green Card interview is to prepare well ahead of time. If your interview is in the U.S.,  review USCIS's interview guidelines . If your interview is at a U.S. embassy or consulate outside the U.S,  review the NVC's interview guidelines .

For more information about the Green Card application process in general, check out our  Green Card filing guides .

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Immigrant Visa Process

Both Petitioner and Applicant

Step 10: Prepare for the Interview

After the National Visa Center (NVC) schedules your visa interview appointment, they will send you, your petitioner, and your agent/attorney (if applicable) an email noting the appointment date and time.   After you receive an interview Appointment Letter from NVC, you must take the following steps BEFORE the interview date.

1. Schedule and Complete a Medical Examination

You (and each family member or “derivative applicant” applying for a visa with you) are required to schedule a medical appointment with an authorized physician in the country where you will be interviewed. This exam must be with an embassy-approved doctor, also referred to as the Panel Physician.  Exams conducted by other physicians will not be accepted.  The exam results can take up to 96 hours. You must complete your medical examination, along with any required vaccinations,  before  your scheduled visa interview date. Please visit our  List of U.S. Embassies and Consulates  for country-specific medical examination instructions.

After your exam, the Panel Physician will either send the exam results directly to the embassy or give you a sealed envelope. If the doctor gives you an envelope, do  not  open it. Instead, bring it to your visa interview and give it to the consular officer.

2.  Register for Courier Service/Other Pre-Interview Instructions

3. Gather Documents Required for the Interview

Every visa applicant, no matter their age, must bring certain documents to the interview, including photographs, and the original or certified copy version of all civil documents submitted to NVC. You do not need to bring your Affidavit of Support or financial evidence you submitted to NVC.

What happens if you forget to bring something on this list? The consular officer will not be able to complete the processing of your visa. You will have to gather the missing items and provide them to the embassy or consulate, and may have to come for additional interviews.  Failure to bring all items on the above list can delay visa issuance.

Country Specific Interview Information

For detailed information about your visa interview, please visit the  U.S. Embassy or Consulate interview preparation instructions  of the city where you are having the interview.

Who's Involved

Applicant : A foreign citizen who is applying for a nonimmigrant or immigrant U.S. visa. The visa applicant may also be referred as a beneficiary for petition based visas.

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Eight brilliant student essays on immigration and unjust assumptions.

Read winning essays from our winter 2019 “Border (In)Security” student writing contest.

For the winter 2019 student writing competition, “Border (In)Security,” we invited students to read the YES! Magazine article “Two-Thirds of Americans Live in the “Constitution-Free Zone” by Lornet Turnbull and respond with an up-to-700-word essay. 

Students had a choice between two writing prompts for this contest on immigration policies at the border and in the “Constitution-free zone,” a 100-mile perimeter from land and sea borders where U.S. Border Patrol can search any vehicle, bus, or vessel without a warrant. They could state their positions on the impact of immigration policies on our country’s security and how we determine who is welcome to live here. Or they could write about a time when someone made an unfair assumption about them, just as Border Patrol agents have made warrantless searches of Greyhound passengers based simply on race and clothing.

The Winners

From the hundreds of essays written, these eight were chosen as winners. Be sure to read the author’s response to the essay winners and the literary gems that caught our eye.

Middle School Winner: Alessandra Serafini

High School Winner: Cain Trevino

High School Winner: Ethan Peter

University Winner: Daniel Fries

Powerful Voice Winner: Emma Hernandez-Sanchez

Powerful Voice Winner: Tiara Lewis

Powerful Voice Winner: Hailee Park

Powerful Voice Winner: Aminata Toure

From the Author Lornet Turnbull

Literary Gems

Middle school winner.

Alessandra Serafini

Brier Terrace Middle School, Brier, Wash.

Broken Promises

“…Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

These words were written by Emma Lazarus and are inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty. And yet, the very door they talk about is no longer available to those who need it the most. The door has been shut, chained, and guarded. It no longer shines like gold. Those seeking asylum are being turned away. Families are being split up; children are being stranded. The promise America made to those in need is broken.

Not only is the promise to asylum seekers broken, but the promises made to some 200 million people already residing within the U.S. are broken, too. Anyone within 100 miles of the United States border lives in the “Constitution-free zone” and can be searched with “reasonable suspicion,” a suspicion that is determined by Border Patrol officers. The zone encompasses major cities, such as Seattle and New York City, and it even covers entire states, such as Florida, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. I live in the Seattle area, and it is unsettling that I can be searched and interrogated without the usual warrant. In these areas, there has been an abuse of power; people have been unlawfully searched and interrogated because of assumed race or religion.

The ACLU obtained data from the Customs and Border Protection Agency that demonstrate this reprehensible profiling. The data found that “82 percent of foreign citizens stopped by agents in that state are Latino, and almost 1 in 3 of those processed are, in fact, U.S. citizens.” These warrantless searches impede the trust-building process and communication between the local population and law enforcement officers. Unfortunately, this lack of trust makes campaigns, such as Homeland Security’s “If You See Something, Say Something,” ineffective due to the actions of the department’s own members and officers. Worst of all, profiling ostracizes entire communities and makes them feel unsafe in their own country.

Ironically, asylum seekers come to America in search of safety. However, the thin veil of safety has been drawn back, and, behind it, our tarnished colors are visible. We need to welcome people in their darkest hours rather than destroy their last bit of hope by slamming the door in their faces. The immigration process is currently in shambles, and an effective process is essential for both those already in the country and those outside of it. Many asylum seekers are running from war, poverty, hunger, and death. Their countries’ instability has hijacked every aspect of their lives, made them vagabonds, and the possibility of death, a cruel and unforgiving death, is real. They see no future for their children, and they are desperate for the perceived promise of America—a promise of opportunity, freedom, and a safe future. An effective process would determine who actually needs help and then grant them passage into America. Why should everyone be turned away? My grandmother immigrated to America from Scotland in 1955. I exist because she had a chance that others are now being denied.

Emma Lazarus named Lady Liberty the “Mother of Exiles.” Why are we denying her the happiness of children? Because we cannot decide which ones? America has an inexplicable area where our constitution has been spurned and forgotten. Additionally, there is a rancorous movement to close our southern border because of a deep-rooted fear of immigrants and what they represent. For too many Americans, they represent the end of established power and white supremacy, which is their worst nightmare. In fact, immigrants do represent change—healthy change—with new ideas and new energy that will help make this country stronger. Governmental agreement on a humane security plan is critical to ensure that America reaches its full potential. We can help. We can help people in unimaginably terrifying situations, and that should be our America.

Alessandra Serafini plays on a national soccer team for Seattle United and is learning American Sign Language outside of school. Her goal is to spread awareness about issues such as climate change, poverty, and large-scale political conflict through writing and public speaking.

  High School Winner

Cain Trevino

North Side High School, Fort Worth, Texas

Xenophobia and the Constitution-Free Zone

In August of 2017, U.S. Border Patrol agents boarded a Greyhound bus that had just arrived at the White River Junction station from Boston. According to Danielle Bonadona, a Lebanon resident and a bus passenger, “They wouldn’t let us get off. They boarded the bus and told us they needed to see our IDs or papers.” Bonadona, a 29-year-old American citizen, said that the agents spent around 20 minutes on the bus and “only checked the IDs of people who had accents or were not white.” Bonadona said she was aware of the 100-mile rule, but the experience of being stopped and searched felt “pretty unconstitutional.”

In the YES! article “Two-Thirds of Americans Live in the ‘Constitution-Free Zone’” by Lornet Turnbull, the author references the ACLU’s argument that “the 100-mile zone violates Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.” However, the Supreme Court upholds the use of immigration checkpoints for inquiries on citizenship status. In my view, the ACLU makes a reasonable argument. The laws of the 100-mile zone are blurred, and, too often, officials give arbitrary reasons to conduct a search. Xenophobia and fear of immigrants burgeons in cities within these areas. People of color and those with accents or who are non-English speakers are profiled by law enforcement agencies that enforce anti-immigrant policies. The “Constitution-free zone” is portrayed as an effective barrier to secure our borders. However, this anti-immigrant zone does not make our country any safer. In fact, it does the opposite.

As a former student from the Houston area, I can tell you that the Constitution-free zone makes immigrants and citizens alike feel on edge. The Department of Homeland Security’s white SUVs patrol our streets. Even students feel the weight of anti-immigrant laws. Dennis Rivera Sarmiento, an undocumented student who attended Austin High School in Houston, was held by school police in February 2018 for a minor altercation and was handed over to county police. He was later picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and held in a detention center. It is unfair that kids like Dennis face much harsher consequences for minor incidents than other students with citizenship.

These instances are a direct result of anti-immigrant laws. For example, the 287(g) program gives local and state police the authority to share individuals’ information with ICE after an arrest. This means that immigrants can be deported for committing misdemeanors as minor as running a red light. Other laws like Senate Bill 4, passed by the Texas Legislature, allow police to ask people about their immigration status after they are detained. These policies make immigrants and people of color feel like they’re always under surveillance and that, at any moment, they may be pulled over to be questioned and detained.

During Hurricane Harvey, the immigrant community was hesitant to go to the shelters because images of immigration authorities patrolling the area began to surface online. It made them feel like their own city was against them at a time when they needed them most. Constitution-free zones create communities of fear. For many immigrants, the danger of being questioned about immigration status prevents them from reporting crimes, even when they are the victim. Unreported crime only places more groups of people at risk and, overall, makes communities less safe.

In order to create a humane immigration process, citizens and non-citizens must hold policymakers accountable and get rid of discriminatory laws like 287(g) and Senate Bill 4. Abolishing the Constitution-free zone will also require pressure from the public and many organizations. For a more streamlined legal process, the League of United Latin American Citizens suggests background checks and a small application fee for incoming immigrants, as well as permanent resident status for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) recipients. Other organizations propose expanding the green card lottery and asylum for immigrants escaping the dangers of their home countries.

Immigrants who come to the U.S. are only looking for an opportunity to provide for their families and themselves; so, the question of deciding who gets inside the border and who doesn’t is the same as trying to prove some people are worth more than others. The narratives created by anti-immigrant media plant the false idea that immigrants bring nothing but crime and terrorism. Increased funding for the border and enforcing laws like 287(g) empower anti-immigrant groups to vilify immigrants and promote a witch hunt that targets innocent people. This hatred and xenophobia allow law enforcement to ask any person of color or non-native English speaker about their citizenship or to detain a teenager for a minor incident. Getting rid of the 100-mile zone means standing up for justice and freedom because nobody, regardless of citizenship, should have to live under laws created from fear and hatred.

Cain Trevino is a sophomore. Cain is proud of his Mexican and Salvadorian descent and is an advocate for the implementation of Ethnic Studies in Texas. He enjoys basketball, playing the violin, and studying c omputer science. Cain plans to pursue a career in engineering at Stanford University and later earn a PhD.  

High School Winner

Ethan Peter

Kirkwood High School, Kirkwood, Mo.

I’m an expert on bussing. For the past couple of months, I’ve been a busser at a pizza restaurant near my house. It may not be the most glamorous job, but it pays all right, and, I’ll admit, I’m in it for the money.

I arrive at 5 p.m. and inspect the restaurant to ensure it is in pristine condition for the 6 p.m. wave of guests. As customers come and go, I pick up their dirty dishes, wash off their tables, and reset them for the next guests. For the first hour of my shift, the work is fairly straightforward.

I met another expert on bussing while crossing the border in a church van two years ago. Our van arrived at the border checkpoint, and an agent stopped us. She read our passports, let us through, and moved on to her next vehicle. The Border Patrol agent’s job seemed fairly straightforward.

At the restaurant, 6 p.m. means a rush of customers. It’s the end of the workday, and these folks are hungry for our pizzas and salads. My job is no longer straightforward.

Throughout the frenzy, the TVs in the restaurant buzz about waves of people coming to the U.S. border. The peaceful ebb and flow enjoyed by Border agents is disrupted by intense surges of immigrants who seek to enter the U.S. Outside forces push immigrants to the United States: wars break out in the Middle East, gangs terrorize parts of Central and South America, and economic downturns force foreigners to look to the U.S., drawn by the promise of opportunity. Refugees and migrant caravans arrive, and suddenly, a Border Patrol agent’s job is no longer straightforward.

I turn from the TVs in anticipation of a crisis exploding inside the restaurant: crowds that arrive together will leave together. I’ve learned that when a table looks finished with their dishes, I need to proactively ask to take those dishes, otherwise, I will fall behind, and the tables won’t be ready for the next customers. The challenge is judging who is finished eating. I’m forced to read clues and use my discretion.

Interpreting clues is part of a Border Patrol agent’s job, too. Lornet Turnbull states, “For example, CBP data obtained by ACLU in Michigan shows that 82 percent of foreign citizens stopped by agents in that state are Latino, and almost 1 in 3 of those processed is, in fact, a U.S. citizen.” While I try to spot customers done with their meals so I can clear their part of the table, the Border Patrol officer uses clues to detect undocumented immigrants. We both sometimes guess incorrectly, but our intentions are to do our jobs to the best of our abilities.

These situations are uncomfortable. I certainly do not enjoy interrupting a conversation to get someone’s dishes, and I doubt Border Patrol agents enjoy interrogating someone about their immigration status. In both situations, the people we mistakenly ask lose time and are subjected to awkward and uncomfortable situations. However, here’s where the busser and the Border Patrol officer’s situations are different: If I make a mistake, the customer faces a minor inconvenience. The stakes for a Border Patrol agent are much higher. Mistakenly asking for documentation and searching someone can lead to embarrassment or fear—it can even be life-changing. Thus, Border Patrol agents must be fairly certain that someone’s immigration status is questionable before they begin their interrogation.

To avoid these situations altogether, the U.S. must make the path to citizenship for immigrants easier. This is particularly true for immigrants fleeing violence. Many people object to this by saying these immigrants will bring violence with them, but data does not support this view. In 1939, a ship of Jewish refugees from Germany was turned away from the U.S.—a decision viewed negatively through the lens of history. Today, many people advocate restricting immigration for refugees from violent countries; they refuse to learn the lessons from 1939. The sad thing is that many of these immigrants are seen as just as violent as the people they are fleeing. We should not confuse the oppressed with the oppressor.

My restaurant appreciates customers because they bring us money, just as we should appreciate immigrants because they bring us unique perspectives. Equally important, immigrants provide this country with a variety of expert ideas and cultures, which builds better human connections and strengthens our society.

Ethan Peter is a junior. Ethan writes for his school newspaper, The Kirkwood Call, and plays volleyball for his high school and a club team. He hopes to continue to grow as a writer in the future. 

University Winner

Daniel Fries

Lane Community College, Eugene, Ore.

Detained on the Road to Equality

The United States is a nation of immigrants. There are currently 43 million foreign-born people living in the U.S. Millions of them are naturalized American citizens, and 23 million, or 7.2 percent of the population, are living here without documentation (US Census, 2016). One in seven residents of the United States was not born here. Multiculturalism is, and always has been, a key part of the American experience. However, romantic notions of finding a better life in the United States for immigrants and refugees don’t reflect reality. In modern history, America is a country that systematically treats immigrants—documented or not—and non-white Americans in a way that is fundamentally different than what is considered right by the majority.

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment states,“No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” When a suspected undocumented immigrant is detained, their basic human rights are violated. Warrantless raids on Greyhound buses within 100 miles of the border (an area referred to by some as the “Constitution-free zone”) are clear violations of human rights. These violations are not due to the current state of politics; they are the symptom of blatant racism in the United States and a system that denigrates and abuses people least able to defend themselves.

It is not surprising that some of the mechanisms that drive modern American racism are political in nature. Human beings are predisposed to dislike and distrust individuals that do not conform to the norms of their social group (Mountz, Allison). Some politicians appeal to this suspicion and wrongly attribute high crime rates to non-white immigrants. The truth is that immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans. In fact, people born in the United States are convicted of crimes at a rate twice that of undocumented non-natives (Cato Institute, 2018).

The majority of immigrants take high risks to seek a better life, giving them incentive to obey the laws of their new country. In many states, any contact with law enforcement may ultimately result in deportation and separation from family. While immigrants commit far fewer crimes, fear of violent crime by much of the U.S. population outweighs the truth. For some politicians, it is easier to sell a border wall to a scared population than it is to explain the need for reformed immigration policy. It’s easier to say that immigrants are taking people’s jobs than explain a changing global economy and its effect on employment. The only crime committed in this instance is discrimination.

Human rights are violated when an undocumented immigrant—or someone perceived as an undocumented immigrant—who has not committed a crime is detained on a Greyhound bus. When a United States citizen is detained on the same bus, constitutional rights are being violated. The fact that this happens every day and that we debate its morality makes it abundantly clear that racism is deeply ingrained in this country. Many Americans who have never experienced this type of oppression lack the capacity to understand its lasting effect. Most Americans don’t know what it’s like to be late to work because they were wrongfully detained, were pulled over by the police for the third time that month for no legal reason, or had to coordinate legal representation for their U.S. citizen grandmother because she was taken off a bus for being a suspected undocumented immigrant. This oppression is cruel and unnecessary.

America doesn’t need a wall to keep out undocumented immigrants; it needs to seriously address how to deal with immigration. It is possible to reform the current system in such a way that anyone can become a member of American society, instead of existing outside of it. If a person wants to live in the United States and agrees to follow its laws and pay its taxes, a path to citizenship should be available.

People come to the U.S. from all over the world for many reasons. Some have no other choice. There are ongoing humanitarian crises in Syria, Yemen, and South America that are responsible for the influx of immigrants and asylum seekers at our borders. If the United States wants to address the current situation, it must acknowledge the global factors affecting the immigrants at the center of this debate and make fact-informed decisions. There is a way to maintain the security of America while treating migrants and refugees compassionately, to let those who wish to contribute to our society do so, and to offer a hand up instead of building a wall.

Daniel Fries studies computer science. Daniel has served as a wildland firefighter in Oregon, California, and Alaska. He is passionate about science, nature, and the ways that technology contributes to making the world a better, more empathetic, and safer place.

Powerful Voice Winner

Emma Hernandez-Sanchez

Wellness, Business and Sports School, Woodburn, Ore.

An Emotion an Immigrant Knows Too Well

Before Donald Trump’s campaign, I was oblivious to my race and the idea of racism. As far as I knew, I was the same as everyone else. I didn’t stop to think about our different-colored skins. I lived in a house with a family and attended school five days a week just like everyone else. So, what made me different?

Seventh grade was a very stressful year—the year that race and racism made an appearance in my life. It was as if a cold splash of water woke me up and finally opened my eyes to what the world was saying. It was this year that Donald Trump started initiating change about who got the right to live in this country and who didn’t. There was a lot of talk about deportation, specifically for Mexicans, and it sparked commotion and fear in me.

I remember being afraid and nervous to go out. At home, the anxiety was there but always at the far back of my mind because I felt safe inside. My fear began as a small whisper, but every time I stepped out of my house, it got louder. I would have dreams about the deportation police coming to my school; when I went to places like the library, the park, the store, or the mall, I would pay attention to everyone and to my surroundings. In my head, I would always ask myself, “Did they give us nasty looks?,” “Why does it seem quieter?” “Was that a cop I just saw?” I would notice little things, like how there were only a few Mexicans out or how empty a store was. When my mom went grocery shopping, I would pray that she would be safe. I was born in America, and both my parents were legally documented. My mom was basically raised here. Still, I couldn’t help but feel nervous.

I knew I shouldn’t have been afraid, but with one look, agents could have automatically thought my family and I were undocumented. Even when the deportation police would figure out that we weren’t undocumented, they’d still figure out a way to deport us—at least that was what was going through my head. It got so bad that I didn’t even want to do the simplest things like go grocery shopping because there was a rumor that the week before a person was taken from Walmart.

I felt scared and nervous, and I wasn’t even undocumented. I can’t even imagine how people who are undocumented must have felt, how they feel. All I can think is that it’s probably ten times worse than what I was feeling. Always worrying about being deported and separated from your family must be hard. I was living in fear, and I didn’t even have it that bad. My heart goes out to families that get separated from each other. It’s because of those fears that I detest the “Constitution-free zone.”

Legally documented and undocumented people who live in the Constitution-free zone are in constant fear of being deported. People shouldn’t have to live this way. In fact, there have been arguments that the 100-mile zone violates the Fourth Amendment, which gives people the right to be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures of property by the government. Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently upheld these practices.

One question that Lornet Turnbull asks in her YES! article “Two-Thirds of Americans Live in the ‘Constitution-Free Zone’” is, “How should we decide who is welcome in the U.S and who is not?” Instead of focusing on immigrants, how about we focus on the people who shoot up schools, rape girls, exploit women for human sex trafficking, and sell drugs? These are the people who make our country unsafe; they are the ones who shouldn’t be accepted. Even if they are citizens and have the legal right to live here, they still shouldn’t be included. If they are the ones making this country unsafe, then what gives them the right to live here?

I don’t think that the Constitution-free zone is an effective and justifiable way to make this country more “secure.” If someone isn’t causing any trouble in the United States and is just simply living their life, then they should be welcomed here. We shouldn’t have to live in fear that our rights will be taken away. I believe that it’s unfair for people to automatically think that it’s the Hispanics that make this country unsafe. Sure, get all the undocumented people out of the United States, but it’s not going to make this country any safer. It is a society that promotes violence that makes us unsafe, not a race.

Emma Hernandez-Sanchez is a freshman who is passionate about literature and her education. Emma wan ts to inspire others to be creative and try their best. She enjoys reading and creating stories that spark imagination. 

  Powerful Voice Winner

Tiara Lewis

Columbus City Preparatory Schools for Girls,

Columbus, Ohio

Hold Your Head High and Keep Those Fists Down

How would you feel if you walked into a store and salespeople were staring at you? Making you feel like you didn’t belong. Judging you. Assuming that you were going to take something, even though you might have $1,000 on you to spend. Sometimes it doesn’t matter. This is because people will always judge you. It might not be because of your race but for random reasons, like because your hair is black instead of dirty blonde. Or because your hair is short and not long. Or just because they are having a bad day. People will always find ways to bring you down and accuse you of something, but that doesn’t mean you have to go along with it.

Every time I entered a store, I would change my entire personality. I would change the way I talked and the way I walked. I always saw myself as needing to fit in. If a store was all pink, like the store Justice, I would act like a girly girl. If I was shopping in a darker store, like Hot Topic, I would hum to the heavy metal songs and act more goth. I had no idea that I was feeding into stereotypes.

When I was 11, I walked into Claire’s, a well-known store at the mall. That day was my sister’s birthday. Both of us were really happy and had money to spend. As soon as we walked into the store, two employees stared me and my sister down, giving us cold looks. When we went to the cashier to buy some earrings, we thought everything was fine. However, when we walked out of the store, there was a policeman and security guards waiting. At that moment, my sister and I looked at one another, and I said, in a scared little girl voice, “I wonder what happened? Why are they here?”

Then, they stopped us. We didn’t know what was going on. The same employee that cashed us out was screaming as her eyes got big, “What did you steal?” I was starting to get numb. Me and my sister looked at each other and told the truth: “We didn’t steal anything. You can check us.” They rudely ripped through our bags and caused a big scene. My heart was pounding like a drum. I felt violated and scared. Then, the policeman said, “Come with us. We need to call your parents.” While this was happening, the employees were talking to each other, smiling. We got checked again. The police said that they were going to check the cameras, but after they were done searching us, they realized that we didn’t do anything wrong and let us go about our day.

Walking in the mall was embarrassing—everybody staring, looking, and whispering as we left the security office. This made me feel like I did something wrong while knowing I didn’t. We went back to the store to get our shopping bags. The employees sneered, “Don’t you niggers ever come in this store again. You people always take stuff. This time you just got lucky.” Their faces were red and frightening. It was almost like they were in a scary 3D movie, screaming, and coming right at us. I felt hurt and disappointed that someone had the power within them to say something so harsh and wrong to another person. Those employees’ exact words will forever be engraved in my memory.

In the article, “Two-Thirds of Americans Live in the ‘Constitution-Free Zone’,” Lornet Turnbull states, “In January, they stopped a man in Indio, California, as he was boarding a Los Angeles-bound bus. While questioning this man about his immigration status, agents told him his ‘shoes looked suspicious,’ like those of someone who had recently crossed the border.” They literally judged him by his shoes. They had no proof of anything. If a man is judged by his shoes, who else and what else are being judged in the world?

In the novel  To Kill a Mockingbird , a character named Atticus states, “You just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don’t you let’em get your goat. Try fighting with your head for a change.” No matter how much you might try to change yourself, your hairstyle, and your clothes, people will always make assumptions about you. However, you never need to change yourself to make a point or to feel like you fit in. Be yourself. Don’t let those stereotypes turn into facts.

Tiara Lewis is in the eighth grade. Tiara plays the clarinet and is trying to change the world— one essay at a time. She is most often found curled up on her bed, “Divergent” in one hand and a cream-filled doughnut in the other.

Hailee Park

 Wielding My Swords

If I were a swordsman, my weapons would be my identities. I would wield one sword in my left hand and another in my right. People expect me to use both fluently, but I’m not naturally ambidextrous. Even though I am a right-handed swordsman, wielding my dominant sword with ease, I must also carry a sword in my left, the heirloom of my family heritage. Although I try to live up to others’ expectations by using both swords, I may appear inexperienced while attempting to use my left. In some instances, my heirloom is mistaken for representing different families’ since the embellishments look similar.

Many assumptions are made about my heirloom sword based on its appearance, just as many assumptions are made about me based on my physical looks. “Are you Chinese?” When I respond with ‘no,’ they stare at me blankly in confusion. There is a multitude of Asian cultures in the United States, of which I am one. Despite what many others may assume, I am not Chinese; I am an American-born Korean.

“Then… are you Japanese?” Instead of asking a broader question, like “What is your ethnicity?,” they choose to ask a direct question. I reply that I am Korean. I like to think that this answers their question sufficiently; however, they think otherwise. Instead, I take this as their invitation to a duel.

They attack me with another question: “Are you from North Korea or South Korea?” I don’t know how to respond because I’m not from either of those countries; I was born in America. I respond with “South Korea,” where my parents are from because I assume that they’re asking me about my ethnicity. I’m not offended by this situation because I get asked these questions frequently. From this experience, I realize that people don’t know how to politely ask questions about identity to those unlike them. Instead of asking “What is your family’s ethnicity?,” many people use rude alternatives, such as “Where are you from?,” or “What language do you speak?”

When people ask these questions, they make assumptions based on someone’s appearance. In my case, people make inferences like:

“She must be really good at speaking Korean.”

“She’s Asian; therefore, she must be born in Asia.”

“She’s probably Chinese.”

These thoughts may appear in their heads because making assumptions is natural. However, there are instances when assumptions can be taken too far. Some U.S. Border Patrol agents in the “Constitution-free zone” have made similar assumptions based on skin color and clothing. For example, agents marked someone as an undocumented immigrant because “his shoes looked suspicious, like those of someone who had recently crossed the border.”

Another instance was when a Jamaican grandmother was forced off a bus when she was visiting her granddaughter. The impetus was her accent and the color of her skin. Government officials chose to act on their assumptions, even though they had no solid proof that the grandmother was an undocumented immigrant. These situations just touch the surface of the issue of racial injustice in America.

When someone makes unfair assumptions about me, they are pointing their sword and challenging me to a duel; I cannot refuse because I am already involved. It is not appropriate for anyone, including Border Patrol agents, to make unjustified assumptions or to act on those assumptions. Border Patrol agents have no right to confiscate the swords of the innocent solely based on their conjectures. The next time I’m faced with a situation where racially ignorant assumptions are made about me, I will refuse to surrender my sword, point it back at them, and triumphantly fight their ignorance with my cultural pride.

Hailee Park is an eighth grader who enjoys reading many genres. While reading, Hailee recognized the racial injustices against immigrants in America, which inspired her essay. Hailee plays violin in her school’s orchestra and listens to and composes music. 

Aminata Toure

East Harlem School, New York City, N.Y.

We Are Still Dreaming

As a young Muslim American woman, I have been labeled things I am not: a terrorist, oppressed, and an ISIS supporter. I have been accused of planning 9/11, an event that happened before I was born. Lately, in the media, Muslims have been portrayed as supporters of a malevolent cause, terrorizing others just because they do not have the same beliefs. I often scoff at news reports that portray Muslims in such a light, just as I scoff at all names I’ve been labeled. They are words that do not define me. 

In a land where labels have stripped immigrants of their personalities, they are now being stripped of something that makes them human: their rights. The situation described in Lornet Turnbull’s article, “Two-Thirds of Americans are Living in the ‘Constitution-Free Zone’,” goes directly against the Constitution, the soul of this country, something that asserts that we are all equal before the law. If immigrants do not have protection from the Constitution, is there any way to feel safe?

Although most insults are easy to shrug off, they are still threatening. I am ashamed when I feel afraid to go to the mosque. Friday is an extremely special day when we gather together to pray, but lately, I haven’t been going to the mosque for Jummah prayers. I have realized that I can never feel safe when in a large group of Muslims because of the widespread hatred of Muslims in the United States, commonly referred to as Islamophobia. Police surround our mosque, and there are posters warning us about dangerous people who might attack our place of worship because we have been identified as terrorists.

I wish I could tune out every news report that blasts out the headline “Terrorist Attack!” because I know that I will be judged based on the actions of someone else. Despite this anti-Muslim racism, what I have learned from these insults is that I am proud of my faith. I am a Muslim, but being Muslim doesn’t define me. I am a writer, a student, a dreamer, a friend, a New Yorker, a helper, and an American. I am unapologetically me, a Muslim, and so much more. I definitely think everyone should get to know a Muslim. They would see that some of us are also Harry Potter fans, not just people planning to bomb the White House.

Labels are unjustly placed on us because of the way we speak, the color of our skin, and what we believe in—not for who we are as individuals. Instead, we should all take more time to get to know one another. As Martin Luther King Jr. said in his “I Have a Dream” speech, we should be judged by the content of our character and not the color of our skin. To me, it seems Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream is a dream that should be a reality. But, for now, we are dreaming.

Aminata Toure is a Guinean American Muslim student. Aminata loves spoken-word poetry and performs in front of hundreds of people at her school’s annual poetry slam. She loves writing, language, history, and West African food and culture. Aminata wants to work at the United Nations when she grows up.

From the Author 

Dear Alessandra, Cain, Daniel, Tiara, Emma, Hailee, Aminata and Ethan,

I am moved and inspired by the thought each of you put into your responses to my story about this so-called “Constitution-free zone.” Whether we realize it or not, immigration in this country impacts all of us— either because we are immigrants ourselves, have neighbors, friends, and family who are, or because we depend on immigrants for many aspects of our lives—from the food we put on our tables to the technology that bewitches us. It is true that immigrants enrich our society in so many important ways, as many of you point out.

And while the federal statute that permits U.S. Border Patrol officers to stop and search at will any of the 200 million of us in this 100-mile shadow border, immigrants have been their biggest targets. In your essays, you highlight how unjust the law is—nothing short of racial profiling. It is heartening to see each of you, in your own way, speaking out against the unfairness of this practice.

Alessandra, you are correct, the immigration system in this country is in shambles. You make a powerful argument about how profiling ostracizes entire communities and how the warrantless searches allowed by this statute impede trust-building between law enforcement and the people they are called on to serve.

And Cain, you point out how this 100-mile zone, along with other laws in the state of Texas where you attended school, make people feel like they’re “always under surveillance, and that, at any moment, you may be pulled over to be questioned and detained.” It seems unimaginable that people live their lives this way, yet millions in this country do.

You, Emma, for example, speak of living in a kind of silent fear since Donald Trump took office, even though you were born in this country and your parents are here legally. You are right, “We shouldn’t have to live in fear that our rights will be taken away.”

And Aminata, you write of being constantly judged and labeled because you’re a Muslim American. How unfortunate and sad that in a country that generations of people fled to search for religious freedom, you are ashamed at times to practice your own. The Constitution-free zone, you write, “goes directly against the Constitution, the soul of this country, something that asserts that we are all equal before the law.”

Tiara, I could personally relate to your gripping account of being racially profiled and humiliated in a store. You were appalled that the Greyhound passenger in California was targeted by Border Patrol because they claimed his shoes looked like those of someone who had walked across the border: “If a man is judged by his shoes,” you ask, “who else and what else are getting judged in the world?”

Hailee, you write about the incorrect assumptions people make about you, an American born of Korean descent, based solely on your appearance and compared it to the assumptions Border Patrol agents make about those they detain in this zone.

Daniel, you speak of the role of political fearmongering in immigration. It’s not new, but under the current administration, turning immigrants into boogiemen for political gain is currency. You write that “For some politicians, it is easier to sell a border wall to a scared population than it is to explain the need for reformed immigration policy.”

And Ethan, you recognize the contributions immigrants make to this country through the connections we all make with them and the strength they bring to our society.

Keep speaking your truth. Use your words and status to call out injustice wherever and whenever you see it. Untold numbers of people spoke out against this practice by Border Patrol and brought pressure on Greyhound to change. In December, the company began offering passengers written guidance—in both Spanish and English—so they understand what their rights are when officers board their bus. Small steps, yes, but progress nonetheless, brought about by people just like you, speaking up for those who sometimes lack a voice to speak up for themselves.

With sincere gratitude,

Lornet Turnbull

Lornet Turnbull is an editor for YES! and a Seattle-based freelance writer. Follow her on Twitter  @TurnbullL .

We received many outstanding essays for the Winter 2019 Student Writing Competition. Though not every participant can win the contest, we’d like to share some excerpts that caught our eye:

After my parents argued with the woman, they told me if you can fight with fists, you prove the other person’s point, but when you fight with the power of your words, you can have a much bigger impact. I also learned that I should never be ashamed of where I am from. —Fernando Flores, The East Harlem School, New York City, N.Y.

Just because we were born here and are privileged to the freedom of our country, we do not have the right to deprive others of a chance at success. —Avalyn Cox, Brier Terrace Middle School, Brier, Wash.

Maybe, rather than a wall, a better solution to our immigration problem would be a bridge. —Sean Dwyer, Lane Community College, Eugene, Ore.

If anything, what I’ve learned is that I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to change our world. I don’t know how to make a difference, how to make my voice heard. But I have learned the importance of one word, a simple two-letter word that’s taught to the youngest of us, a word we all know but never recognize: the significance of ‘we.’ —Enna Chiu, Highland Park High School, Highland Park, N.J.

Not to say the Border Patrol should not have authorization to search people within the border, but I am saying it should be near the border, more like one mile, not 100. —Cooper Tarbuck, Maranacook Middle School, Manchester, Maine.

My caramel color, my feminism, my Spanish and English language, my Mexican culture, and my young Latina self gives me the confidence to believe in myself, but it can also teach others that making wrong assumptions about someone because of their skin color, identity, culture, looks or gender can make them look and be weaker. —Ana Hernandez, The East Harlem School, New York City, N.Y.

We don’t need to change who we are to fit these stereotypes like someone going on a diet to fit into a new pair of pants. —Kaylee Meyers, Brier Terrace Middle School, Brier, Wash.

If a human being with no criminal background whatsoever has trouble entering the country because of the way he or she dresses or speaks, border protection degenerates into arbitrariness. —Jonas Schumacher, Heidelberg University of Education, Heidelberg, Germany

I believe that you should be able to travel freely throughout your own country without the constant fear of needing to prove that you belong here . —MacKenzie Morgan, Lincoln Middle School, Ypsilanti, Mich.

America is known as “the Land of Opportunity,” but this label is quickly disappearing. If we keep stopping those striving for a better life, then what will become of this country? —Ennyn Chiu, Highland Park Middle School, Highland Park, N.J.

The fact that two-thirds of the people in the U.S. are living in an area called the “Constitution-free zone” is appalling. Our Constitution was made to protect our rights as citizens, no matter where we are in the country. These systems that we are using to “secure” our country are failing, and we need to find a way to change them. —Isis Liaw, Brier Terrace Middle School, Brier, Wash.

I won’t let anyone, especially a man, tell me what I can do, because I am a strong Latina. I will represent where I come from, and I am proud to be Mexican. I will show others that looks can be deceiving. I will show others that even the weakest animal, a beautiful butterfly, is tough, and it will cross any border, no matter how challenging the journey may be. —Brittany Leal, The East Harlem School, New York City, N.Y.

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Waking Up from the American Dream

If you are an undocumented person anywhere in America, some of the things you do to make a dignified life for yourself and your loved ones are illegal. Others require a special set of skills. The elders know some great tricks—crossing deserts in the dead of night, studying the Rio Grande for weeks to find the shallowest bend of river to cross, getting a job on their first day in the country, finding apartments that don’t need a lease, learning English at public libraries, community colleges, or from “Frasier.” I would not have been able to do a single thing that the elders have done. But the elders often have only one hope for survival, which we tend not to mention. I’m talking about children. And no, it’s not an “anchor baby” thing. Our parents have kids for the same reasons as most people, but their sacrifice for us is impossible to articulate, and its weight is felt deep down, in the body. That is the pact between immigrants and their children in America: they give us a better life, and we spend the rest of that life figuring out how much of our flesh will pay off the debt.

I am a first-generation immigrant, undocumented for most of my life, then on DACA , now a permanent resident. But my real identity, the one that follows me around like a migraine, is that I am the daughter of immigrants. As such, I have some skills of my own.

You pick them up young. Something we always hear about, because Americans love this shit, is that immigrant children often translate for their parents. I began doing this as a little girl, because I lost my accent, dumb luck, and because I was adorable in the way that adults like, which is to say I had large, frightened eyes and a flamboyant vocabulary. As soon as doctors or teachers began talking, I felt my parents’ nervous energy, and I’d either answer for them or interpret their response. It was like my little Model U.N. job. I was around seven. My career as a professional daughter of immigrants had begun.

In my teens, I began to specialize. I became a performance artist. I accompanied my parents to places where I knew they would be discriminated against, and where I could insure that their rights would be granted. If a bank teller wasn’t accepting their I.D., I’d stroll in with an oversized Forever 21 blazer, red lipstick, a slicked-back bun, and fresh Stan Smiths. I brought a pleather folder and made sure my handshake broke bones. Sometimes I appealed to decency, sometimes to law, sometimes to God. Sometimes I leaned back in my chair, like a sexy gangster, and said, “So, you tell me how you want my mom to survive in this country without a bank account. You close at four, but I have all the time in the world.” Then I’d wink. It was vaudeville, but it worked.

My parents came to America in their early twenties, naïve about what awaited them. Back in Ecuador, they had encountered images of a wealthy nation—the requisite flashes of Clint Eastwood and the New York City skyline—and heard stories about migrants who had done O.K. for themselves there. But my parents were not starry-eyed people. They were just kids, lost and reckless, running away from the dead ends around them.

My father is the only son of a callous mother and an absent father. My mother, the result of her mother’s rape, grew up cared for by an aunt and uncle. When she married my father, it was for the reasons a lot of women marry: for love, and to escape. The day I was born, she once told me, was the happiest day of her life.

Soon after that, my parents, owners of a small auto-body business, found themselves in debt. When I was eighteen months old, they left me with family and settled in Brooklyn, hoping to work for a year and move back once they’d saved up some money. I haven’t asked them much about this time—I’ve never felt the urge—but I know that one year became three. I also know that they began to be lured by the prospect of better opportunities for their daughter. Teachers had remarked that I was talented. My mother, especially, felt that Ecuador was not the place for me. She knew how the country would limit the woman she imagined I would become—Hillary Clinton, perhaps, or Princess Di.

My parents sent loving letters to Ecuador. They said that they were facing a range of hardships so that I could have a better life. They said that we would reunite soon, though the date was unspecified. They said that I had to behave, not walk into traffic—I seem to have developed a habit of doing this—and work hard, so they could send me little gifts and chocolates. I was a toddler, but I understood. My parents left to give me things, and I had to do other things in order to repay them. It was simple math.

They sent for me when I was just shy of five years old. I arrived at J.F.K. airport. My father, who seemed like a total stranger, ran to me and picked me up and kissed me, and my mother looked on and wept. I recall thinking she was pretty, and being embarrassed by the attention. They had brought roses, Teddy bears, and Tweety Bird balloons.

Getting to know one another was easy enough. My father liked to read and lecture, and had a bad temper. My mother was soft-spoken around him but funny and mean—like a drag queen—with me. She liked Vogue . I was enrolled in a Catholic school and quickly learned English—through immersion, but also through “Reading Rainbow” and a Franklin talking dictionary that my father bought me. It gave me a colorful vocabulary and weirdly over-enunciated diction. If I typed the right terms, it even gave me erotica.

Meanwhile, I had confirmed that my parents were not tony expats. At home, meals could be rice and a fried egg. We sometimes hid from our landlord by crouching next to my bed and drawing the blinds. My father had started out driving a cab, but after 9/11, when the governor revoked the driver’s licenses of undocumented immigrants, he began working as a deliveryman, carrying meals to Wall Street executives, the plastic bags slicing into his fingers. Some of those executives forced him to ride on freight elevators. Others tipped him in spare change.

My mother worked in a factory. For seven days a week, sometimes in twelve-hour shifts, she sewed in a heat that caught in your throat like lint, while her bosses, also immigrants, hurled racist slurs at her. Some days I sat on the factory floor, making dolls with swatches of fabric, cosplaying childhood. I didn’t put a lot of effort into making the dolls—I sort of just screwed around, with an eye on my mom at her sewing station, stiffening whenever her supervisor came by to see how fast she was working. What could I do to protect her? Well, murder, I guess.

Our problem appeared to be poverty, which even then, before I’d seen “Rent,” seemed glamorous, or at least normal. All the protagonists in the books I read were poor. Ramona Quimby on Klickitat Street, the kids in “Five Little Peppers and How They Grew.” Every fictional child was hungry, an orphan, or tubercular. But there was something else setting us apart. At school, I looked at my nonwhite classmates and wondered how their parents could be nurses, or own houses, or leave the country on vacation. It was none of my business—everyone in New York had secrets—but I cautiously gathered intel, toothpick in mouth. I finally cracked the case when I tried to apply to an essay contest and asked my parents for my Social Security number. My father was probably reading a newspaper, and I doubt he even looked up to say, “We don’t have papers, so we don’t have a Social.”

It was not traumatic. I turned on our computer, waited for the dial-up, and searched what it meant not to have a Social Security number. “Undocumented immigrant” had not yet entered the discourse. Back then, the politically correct term, the term I saw online, was “illegal immigrant,” which grated—it was hurtful in a clinical way, like having your teeth drilled. Various angry comments sections offered another option: illegal alien . I knew it was form language, legalese meant to wound me, but it didn’t. It was punk as hell. We were hated , and maybe not entirely of this world. I had just discovered Kurt Cobain.

Obviously, I learned that my parents and I could be deported at any time. Was that scary? Sure. But a deportation still seemed like spy-movie stuff. And, luckily, I had an ally. My brother was born when I was ten years old. He was our family’s first citizen, and he was named after a captain of the New York Yankees. Before he was old enough to appreciate art, I took him to the Met. I introduced him to “S.N.L.” and “Letterman” and “Fun Home” and “Persepolis”—all the things I felt an upper-middle-class parent would do—so that he could thrive at school, get a great job, and make money. We would need to armor our parents with our success.

We moved to Queens, and I entered high school. One day, my dad heard about a new bill in Congress on Spanish radio. It was called the DREAM Act, and it proposed a path to legalization for undocumented kids who had gone to school here or served in the military. My dad guaranteed that it’d pass by the time I graduated. I never react to good news—stoicism is part of the brand—but I was optimistic. The bill was bipartisan. John McCain supported it, and I knew he had been a P.O.W., and that made me feel connected to a real American hero. Each time I saw an “R” next to a sponsor’s name my heart fluttered with joy. People who were supposed to hate me had now decided to love me.

But the bill was rejected and reintroduced, again and again, for years. It never passed. And, in a distinctly American twist, its gauzy rhetoric was all that survived. Now there was a new term on the block: “Dreamers.” Politicians began to use it to refer to the “good” children of immigrants, the ones who did well in school and stayed off the mean streets—the innocents. There are about a million undocumented children in America. The non-innocents, one presumes, are the ones in cages, covered in foil blankets, or lost, disappeared by the government.

I never called myself a Dreamer. The word was saccharine and dumb, and it yoked basic human rights to getting an A on a report card. Dreamers couldn’t flunk out of high school, or have D.U.I.s, or work at McDonald’s. Those kids lived with the pressure of needing a literal miracle in order to save their families, but the miracle didn’t happen, because the odds were against them, because the odds were against all of us. And so America decided that they didn’t deserve an I.D.

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The Dream, it turned out, needed to demonize others in order to help the chosen few. Our parents, too, would be sacrificed. The price of our innocence was the guilt of our loved ones. Jeff Sessions, while he was Attorney General, suggested that we had been trafficked against our will. People actually pitied me because my parents brought me to America. Without even consulting me.

The irony, of course, is that the Dream was our inheritance. We were Dreamers because our parents had dreams.

It’s painful to think about this. My mother, an aspiring interior designer, has gone twenty-eight years without a sick day. My dad, who loves problem-solving, has spent his life wanting a restaurant. He’s a talented cook and a brilliant manager, and he often did the work of his actual managers for them. But, without papers, he could advance only so far in a job. He needed to be paid in cash; he could never receive benefits.

He often used a soccer metaphor to describe our journey in America. Our family was a team, but I scored the goals. Everything my family did was, in some sense, a pass to me. Then the American Dream could be mine, and then we could start passing to my brother. That’s how my dad explained his limp every night, his feet blistered from speed-running deliveries. It’s why we sometimes didn’t have money for electricity or shampoo. Those were fouls. Sometimes my parents did tricky things to survive that you’ll never know about. Those were nutmegs. In 2015, when the U.S. women’s team won the World Cup, my dad went to the parade and sent me a selfie. “Girl power!” the text read.

My father is a passionate, diatribe-loving feminist, though his feminism often seems to exclude my mother. When I was in elementary school, he would take me to the local branch of the Queens Public Library and check out the memoir of Rosalía Arteaga Serrano, the only female President in Ecuador’s history. Serrano was ousted from office, seemingly because she was a woman. My father would read aloud from the book for hours, pausing to tell me that I’d need to toughen up. He would read from dictators’ speeches—not for the politics, but for the power of persuasive oratory. We went to the library nearly every weekend for thirteen years.

My mother left her factory job to give me, the anointed one, full-time academic support. She pulled all-nighters to help me make extravagant posters. She grilled me with vocabulary flash cards, struggling to pronounce the words but laughing and slapping me with pillows if I got something wrong. I aced the language portions of my PSATs and SATs, partly because of luck, and partly because of my parents’ locally controversial refusal to let me do household chores, ever, because they wanted me to be reading, always reading, instead.

If this all seems strategic, it should. The American Dream doesn’t just happen to cheery Pollyannas. It happens to iconoclasts with a plan and a certain amount of cunning. The first time I encountered the idea of the Dream, it was in English class, discussing “The Great Gatsby.” My classmates all thought that Gatsby seemed sort of sad, a pathetic figure. I adored him. He created his own persona, made a fortune in an informal economy, and lived a quiet, paranoid, reclusive life. Most of all, he longed. He stood at the edge of Long Island Sound, longing for Daisy, and I took the train uptown to Columbia University and looked out at the campus, hoping it could one day be mine. At the time, it was functionally impossible for undocumented students to enroll at Columbia. The same held for many schools. Keep dreaming, my parents said.

I did. I was valedictorian of my class, miraculously got into Harvard, and was tapped to join a secret society that once included T. S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens. I was the only Latina inducted, I think, and I was very chill when an English-Spanish dictionary appeared in our club bathroom after I started going to teas. When I graduated, in 2011, our country was deporting people at record rates. I knew that I needed to add even more of a golden flicker to my illegality, so that if I was deported, or if my parents were deported, we would not go in the middle of the night, in silence, anonymously, as Americans next door watched another episode of “The Bachelor.” So I began writing, with the explicit aim of entering the canon. I wrote a book about undocumented immigrants, approaching them not as shadowy victims or gilded heroes but as people, flawed and complex. It was reviewed well, nominated for things. A President commended it.

But it’s hard to feel anything. My parents remain poor and undocumented. I cannot protect them with prizes or grades. My father sobbed when I handed him my diploma, but it was not the piece of paper that would make it all better, no matter how heavy the stock.

By the time I was in grad school, my parents’ thirty-year marriage was over. They had spent most of those years in America, with their heads down and their bodies broken; it was hard not to see the split as inevitable. My mom called me to say she’d had enough. My brother supported her decision. I talked to each parent, and helped them mutually agree on a date. On a Tuesday night, my father moved out, leaving his old parenting books behind, while my mom and brother were at church. I asked my father to text my brother that he loved him. I think he texted him exactly that. Then I collapsed onto the floor beneath an open drawer of knives, texted my partner to come help me, and convulsed in sobs.

After that, my mom became depressed. I did hours of research and found her a highly qualified, trauma-informed psychiatrist, a Spanish speaker who charged on a sliding scale I could afford. My mom got on Lexapro, which helped. She also started a job that makes her very happy. In order to find her that job, I took a Klonopin and browsed Craigslist for hours each day, e-mailing dozens of people, being vague about legal status in a clever but truthful way. I impersonated her in phone interviews, hanging off my couch, the blood rushing to my head, struggling not to do an offensive accent.

You know how, when you get a migraine, you regret how stupid you were for taking those sweet, painless days for granted? Although my days are hard, I understand that I’m living in an era of painlessness, and that a time will come when I look back and wonder why I was such a stupid, whining fool. My mom’s job involves hard manual labor, sometimes in the snow or the rain. I got her a real winter coat, her first, from Eddie Bauer. I got her a pair of Hunter boots. These were things she needed, things I had seen on women her age on the subway, their hands bearing bags from Whole Foods. My mom’s hands are arthritic. She sends me pictures of them covered in bandages.

My brother and I now have a pact: neither of us can die, because then the other would be stuck with our parents. My brother is twenty-two, still in college, and living with my mom. He, too, has some skills. He is gentle, kind, and excellent at deëscalating conflict. He mediated my parents’ arguments for years. He has also never tried to change them, which I have, through a regimen of therapy, books, and cheesy Instagram quotes. So we’ve decided that, in the long term, since his goal is to get a job, get married, have kids, and stay in Queens, he’ll invite Mom to move in with him, to help take care of the grandkids. He’ll handle the emotional labor, since it doesn’t traumatize him. And I’ll handle the financial support, since it doesn’t traumatize me.

I love my parents. I know I love them. But what I feel for them daily is a mixture of terror, panic, obligation, sorrow, anger, pity, and a shame so hot that I need to lie face down, in my underwear, on very cold sheets. Many Americans have vulnerable parents, and strive to succeed in order to save them. I hold those people in the highest regard. But the undocumented face a unique burden, due to scorn and a lack of support from the government. Because our parents made a choice—the choice to migrate—few people pity them, or wonder whether restitution should be made for decades of exploitation. That choice, the original sin, is why our parents were thrown out of paradise. They were tempted by curiosity and hunger, by fleshly desires.

And so we return to the debt. However my parents suffer in their final years will be related to their migration—to their toil in this country, to their lack of health care and housing support, to psychic fatigue. They were able, because of that sacrifice, to give me their version of the Dream: an education, a New York accent, a life that can better itself. But that life does not fully belong to me. My version of the American Dream is seeing them age with dignity, being able to help them retire, and keeping them from being pushed onto train tracks in a random hate crime. For us, gratitude and guilt feel almost identical. Love is difficult to separate from self-erasure. All we can give one another is ourselves.

Scholars often write about the harm that’s done when children become caretakers, but they’re reluctant to do so when it comes to immigrants. For us, they say, this situation is cultural . Because we grow up in tight-knit families. Because we respect our elders. In fact, it’s just the means of living that’s available to us. It’s a survival mechanism, a mutual-aid society at the family level. There is culture, and then there is adaptation to precarity and surveillance. If we are lost in the promised land, perhaps it’s because the ground has never quite seemed solid beneath our feet.

When I was a kid, my mother found a crystal heart in my father’s taxi. The light that came through it was pretty, shimmering, like a gasoline spill on the road. She put it in her jewelry box, and sometimes we’d take out the box, spill the contents onto my pink twin bed, and admire what we both thought was a heart-shaped diamond. I grew up, I went to college. I often heard of kids who had inherited their grandmother’s heirlooms, and I sincerely believed that there were jewels in my family, too. Then, a few years ago, my partner and I visited my mom, and she spilled out her box. She gave me a few items I cherish: a nameplate bracelet in white, yellow, and rose gold, and the thick gold hoop earrings that she wore when she first moved to Brooklyn. Everything else was costume jewelry. I couldn’t find the heart.

I realized that, when my mother found the crystal, she was around the same age I am now. She had probably never held a diamond, and she probably wanted to believe that she had found one in America, a dream come true. She wanted me to believe it, and then, as we both grew up, alone, together, she stopped believing, stopped wanting to believe, and stopped me from wanting to believe. And she probably threw that shit out. I didn’t ask. Some things are none of our business. ♦

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, how should i approach writing my first-generation immigrant college essay.

Hi everyone! I'm a first-generation immigrant, and I want to write my college essay about my experiences and how they've shaped me. I want to make sure my essay stands out and isn't just another 'immigrant story.' Any advice on how to approach this topic in a unique way? Thanks in advance!

Hi there! It's great that you want to share your first-generation immigrant experience in your college essay. To make it unique, I suggest focusing on specific aspects of your journey that have impacted you the most. Here are a few tips to help you get started:

1. Reflect on the moments of your life that you feel define your immigrant experience. It could be a turning point, a struggle, or a triumph. Be as detailed as possible to make your story stand out.

2. Consider discussing how your background has influenced your perspective, values, and goals. Colleges appreciate students who bring diverse viewpoints to their campus.

3. Show, don't tell! Use descriptive language and anecdotes to paint a vivid picture of your experiences. This will help your essay come to life for the reader.

4. Avoid clichés and generalizations. Remember, your story is unique to you, so don't be afraid to be authentic and honest.

5. Lastly, proofread and revise your essay multiple times. This will ensure that your writing is polished and effectively conveys your message.

Good luck with your essay, and I'm sure you'll create something that is both meaningful and memorable!

About CollegeVine’s Expert FAQ

CollegeVine’s Q&A seeks to offer informed perspectives on commonly asked admissions questions. Every answer is refined and validated by our team of admissions experts to ensure it resonates with trusted knowledge in the field.

Immigration Interview Questions You Need to Know

Obtaining a Green Card is neither quick nor easy. If you are like most people, you will be very excited when your interview notice finally arrives . At the same time, you may feel anxious about your upcoming interview.  While not all Green Card interviews are the same, they usually follow a general format. Being well prepared for your interview will give you peace of mind and increase the likelihood of a successful outcome. When you receive your interview notice, it is crucial that you read it carefully as it will direct you exactly WHEN (date and time) and WHERE (location) your interview will take place. The interview notice will often include a general list of documents that might not always apply to you completely. It's recommended to bring the original document of every copy you submitted in your application. You will be instructed to bring an interpreter if you do not speak English fluently.

Preparing for Your Immigration Interview

As we mentioned above, coming prepared for your interview is very important. If you come organized and prepared you will likely feel more comfortable on the day of the interview. Here are some general tips: We always recommend to our clients to visit the USCIS field office where your interview will take place prior to the day of the interview (preferably at the same time of day). Make sure you know where the building is, how long it takes to get there, parking, security, and so on.

• Dress business professional. No need for a suit and tie, but it is best to dress professional, respectful and comfortable.
• Get there early (but not that early!)- We always recommend arriving at your interview at least 45 minutes before your scheduled time. Due to Covid-19, most USCIS field office will not let you actually enter the building more than 15 minutes before your scheduled time, however- it's better to get there early and wait outside the building than to be late.
• Read your applications and be familiar with all the questions and answers on them- you will be asked questions from your applications, it helps to prepare and review them.
• Organize all required documents in a binder with dividers for easy access during your interview - It reduces stress levels when you can easily find and access a document you are asked to provide the officer with.
• Consider scheduling a prep session- If you do not have an attorney representing you- you should consider scheduling an interview prep session with an immigration attorney. An experienced attorney can review your applications and supporting documentation, conduct a mock interview and really prepare you for what to expect at your interview.

Common Immigration Interview Questions in 2024

Aside from organizing your documents, knowing what sort of questions you can expect to be asked will help you prepare for your interview. Answer all questions fully, succinctly, and truthfully , but do not volunteer information unless asked. If you're unsure of the answer or do not understand a question, you should always say so rather than guess.

The interview will start with the USCIS officer greeting you and introducing themselves. You should do likewise. They might ask, "How are you?" or something similar. Many will make small talk, such as commenting about the weather. Most people report that their USCIS interviewer was friendly, but there are exceptions. The officer will explain the purpose of the interview.

Before going to your interview, be aware that you will be asked to swear an oath . When instructed, raise your right hand and wait until instructed to say the following: "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?" You might be asked if you understand what an oath is . It is essential to know that lying under oath is a crime and can make you ineligible to receive a Green Card. ‍

Personal information

You can expect questions asking basic personal information such as:

• What is your full name?
• When is your birthday?
• Where were you born?
• What is your race?
• Are you Hispanic or Latino?
• What is your current address?
• What is your phone number?

Should you apply for a marriage-based Green Card, expect to be asked these questions about your spouse, too.

Physical information

It might seem strange to be asked questions about your physical appearance when your interviewer can easily see you. Nonetheless, you might be asked questions such as:

• How tall are you?
• What color are your eyes?
• What color is your hair?
• What is your weight? (Don’t lie, though it might be tempting!)

Family history

Be prepared to answer questions about your family. Should you apply for a marriage-based Green Card, there might also be questions about your spouse's family. Typical questions include:

• What is your mother's maiden name?
• -in-law or father-in-law's first name?
• Is your mother or father a U.S. citizen?
• How many children do you have?
• Where were your children born?
• Is your child your biological, adopted, or your spouse's?

Related: Do You Need an Attorney at Your Green Card Interview?

Relationship history

When applying for a marriage-based Green Card expect questions, some of which might ask about small details or be quite probing , about your relationship with your spouse. You and your spouse might even be questioned separately. Relationship questions for other types of Green Cards are usually more basic. Officers can ask a vast range of questions, but here are some examples:

• How, where, and when did you meet your spouse?
• Where did your first date take place?
• How long did were you with your spouse before getting married?
• When and where were you married?
• Did you go on a honeymoon? If yes, where did you go?
• What is your spouse’s current job?
• What do your parents think about your spouse?

Military Information

You could be asked questions about any military service, either in the U.S. military or another country:

• Have you ever served in the United States military?
• When did you register with the Selective Service? (if you are male)
• What rank did you hold when you served in the military of [name of your home country]?

Immigration status

Your interviewer will want to know your immigration history and if you have maintained legal status

• Are you a legal resident or citizen of a foreign country? If so, which country?
• Have you ever worked in the United States without an authorization?
• Have you ever violated the terms and conditions of your visa?

You might be asked about foreign travel. Be aware that travel to certain countries (generally those considered hostile to the U.S., such as Iran) might trigger more scrutiny. Have an explanation ready about the purpose of your travel . Possible general questions include:

• What foreign countries have you visited in the past ten years?
• When did you last travel outside the U.S.?
• How long was your last trip outside the U.S.?

Residential history

Make sure you know where you lived and when. While it might be hard to remember every detail, especially if you have moved around, think and answer thoroughly . Possible questions include:

• Where do you currently live?
• How long have you lived there?
• Where else have you lived during the past five years?
• Have you moved since you submitted your application?
• What places have you lived in since the age of sixteen?

Education and Employment

You should expect to answer quite a few questions about your education and employment if your Green Card application is employment-based. While people with family-based applications do not usually answer as many employment-related questions, that is not always the case. Some types of careers and jobs, such as those that appear political, might trigger more questions . Typical questions include:

• Where do you work?
• Where else have you worked in the past five years?
• What is your salary?
• What is the name of the last school you attended?
• What did you study at the last school you attended?

USCIS officers often request to see tax returns, even if that is not listed on your interview notice as one of the documents you should bring. You might be asked questions about your tax history , such as

• Do you owe any taxes to a local, state, or federal government?
• Have you ever failed to file a tax return when you were legally obligated?

To be eligible for a Green Card, you must be of good moral character and uphold the laws of the U.S. Possible questions you might be asked include:

• Have you ever claimed to be a citizen of the United States of America?
• Have you ever attacked, discriminated against, or denied another person's rights based on their nationality, race, religious beliefs, orientation, or political opinion?
• Will you obey the laws of the United States?

Related: How to Prepare for Your Green Card Interview

Affiliation with Certain Organizations

Form I-485 asks for a list of any organizations you are affiliated with, and you might be asked the same questions during your Green Card interview. Technically, USCIS means any organization, even very innocuous ones such as the Boy Scouts . Specifically, USCIS is looking to see if you are a member of an organization that could be considered a threat to the U.S. Memberships in some groups, such as terrorist organizations or the Communist Party, could make you ineligible to receive a Green Card. Typical questions include:

• Have you ever been associated with or a member of any organization, association, fund foundation, party, club, or similar group?
• Have you ever been associated with or a member of the Communist Party, the Nazi Party, or a terrorist organization?

Legal issues

You are required to disclose any criminal record on Form I-485, and you must bring documentation with you to your interview if you have any such history. You might be asked questions such as:

• Have you ever been arrested?
• Have you ever committed a crime without being charged?

Other Questions

The USCIS officer is allowed to ask you questions about any topic , even those you might find to be overly personal, such as what method of contraception you use. You are allowed to say if you feel a question is too personal, but be sure to decline politely, even if you find it rude. Such questions are more typical during marriage-based Green Card interviews. Some other unusual or personal questions you could be asked about include:

• Was anyone drunk at your wedding reception?
• What do you and your spouse typically argue about?
• Where do you keep spare toilet paper?

Tips for Your Immigration Interview

(Be on time, wear nice clothing, act normal -- not overly nice or uncomfortable --, be organized with your paperwork, talk to your attorney, etc.)

How can an Immigration Attorney May Help with Your Interview?

An immigration attorney can help you prepare for your interview. They advise you on what to expect, given your circumstances, write a letter on your behalf to bring to your interview, and even accompany you . You should especially consider consulting an attorney if your case has any complicating factors such as visa overstays, memberships with organizations that might invite scrutiny, or a police record . With marriage-based Green card applications, it is good to consult an attorney if there are significant differences in your ages, education level, cultures, or religion because those factors often trigger more questioning. Brudner Law is experienced in many areas of immigration law.

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Preparing for Your Affirmative Asylum Interview

ALERT: Interpreters at Affirmative Asylum Interviews

Starting Sept. 13, 2023, affirmative asylum applicants must bring an interpreter to their asylum interview if they are not fluent in English or wish to have their interview conducted in a language other than English. Your interpreter must be at least 18 years old and fluent in English and a language you speak fluently.

Sign language interpreters are the only exception to this requirement. USCIS continues to provide sign language interpreters as a disability accommodation. Follow the instructions on your interview notice to request this disability accommodation.

If you need an interpreter and do not bring one, or if your interpreter is not fluent in English and a language you speak, and you do not establish good cause, we may consider this a failure to appear for your interview and we may dismiss your asylum application or refer your asylum application to an immigration judge. We will determine good cause on a case-by-case basis.

On Sept. 23, 2020, USCIS published a temporary final rule (TFR) requiring affirmative asylum applicants to use our contracted telephonic interpreters for their asylum interviews, instead of bringing an interpreter to the interview. We published this TFR to reduce the spread of COVID-19 during asylum interviews with USCIS asylum officers while the COVID-19 national emergency and public health emergency were in effect. We published four subsequent TFRs extending the requirement, with the current extension effective through Sept. 12, 2023. This fourth extension provided additional time after the national and public health emergencies expired to allow USCIS to prepare to return to the prior regulatory requirement. With the expiration of the TFR, we revert to a long-standing regulatory requirement for an affirmative asylum applicant to provide an interpreter under 8 CFR 208.9(g).

If you are seeking asylum through the Asylum Merits Interview process with USCIS after a positive credible fear determination, visit our Asylum Merits Interview with USCIS: Processing After a Positive Credible Fear Determination page for information on how to prepare for your Asylum Merits Interview. This means you were placed in expedited removal proceedings, you received a positive credible fear determination, and USCIS retained your asylum application for further consideration in an Asylum Merits Interview. For information on ways to obtain asylum in the United States, visit the Obtaining Asylum in the United States page.

On the day of your affirmative asylum interview you should bring:

• Any passports you may have,
• Other travel or identification documents, and
• Form I-94, Arrival-Departure Record, if you received one when you arrived in the U.S.
• The originals of any birth certificates, marriage certificates, or other documents you previously submitted with your Form I-589, Application for Asylum and for Withholding of Removal ,
• A copy of your Form I-589 and any additional material that you previously submitted in case the asylum office is missing any of this information;
• Any additional items you have available that document your claim and that you have not already submitted with your application;
• An interpreter if you are not able to continue with the interview in English,
• They must bring any identity, travel or other supporting documents they have in their possession.
• Although you are required to list all of your family members on your application, the only family members you need to bring to the interview are those who will be included as derivatives in the asylum decision.
• Any document in a language other than English must be accompanied by an English translation that the translator has certified is complete and correct.
• The translator must certify that they are competent to translate the language used in the document into English.

You have the right to bring an attorney or representative to your interview at no cost to the U.S. government. You and your attorney/representative must submit Form G-28, Notice of Entry of Appearance as Attorney or Accredited Representative to USCIS, in order for your attorney/representative to accompany you to your asylum interview.

If you do not speak English you will be interviewed through an interpreter who you bring with you to the interview.

We do not provide any interpreters during the asylum interview, except if you are deaf or hard of hearing. If you are deaf or hard of hearing and need assistance in obtaining an appropriate interpreter, contact the asylum office with jurisdiction over your case in advance of your scheduled asylum interview.

You must bring an interpreter if you do not speak English well enough to be interviewed in English. The interpreter must be fluent in English and a language you speak fluently and must be at least 18 years old.

The following individuals cannot serve as your interpreter:

• Your attorney or representative;
• A witness testifying on your behalf at the interview; or
• A representative or employee of the government of your country.

The regulation relating to interpreters can be found at 8 CFR 208.9(g) .

If you do not bring a competent interpreter to your interview and you cannot speak English, we will cancel and reschedule your interview. This is considered a delay caused by you. If you have filed Form I-765, Application for Employment Authorization, and there are any outstanding delays in the adjudication of your asylum application that you caused, we will deny your Form I-765.

Although we do not provide interpreters for the interview, we use contract interpreters to monitor asylum interviews at local asylum offices and other locations by telephone. In general, the role of the contract interpreter is limited to monitoring your interpreter’s interpretation. Contract interpreters may be expected to occasionally interject if your interpreter fails to provide adequate, accurate, and neutral interpretation.

You have the right to bring an attorney or representative to your asylum interview and to immigration proceedings before the immigration court, at no cost to the U.S. government. You may obtain a list of pro bono (free or reduced cost) attorneys and community-based, non-profit organizations that may be available to assist you by:

• Visiting the  Avoid Scams page;
• Visiting the U.S. Department of Justice,  Office of Legal Access Programs (OLAP)  website. This site provides information on the Recognition and Accreditation Program.
• Visiting OLAP’s website which provides a list of free legal service providers by state: www.usdoj.gov/eoir/probono/states.htm ; or
• Contacting the USCIS Field Office or asylum office near your home.

You and your attorney or representative must submit Form G-28, Notice of Entry of Appearance as Attorney or Accredited Representative , to USCIS in order for your attorney or representative to accompany you to your asylum interview. 

If you are scheduled for an asylum or NACARA 203 interview at an asylum office and you have an attorney or an accredited representative, they may participate in your interview remotely by telephone.

To participate remotely, they must complete  Form G-1593, Certification by Attorney or Accredited Representative for Remote Participation in an Affirmative Asylum and/or NACARA 203 Interview (PDF, 248.05 KB) , and submit it to the asylum office where we have scheduled your interview.

Please carefully read the information on Form G-1593 and consult with your attorney or accredited representative to determine whether you want them to participate remotely.

The filing of Form G-28 does not prevent asylum offices from processing an application even if your attorney is not present. If an asylum office denies your request to reschedule an interview and your attorney is not available for the interview, you can either sign a waiver and continue with the interview without your attorney or accept referral to the immigration court. If you accept referral to the immigration court, your case will be treated as though you failed to appear at your asylum interview. Although you have the right to have an attorney or representative present at the interview, you are responsible for ensuring that your attorney/representative is present for the interview.

Representatives of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) may be able to assist you in identifying individuals who can help you complete your Form I-589. Please contact the UNHCR for more information:

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 1775 K Street, NW, Suite 300 Washington, DC 20006 Telephone: (202) 296-5191 Website: https://www.unhcr.org/

Your interview will generally last at least an hour, although the time may vary depending on your case. You will be asked to take an oath promising to tell the truth during the interview. Your interpreter will also take an oath promising to interpret accurately and truthfully. The asylum officer will verify your identity, ask you basic biographical questions and the reasons you are applying for asylum, and questions to determine if any bars will prevent you from applying for or being granted asylum.

For more information on the bars to asylum, please visit our Asylum Bars  page.

The asylum officer will know that it may be difficult for you to talk about traumatic and painful experiences that caused you to leave your country. However, it is very important that you talk about your experiences so that the asylum officer can determine whether you qualify for a grant of asylum.

The information you share with the asylum officer is confidential. In general, information related to your asylum claim cannot be shared with third parties without your written consent or specific authorization by the Secretary of Homeland Security. There are certain exceptions to this rule, however, which can be found in the confidentiality regulation (See 8 CFR 208.6). For more information on confidentiality and the asylum process, please visit our Fact Sheet on Asylum Confidentiality (PDF, 350.1 KB) .

You and your attorney or representative, if you have one present, will have time at the end of the interview to make a statement or add any additional information. A decision on your case will not be made at the asylum interview. For the legal regulations governing asylum interviews, see 8 CFR 208.9.

Shortly after you miss your interview, you will receive a “Failure to Appear Warning Letter” from the asylum office where your interview was scheduled to occur. This letter explains the consequences of missing your interview and how to request a rescheduled interview before referral to immigration court for removal proceedings.

If we receive your request within 45 days after your missed interview date, you must establish good cause for failing to appear for your interview.

If we receive your request more than 45 days after your missed interview date, you must establish exceptional circumstances for failing to appear.

If 46 days have passed and the asylum office has not received a request to reschedule your interview and:

• You are not in lawful immigration status, the asylum office will refer your case to an immigration judge for adjudication before EOIR and send you a “Referral Notice for Failure to Appear.” (For information on requests made after a case is referred to the immigration court, see the Establishing Good Cause or Exceptional Circumstances page.)
• You are in lawful immigration status, the asylum office will administratively close your case and send you a “Dismissal of Asylum Application – Failure to Appear.”

We will consider your failure to appear for your asylum interview an applicant-caused delay with regard to employment authorization. You may file a Form I-765, Application for Employment Authorization, based on your pending asylum application 150 days after you filed your asylum application. You are not eligible to receive an Employment Authorization Document (EAD) until your asylum application has been pending for at least another 30 days, for a total of 180 days.

More information about establishing exceptional circumstances is available on the Establishing Good Cause or Exceptional Circumstances webpage.

If you need to reschedule your interview before the scheduled appointment, you must either:

• Mail, fax or email a letter to the asylum office where your interview is scheduled to be held; or
• Go to that asylum office and complete an In-Person Reschedule Request.

The asylum office will not honor a request to reschedule received by telephone. A request to reschedule an asylum interview must include the reason for the request and any relevant evidence.

We will notify you in writing whether or not your interview will be rescheduled. We will send you a new interview appointment notice with the new interview date, time and location. For the purpose of employment authorization, an approved request to reschedule is an applicant-caused delay that will be resolved on the date you appear for your rescheduled appointment. You may file a Form I-765, Application for Employment Authorization, based on your pending asylum application 150 days after you filed your asylum application. You are not eligible to receive an Employment Authorization Document (EAD) until your asylum application has been pending for at least another 30 days, for a total of 180 days. 8 CFR 208.7(a)(1).

You must prove that your request for rescheduling is due to good cause , if you need to reschedule and:

• You have already rescheduled your interview 1 time; or
• You are requesting to reschedule on the date of the interview; or
• You failed to appear for your interview and you are making your request within 45 days of the missed interview date.

You must prove that your request for rescheduling is due to exceptional circumstances if:

• You failed to appear for your interview and you are making your request more than 45 days after your missed interview date.

Exceptional circumstances are a higher standard than good cause. More information about establishing good cause and exceptional circumstances is available on the Establishing Good Cause or Exceptional Circumstances webpage.

NOTE: Rescheduling your interview will result in an applicant-caused delay that will remain unresolved until you appear for your rescheduled interview.

NOTE: If the interview notice was not mailed to the most recent address you provided to USCIS, then the asylum office will reschedule the interview without requiring that you show good cause or exceptional circumstances.

Find addresses and locations for USCIS asylum offices are available on the Asylum  using the Asylum Office Locator .

More Information

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Guest Essay

Do Politicians Realize How Difficult and Rare Immigrating to the U.S. Legally Actually Is?

By Jorge Loweree

Mr. Loweree is the managing director of programs and strategy at the American Immigration Council.

During the Republican National Convention, speakers repeatedly tried to draw a contrast between asylum seekers who’ve crossed the southern border in recent years and immigrants who’ve entered the country through other channels. As Vivek Ramaswamy put it, legal immigrants like his parents “deserve the opportunity to secure a better life for your children in America.” Others deserve deportation, “because you broke the law.”

Elected leaders like to invoke this narrative that there’s an easy, “right” and a hard, “wrong” way to immigrate to the United States, because it makes the solution for fixing our broken immigration system seem simple. We just need more law-abiding people to get in the right line.

But the reality that is all too clear to immigrants navigating our byzantine system, and the lawyers and advocates who try to help them, is that there is no line to get into for a vast majority of people who wish to come to the United States. If the government is serious about securing the border, we have to make it easier for people to come through legal channels.

The U.S. admits a tiny fraction of people who want to immigrate

Number of people who said they want to immigrate or who legally applied, compared to those granted permanent residence

158 million people would like to immigrate to the U.S.

32 million people actually began the application process in 2021

family members

Only 900,000 people were allowed to enter legally

Sources: Gallup, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

Note: Data was originally compiled in “ Why Legal Immigration Is Nearly Impossible ” by David Bier for the Cato Institute. The number of people who would like to immigrate is taken from a 2018 Gallup poll.

Our system of legal immigration isn’t set up to reward “good” choices. It is littered with arbitrary caps, bureaucratic delays and redundant processes that wring years of effort and money out of the precious few who qualify.

The current system is largely designed to favor those who have family ties here: namely, spouses, parents and adult children who are U.S. citizens and spouses and children of lawful permanent residents.

For some countries, the wait time to get a family-based visa stretches into centuries

Estimated wait time for family-sponsored visas in capped categories as of 2021

Visa for an unmarried adult child

Philippines

Married adult child

Sibling of adult citizens

YEARS TO PROCESS

All other countries

Sources: U.S. State Department, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

Note: Data was originally compiled in “ Why Legal Immigration Is Nearly Impossible ” by David Bier for the Cato Institute. “All other countries” represents the average.

The green card approval rate is at a historic low point

Share of legal immigrants that were approved for permanent residency

GREEN CARD APPROVAL RATE

Until the 1920s, almost anyone could arrive in the U.S. and be granted permanent residency.

Rates rose during the 1960s when Congress added new visa categories and exceptions to allow more people to immigrate.

They fell in the 1980s after the creation of the green card lotttery, as many more people began applying.

Sources: U.S. Department of State, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service

Note: Data was originally compiled in “ Why Legal Immigration Is Nearly Impossible ” by David Bier for the Cato Institute.

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Many immigrant spouses of California residents left out of Biden citizenship plan

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Almost as soon as President Biden announced a sweeping executive action in June to set more than 500,000 people on a path to U.S. citizenship, immigrants who won’t qualify under the plan began pushing to be included.

The new policy — unveiled before Biden dropped out of the presidential race as he was attempting to shore up progressive credentials — would shield from deportation undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens if they have lived in the country for the last decade, don’t have any disqualifying criminal convictions and pass a vetting process to ensure they pose no threat to public safety or national security.

The program would allow these spouses, many with children here and deep roots in their communities, to remain in the U.S. and work legally. They would also be allowed to access immigration benefits available to spouses of U.S. citizens. Biden cast the change as a moral imperative to keep families together, as well as an economic benefit to bring more workers out of the shadows.

Immigrant spouses of U.S. citizens protected from deportation under Biden’s latest action

President Biden’s action will shield those without legal status who are spouses of U.S. citizens and have lived consecutively in the country for at least 10 years.

June 18, 2024

Formal regulations to implement Biden’s policy could be released any day , with applications expected to open later this month .

But Biden’s proposal leaves out many people who immigration advocates say are equally deserving of protection, but fall short of the proposed criteria. That includes spouses who followed the current rules and voluntarily left the country to apply for reentry, and are now outside the U.S. A Biden administration official said last month that the issue was under review.

Other immigrants would be barred from participating in Biden’s plan due to decades-old border offenses or because they did not pass a U.S. consular vetting process.

Advocates for such families estimate that more than 1 million people married to U.S. citizens are unable to access the pathway to citizenship for various reasons.

Adriana Gutiérrez, 41, and husband José, 43, are among those who fall through the cracks of Biden’s program, which relies on an authority known as “parole in place.”

José, who asked that his last name not be used, entered the U.S. illegally more than 20 years ago. He met Gutiérrez almost immediately. They married and now live in the Sacramento area with their four children.

They’ve lived a quiet, law-abiding life. But attorneys advised them to not apply for a green card because they may bring unwanted attention to José’s situation.

That’s because shortly before the couple met, José had attempted to cross the border illegally using a cousin’s U.S. birth certificate. He was caught, deported and punished with a lifetime reentry ban. A few days later, he crossed back into the U.S. illegally.

“We’re together, but we’re living in this shadow,” Gutiérrez said. “It seems unfair that we’re having to pay such a harsh price for something that he did over 20 years ago.”

Others won’t receive protection under Biden’s plan because they tried to follow the previous immigration rules.

Immigrants who enter the country lawfully and marry U.S. citizens can obtain legal residency and, later, U.S. citizenship. But as a penalty for skirting immigration law, those who enter illegally and get married must leave the country in order to adjust their immigration status and usually wait at least a decade before being allowed back. In practice, many receive waivers that permit them to speed up the process and be reunited with their families.

Celenia Gutiérrez (no relation to Adriana) said her husband, Isaías Sánchez Gonzalez, left their Los Angeles home and three children in 2016 for a visa interview in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. He assumed he would be quickly readmitted and reunited with his family.

Instead he was barred from returning because, after the interview, a consular officer suspected he belonged to a criminal organization, a claim he denies.

“I dedicated myself to acting right. I never had any problems with the law or police,” Sánchez Gonzalez said. He believes the consular officer may have suspected his tattoos — of the Virgen de Guadalupe, comedy and tragedy theater masks, and the Aztec calendar — were gang-related.

“I like tattoos, but if I had known the problems they would cause, believe me, I wouldn’t have gotten them,” he said.

After the denial, his wife, who was studying to be a nurse, was forced to defer her schooling and get a job to provide for two households while battling depression.

Sánchez Gonzalez, 46, now lives in Tijuana. His wife and children visit one or two weekends a month.

Celenia Gutiérrez, 41, believes her husband could have qualified for Biden’s spousal protections had he simply remained in the U.S. instead of attempting to rectify his legal status.

“We decided to get married so we could get his papers,” she said. “We didn’t want him to get deported. We tried to do everything good, and it still happened.”

Just before Biden announced the program, his administration fought a legal battle against a U.S. citizen from Los Angeles who similarly became separated from her husband after he went to El Salvador for a visa interview and was rejected, despite his assurances of having a clean criminal record.

The government alleged — based on his tattoos, an interview and confidential law enforcement information — that Luis Asencio Cordero was a gang member, which he denied. In June the Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled against the couple , finding that Asencio Cordero’s wife, Sandra Muñoz, had failed to establish that her constitutional right to marriage extends to living with him in the U.S.

A Los Angeles man was denied a green card over his tattoos. The Supreme Court might take up his case

Attorney Sandra Muñoz and her husband, Luis Acensio Cordero, have sued the federal government after it denied him a visa, in part, over his tattoos.

Jan. 4, 2024

Due to the uncertainty of reentry, many immigrants have opted to stay in the U.S. and continue risking deportation.

American Families United, established in 2006 to advocate on behalf of U.S. citizens who are married to foreign nationals, is urging the Biden administration to offer a review of more complicated cases, including those of immigrant spouses in the U.S. who know they would face reentry barriers, and those who already left the country for a consular interview and were denied while abroad.

The group believes the vetting process and interviews by consular officials can be too subjective and unaccountable. Such decisions are rarely reviewable by federal courts, though immigrants denied while in the U.S. can appeal.

“We’re asking for discretion,” said Ashley DeAzevedo, president of American Families United. The organization has a membership list of nearly 20,000 people, most of whom are families with complex cases. “It’s very hard to have 10 years’ presence in the United States, be married to a U.S. citizen and not have some form of complication in your immigration history.”

In an interview last month with The Times, Tom Perez, a senior advisor to the president, said the administration has contemplated what to do about immigrants who attempted to legalize their immigration status and ended up separated. It’s unknown how many such families exist, he said.

“How do we deal with folks who actually followed the rules in place and are in Guatemala or wherever they might be?” he said. “That is an issue that is squarely on the table.”

Al Castillo, 55, a Los Angeles man who asked to be identified by his middle name, has been separated from his wife for two years, after she left the country to apply for permanent residency in accordance with the rules.

She hasn’t been denied reentry, but has found the bureaucratic process so complicated and nerve-racking that she’s unsure whether she will be allowed to return or would qualify for protection under Biden’s program. Afraid to take the wrong step, she now finds herself in limbo, her husband said.

The rule, “unless it’s written in the right way, won’t be able to help us,” Castillo said.

When Biden announced the program, he said he wanted to avoid separating families.

“From the current process, undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens must go back to their home country ... to obtain long-term legal status,” the president said. “They have to leave their families in America, with no assurance they’ll be allowed back in.”

Shortly after Biden announced the program, former President Trump’s reelection campaign slammed it. In a statement, the campaign’s national press secretary Karoline Leavitt called it “mass amnesty” and claimed it would lead to a surge in crime, invite more illegal immigration and guarantee more votes for the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris, who is now running against Trump, issued a statement calling the action “a significant step forward” and saying those who will benefit deserve to remain with their families.

On a call with DeAzevedo and other advocates last month, Rep. Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) said that protecting immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens is an economic issue as much as it is about being on the right side of history.

“You want to keep the American economy strong?” he said. “We need more workers. And what better worker could you bring into the mainstream than those that have been here 10, 20, 30 years working hard, that have children, grandchildren, have mortgages to pay, have followed the law, paid their taxes?”

More to Read

Some immigrant families rejoice over Biden’s expansive move toward citizenship, while others are left out

June 19, 2024

Photos: A visual report from the border following President Biden’s rollout of asylum restrictions

June 6, 2024

Biden administration wants to speed up deportation for some migrants. How will it work?

May 9, 2024

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Andrea Castillo covers immigration. Before joining the Los Angeles Times, she covered immigrant, ethnic and LGBTQ+ communities for the Fresno Bee. She got her start at the Oregonian in Portland. A native of Seattle, she’s been making her way down the West Coast since her graduation from Washington State University.

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20 Immigration Officer Interview Questions and Answers

Common Immigration Officer interview questions, how to answer them, and sample answers from a certified career coach.

Are you an experienced immigration officer looking for a new job? Or maybe you’re just starting out in the field and hoping to make a great first impression. Either way, it’s important to know what kinds of questions you might encounter during your interview.

From understanding the mission of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to being able to explain specific policies—there are certain topics that every interviewer will want to discuss before offering you the job. To help you prepare, we’ve rounded up some of the most common immigration officer interview questions. Read on, and get ready to ace them!

• What is your experience with immigration law and regulations?
• How do you handle difficult conversations with applicants who are not eligible for a visa or other immigration benefit?
• Describe a time when you had to make a decision about an applicant’s eligibility that was not clear-cut.
• Explain the concept of due process in the context of immigration law.
• Are you familiar with the different types of visas available to foreign nationals?
• What strategies do you use to ensure accuracy when reviewing applications?
• How do you stay informed about changes to immigration laws and policies?
• Describe a situation where you had to explain complex immigration rules to an applicant.
• What would you do if an applicant provided false information on their application?
• How do you approach interviewing applicants to determine their eligibility for a visa or other immigration benefit?
• Do you have any experience working with refugees or asylum seekers?
• How do you assess whether an applicant meets the requirements for a particular type of visa?
• What steps do you take to verify the authenticity of documents submitted by applicants?
• Have you ever encountered a case of human trafficking while processing an application?
• What strategies do you use to maintain confidentiality when dealing with sensitive information?
• How do you handle cases involving family members of applicants?
• What do you consider to be the most important qualities of an effective immigration officer?
• Describe a time when you had to work with another government agency to resolve an immigration issue.
• How do you handle situations where an applicant does not meet the criteria for a visa but has extenuating circumstances?
• What do you think are the biggest challenges facing immigration officers today?

1. What is your experience with immigration law and regulations?

Immigration officers are responsible for making sure that the laws and regulations of a country are followed when it comes to entry and exit into and out of the country. This means that they must be knowledgeable about immigration law and regulations in order to perform their job duties. Interviewers will ask this question to ensure that the candidate has the necessary knowledge and experience to be successful in the role.

How to Answer:

To answer this question, you should provide an overview of your experience with immigration law and regulations. This could include any relevant courses or certifications that you have taken, as well as any work experiences where you applied your knowledge of the subject. You should also be prepared to discuss any challenges or successes you have had in dealing with immigration law and regulations. Additionally, it would be beneficial to mention any additional research or reading you have done on the topic outside of your formal education or job duties.

Example: “I have a strong background in immigration law and regulations. I took a course on the subject during my undergraduate studies, and I have also done additional research on the topic since then. During my time as an intern at the Department of Immigration, I was able to gain hands-on experience with the laws and regulations related to entry into and exit from the country. I am familiar with the complexities of the process and understand how important it is for all parties involved to follow the rules. I believe that my knowledge and experience make me well-suited for this position.”

2. How do you handle difficult conversations with applicants who are not eligible for a visa or other immigration benefit?

Immigration officers are responsible for making important decisions that can have a significant impact on people’s lives. This means they must be able to handle difficult conversations with applicants who may not be eligible for a visa or other immigration benefit. The interviewer wants to know that you can handle these conversations with empathy and professionalism.

Start by explaining that you understand this is a difficult situation for the applicant and that you take your responsibility to provide accurate and fair information seriously. Explain that you strive to be understanding and compassionate while also providing clear guidance on what steps they need to take in order to apply again or pursue other options. Lastly, emphasize how important it is to ensure applicants have all of the necessary information so they can make informed decisions about their immigration status.

Example: “In my current role as an immigration officer, I have had to make difficult decisions about who is eligible for a visa or other immigration benefit. For example, I recently had to decide whether to approve a visa application for a family from a conflict-torn country. After carefully considering all the factors involved, including economic and security implications, I consulted with colleagues and experts in the field before making my decision. Ultimately, I denied their visa application due to safety concerns. While it was a hard decision to make, I learned how important it is to weigh all relevant information when making such decisions.”

3. Describe a time when you had to make a decision about an applicant’s eligibility that was not clear-cut.

Immigration officers are responsible for making decisions about who can enter and stay in a country. These decisions are often not clear-cut and require a great deal of judgment and discretion. This question allows the interviewer to get a sense of how you make decisions in these situations and how you handle the pressure of making a potentially life-changing decision.

Start by describing the situation and the decision you had to make. Then, explain how you weighed the factors involved in making the decision. For example, did you have to consider economic or security implications? Did you consult with colleagues or other experts? Be sure to emphasize that you followed all relevant laws and regulations when making your decision. Finally, discuss the outcome of your decision and what you learned from it.

Example: “I was recently tasked with making a decision about an applicant’s eligibility for permanent residency. The case was not clear-cut and I had to consider both the economic implications of allowing the applicant to stay in the country, as well as any potential security risks. After consulting with colleagues and researching relevant laws and regulations, I ultimately decided to deny the application based on the information available at that time. This was a difficult decision but one that I believe was correct given the circumstances. I learned from this experience that it is important to carefully weigh all factors before making a judgment call in these types of situations.”

4. Explain the concept of due process in the context of immigration law.

Immigration officers must understand the legal and ethical implications of their job. Due process is a key concept that applies to the immigration process and is important for immigration officers to understand. By asking this question, the interviewer is trying to gauge the applicant’s understanding of this concept and their ability to apply it to the job.

Due process is the idea that all people have certain rights and protections under the law. In the context of immigration law, this means that immigrants must be given a fair hearing before any decisions are made about their status in the country. This includes providing them with access to legal representation and ensuring they understand the proceedings. It also involves making sure that any decision made is based on evidence and not just hearsay or speculation. As an immigration officer, it is important to remember these principles when carrying out your duties.

Example: “Due process is a fundamental principle of immigration law that ensures all immigrants are treated fairly and given the opportunity to present their case. As an immigration officer, it is my responsibility to uphold this principle by providing immigrants with access to legal representation, making sure they understand the proceedings, and ensuring any decisions made about their status in the country are based on evidence rather than speculation or hearsay.”

5. Are you familiar with the different types of visas available to foreign nationals?

Immigration officers are responsible for processing visa applications and determining an individual’s eligibility for a visa. They must have knowledge of the different types of visas available and the criteria for each, in order to accurately process applications and make decisions. This question is a way for the interviewer to gauge your knowledge of the visa process and the types of visas available.

To answer this question effectively, you should be familiar with the different types of visas available to foreign nationals. This includes tourist visas, student visas, work visas, and more. You should also have a general understanding of the criteria for each type of visa, such as length of stay, purpose of travel, and eligibility requirements. Additionally, it’s important to demonstrate that you are able to research any additional information needed in order to accurately process applications.

Example: “Yes, I am familiar with the different types of visas available to foreign nationals. I have a good understanding of tourist visas, student visas, work visas and other types of visas. I also understand the criteria for each type of visa, such as length of stay, purpose of travel, and eligibility requirements. Additionally, I have experience researching any additional information needed in order to accurately process applications.”

6. What strategies do you use to ensure accuracy when reviewing applications?

Immigration officers are responsible for ensuring that all applications they review are accurate and meet the requirements of the law. This question is designed to help the interviewer understand how you approach this task and how you might handle any potential issues. It also indicates your level of knowledge when it comes to the legal requirements of the job.

You should be prepared to explain the strategies you use to ensure accuracy when reviewing applications. Examples of strategies could include double-checking all information on the application, verifying documents with other sources (such as databases or government websites), and consulting with colleagues or supervisors if there are any questions or doubts about an application. Additionally, you can mention that you stay up-to-date on relevant laws and regulations so that you understand the requirements for each application.

Example: “I use a combination of strategies to ensure accuracy when reviewing applications. I always double-check all information provided on the application, verifying documents with other sources such as databases and government websites. If there are any questions or doubts about an application, I consult with colleagues or supervisors for their input. Additionally, I try to stay up-to-date on relevant laws and regulations so that I understand the requirements for each application.”

7. How do you stay informed about changes to immigration laws and policies?

Immigration laws are constantly changing, and it’s the job of an immigration officer to stay on top of those changes and apply them appropriately. This question is a way for the interviewer to make sure you’re aware of this responsibility and have a plan in place for keeping up with the ever-evolving rules and regulations.

To answer this question, you want to demonstrate that you’re proactive in staying up-to-date on immigration laws and policies. Talk about how you stay abreast of changes by reading relevant journals, attending conferences or seminars, or networking with colleagues who are knowledgeable in the field. You can also mention any other methods you use to stay informed, such as following government websites, subscribing to newsletters, or joining professional organizations.

Example: “I stay informed about changes to immigration laws and policies by reading journals such as Immigration Lawyer Magazine, attending conferences, and networking with colleagues in the field. I also follow government websites for updates on new regulations, subscribe to newsletters from organizations like the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and am a member of the National Immigration Officers Association. These resources help me stay abreast of any developments or changes so that I can effectively do my job.”

8. Describe a situation where you had to explain complex immigration rules to an applicant.

Immigration officers are expected to have a comprehensive knowledge of immigration laws, regulations, and policies. This question is designed to assess your ability to communicate this knowledge to applicants in a way that is both understandable and professional. Immigration officers must be able to provide clear, concise information to people who may not be familiar with immigration processes, and this question is an opportunity to demonstrate how you can do so.

When answering this question, it’s important to focus on your communication skills. Talk about how you were able to explain the rules in a way that was easy for the applicant to understand. If possible, provide an example of a situation where you had to explain complex immigration rules to someone who didn’t have a lot of knowledge or experience with immigration processes. Show that you are patient and understanding when communicating with applicants and that you can effectively answer their questions.

Example: “I recently had to explain the process for obtaining a green card to an applicant who had limited knowledge of immigration law. I started by providing an overview of the process and the different steps involved, and then I went into more detail about the eligibility requirements and documentation needed. I also made sure to explain the timeline for the process, so the applicant could plan accordingly. Throughout the conversation, I was patient and made sure to answer any questions the applicant had. In the end, the applicant had a much better understanding of the process and felt more confident in their ability to complete it.”

9. What would you do if an applicant provided false information on their application?

This question is asked to gauge how the candidate would handle a situation where an immigration applicant is not being truthful. It is important for Immigration Officers to be able to identify when an applicant is providing false information and take appropriate action. The interviewer wants to make sure the candidate is aware of the consequences of providing false information, and that they have the knowledge and experience to handle such a situation.

The best way to answer this question is to explain the steps you would take if an applicant provided false information on their application. You should start by explaining that you would investigate further to verify the accuracy of the information, such as checking with other sources or requesting additional documentation. You should also mention that it is important to document any discrepancies in the application and inform the applicant of the potential consequences of providing false information, such as denial of their application or criminal charges. Finally, you should emphasize your commitment to ensuring all applications are processed accurately and fairly.

Example: “If an applicant provided false information on their application, I would first investigate further to verify the accuracy of the information. I would check with other sources, such as previous employers or educational institutions, or request additional documentation. It is important to document any discrepancies in the application and inform the applicant of the potential consequences of providing false information, such as denial of their application or criminal charges. I understand the importance of accuracy and fairness in the immigration process and I am committed to ensuring all applications are processed accurately and fairly.”

10. How do you approach interviewing applicants to determine their eligibility for a visa or other immigration benefit?

Immigration officers are responsible for ensuring that all applicants for visas or other immigration benefits meet the requirements set out by the government. Interviewing applicants is an important part of this process. Interviewers need to know that you can assess a potential applicant’s eligibility in a timely, professional, and accurate manner. They’ll want to know that you understand the laws and regulations governing immigration and can make decisions based on those laws.

You should be prepared to explain the steps you take when interviewing applicants for visas or other immigration benefits. Explain that you review all relevant documents, ask questions to clarify any information in the application, and assess whether the applicant meets the requirements of the visa or benefit they are applying for. You should also emphasize your ability to make fair and impartial decisions based on the facts presented to you by the applicant. Additionally, it’s important to show that you understand the importance of maintaining a professional demeanor throughout the interview process and that you can remain unbiased despite personal opinions or beliefs.

Example: “When interviewing applicants for visas or other immigration benefits, I take a thorough and systematic approach. I review all relevant documents, ask questions to clarify any information in the application, and assess whether the applicant meets the requirements of the visa or benefit they are applying for. Additionally, I understand the importance of remaining professional and impartial throughout the entire process. I approach each interview with an open mind, making sure to ask questions that are relevant to the applicant’s eligibility without making any assumptions or judgments. I also take into account any extenuating circumstances that the applicant may have. By taking this approach, I am able to make sure that all applicants are treated fairly and accurately assessed for their eligibility.”

11. Do you have any experience working with refugees or asylum seekers?

Immigration officers are responsible for processing and approving applications for visas, permanent residency, and other immigration documents. It’s important for them to have a deep understanding of the process and the people they’re working with. By asking this question, the interviewer is looking to learn more about your experience with immigrants and refugees, as well as how you handle sensitive and challenging situations.

If you have experience working with refugees or asylum seekers, talk about the specific cases you worked on and how you handled them. If you don’t have any direct experience, focus on any other related work experience you may have in immigration law, international relations, or social services. Additionally, emphasize your understanding of relevant laws and regulations, as well as your commitment to upholding these standards.

Example: “I don’t have direct experience working with refugees or asylum seekers, but I do have a strong understanding of immigration law and the application process. During my time as a legal assistant at a law firm, I worked on several cases involving immigrants and their families. I also worked closely with a local non-profit organization providing assistance to immigrants and refugees. I’m passionate about helping people in need, and I’m committed to ensuring that all applications are processed in a timely and fair manner, in accordance with the relevant laws and regulations.”

12. How do you assess whether an applicant meets the requirements for a particular type of visa?

Immigration officers must have strong knowledge of the law and the various visa requirements so they can accurately assess each applicant’s eligibility. This question helps the recruiter understand your familiarity with the regulations and your ability to make sound judgments based on the information you are presented with.

The best way to answer this question is to provide a detailed example of how you assess an applicant’s eligibility for a visa. Be sure to include the steps you take, such as verifying documents, gathering evidence, and researching relevant laws. You should also explain why each step is important and what information it helps you determine about the applicant. Finally, be sure to emphasize your attention to detail and ability to make sound judgments based on all the available evidence.

Example: “When assessing whether an applicant meets the requirements for a particular type of visa, I take a thorough and methodical approach. I begin by verifying the documents they have provided and ensuring that they are valid and up-to-date. I then research applicable laws and regulations to ensure that the applicant meets all of the necessary criteria. I then gather additional evidence to support the applicant’s claims, such as letters of recommendation, proof of financial stability, and other supporting documents. Once I have all of the necessary evidence, I make a judgment based on the facts and the law to determine whether the applicant is eligible for the requested visa. Throughout the process, I remain attentive to detail and ensure that all the steps are completed accurately and in a timely manner.”

13. What steps do you take to verify the authenticity of documents submitted by applicants?

Immigration officers have an important job of ensuring that the documents submitted by applicants are indeed authentic. This question can help the interviewer understand how well you can assess the authenticity of documents, as well as how well you can detect any fraud or misrepresentation. Your answer should show that you have a good understanding of the various methods and techniques used to verify the authenticity of documents.

You should explain the steps you take to verify documents, such as cross-referencing with other sources of information, using databases to compare signatures and photographs, or conducting interviews to confirm details. You should also mention any specific techniques you use to detect fraud or misrepresentation, such as verifying dates, looking for inconsistencies in stories, or double checking contact details. Additionally, you can talk about how you stay up to date on new methods and technologies used to verify authenticity and detect fraud.

Example: “When verifying the authenticity of documents submitted by applicants, I take a multi-faceted approach. I cross-reference the documents with other sources of information, such as databases, to compare signatures and photographs. I also conduct interviews to confirm details and look for inconsistencies. I’m constantly looking for ways to improve my methods, and I make sure to stay up to date on any new technologies and methods used to verify documents and detect fraud. I have a keen eye for detail and I’m very thorough in my work, which helps me ensure that all documents are authentic.”

14. Have you ever encountered a case of human trafficking while processing an application?

Immigration officers are charged with keeping our borders safe from threats like human trafficking. This question is designed to assess your knowledge of the field and your ability to recognize and respond to potential cases of human trafficking. The interviewer wants to know that you have the tools, knowledge, and experience to be able to handle such a situation.

If you have encountered a case of human trafficking while processing an application, be sure to explain the steps you took to address it. Talk about how you identified the signs and reported your findings to the proper authorities. If you haven’t encountered such a case, talk about any training or education you have had related to identifying potential cases of human trafficking. You can also mention any proactive measures you take when reviewing applications that could help identify potential cases.

Example: “I have not yet encountered a case of human trafficking while processing an application, but I have received training on how to identify and report potential cases. I am very aware of the signs to look out for, such as applicants who are reluctant to provide information or appear to be under the control of someone else. I also take proactive measures to ensure that all applications are thoroughly reviewed and that any suspicious cases are reported to the proper authorities.”

15. What strategies do you use to maintain confidentiality when dealing with sensitive information?

Immigration officers need to be able to keep sensitive information private, since they are often handling applications, passports, and other documents with private data. Interviewers will want to ensure that you understand the importance of confidentiality and can demonstrate that you have the necessary skills to handle confidential information in a secure and responsible way.

You should be prepared to discuss the strategies that you use to ensure confidentiality, such as limiting access to information, encrypting documents, and using secure methods of communication. You can also talk about any training or certifications you have in data security and privacy. Additionally, if you have ever handled a particularly sensitive case in the past, this is a great opportunity to highlight your experience with maintaining confidentiality.

Example: “I understand the importance of confidentiality when dealing with sensitive information, and I take extra precautions to ensure the security of the data I’m working with. I use secure methods of communication, such as encrypted emails, and I limit access to information by only providing it to those who absolutely need it. I also have a certification in data security and privacy, and I’m well-versed in the regulations and laws that govern the handling of confidential information. In my previous role as an immigration officer, I handled a particularly sensitive case involving a minor, and I was able to maintain full confidentiality throughout the process.”

16. How do you handle cases involving family members of applicants?

Immigration officers must be able to work with applicants’ family members during the application process, as they may be required to provide additional information or documents. It’s important for immigration officers to be able to handle these cases with empathy and sensitivity, as these are often difficult and emotional situations. By asking this question, the interviewer is looking for an indication that you understand the need for emotional intelligence when working with applicants and their families.

In your answer, emphasize your ability to remain professional and empathetic in difficult situations. Talk about how you have worked with family members of applicants in the past and what approach you take when dealing with them. Additionally, explain how you ensure that all parties involved are kept informed throughout the process and that their questions are answered in a timely manner.

Example: “In my experience, family members of applicants can often be overwhelmed by the process and the implications of the application. My approach is to be patient and understanding, while ensuring that all parties involved are kept informed throughout the process. I make sure to answer any questions they may have in a clear and concise manner, and I strive to create a positive and supportive environment for them. Additionally, I always ensure that I am transparent and honest in my communication, so that all parties are fully aware of the implications of the application and the potential outcomes.”

17. What do you consider to be the most important qualities of an effective immigration officer?

Immigration officers play a vital role in ensuring the safety and well-being of a country. They need to be able to make quick, accurate decisions, communicate effectively with people of all backgrounds, and be able to handle difficult and potentially dangerous situations. This question allows the interviewer to gain insight into a candidate’s understanding of the role and their commitment to upholding its responsibilities.

When answering this question, focus on qualities that demonstrate your knowledge and commitment to the job. Good qualities for an immigration officer include strong communication skills, excellent attention to detail, the ability to think quickly and make sound decisions under pressure, a sense of justice and fairness, empathy, patience, and an understanding of cultural diversity. Additionally, you should emphasize any experience or training you have had related to the role.

Example: “I believe that the most important qualities of an effective immigration officer are strong communication skills, excellent attention to detail, the ability to think quickly and make sound decisions under pressure, a sense of justice and fairness, empathy, patience, and an understanding of cultural diversity. I have experience in working with people of different backgrounds and I am familiar with the laws and regulations pertaining to immigration. I have also had extensive training in conflict resolution and I am comfortable working in high-pressure situations. I am confident that these qualities and my experience make me an ideal candidate for this role.”

18. Describe a time when you had to work with another government agency to resolve an immigration issue.

Immigration officers must have the ability to work with people in other agencies, both inside and outside of the government, to ensure that immigration issues are properly and efficiently resolved. This question is designed to assess the candidate’s ability to work collaboratively and build relationships with external stakeholders. It also reveals the candidate’s understanding of the complexities and nuances of the immigration process.

The interviewer wants to hear about a specific example of when you had to work with another government agency, such as the Department of Homeland Security or the State Department. Talk about the issue that needed to be resolved and how you went about resolving it. Be sure to emphasize your ability to collaborate and build relationships with external stakeholders, as well as your understanding of the complexities of the immigration process.

Example: “I was recently tasked with resolving an immigration issue that involved working with the Department of Homeland Security. The issue was a complex one, involving multiple parties and a tight timeline. I worked closely with the DHS to ensure that all the paperwork was in order and that all parties were aware of their responsibilities. I also made sure that I was up-to-date on the latest immigration regulations and policies, so that I could ensure that the issue was resolved quickly and efficiently. In the end, the issue was successfully resolved and all parties were satisfied with the outcome.”

19. How do you handle situations where an applicant does not meet the criteria for a visa but has extenuating circumstances?

Immigration officers need to be able to make tough decisions while being fair and compassionate. This question is designed to gauge how you handle these kinds of situations. Interviewers want to know that you can think critically, weigh the evidence presented to you, and make a decision based on the best interests of all involved.

When answering this question, you should emphasize your ability to consider the facts of each case and make a decision based on those facts. It’s important to be able to empathize with the applicant’s situation while still adhering to the law. You should also explain how you would take into account any extenuating circumstances that may have affected the applicant’s eligibility for a visa. Additionally, discuss how you would ensure that all applicants are treated fairly and equally regardless of their background or nationality.

Example: “I understand that every situation is different and that extenuating circumstances can play a role in an applicant’s eligibility for a visa. When I am presented with a case where an applicant does not meet the criteria for a visa, I always take the time to review the individual’s situation and any evidence they may have to support their application. I also take into account any extenuating circumstances that may have affected their eligibility. Above all, I make sure to treat all applicants with respect and ensure that all decisions are made fairly and without bias.”

20. What do you think are the biggest challenges facing immigration officers today?

Immigration officers work in a highly visible and often politically charged area. It is important for the interviewer to understand your understanding of the current challenges facing immigration officers. This question allows the interviewer to gain insight into your thought process and how you would approach the job. It also allows the interviewer to assess your knowledge and experience in the field.

To answer this question, you should begin by discussing the complexities of immigration law and how it is constantly changing. You can then discuss some of the current challenges facing immigration officers such as increased paperwork, backlogs in processing applications, and a lack of resources to adequately handle the influx of immigrants. You should also talk about the need for sensitivity when dealing with different cultures, languages, and backgrounds. Additionally, you could highlight the importance of staying up-to-date on new laws and regulations and ensuring that all policies are followed properly.

Example: “I believe the biggest challenges facing immigration officers today are the increasing complexities of immigration law and the need for sensitivity when dealing with different cultures, languages, and backgrounds. In addition, there is the challenge of staying up-to-date on new laws and regulations, as well as dealing with the backlog of applications and paperwork. It is also important to have the resources and personnel to adequately handle the influx of immigrants. As an immigration officer, I am committed to understanding and adhering to all laws and regulations while also providing a respectful and sensitive environment for all individuals.”

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• Criminal Justice

My immigrant family achieved the American dream. Then I started to question it.

by Amanda Machado

In summer 2007, I returned home from my freshman year at Brown University to the new house my family had just bought in Florida. It had a two-car garage. It had a pool. I was on track to becoming an Ivy League graduate, with opportunities no one else in my family had ever experienced. I stood in the middle of this house and burst into tears. I thought: We’ve made it.

That moment encapsulated what I had always thought of the “American dream.” My parents had come to this country from Mexico and Ecuador more than 30 years before, seeking better opportunities for themselves. They worked and saved for years to ensure my two brothers and I could receive a good education and a solid financial foundation as adults. Though I can’t remember them explaining the American dream to me explicitly, the messaging I had received by growing up in the United States made me know that coming home from my first semester at a prestigious university to a new house meant we had achieved it.

• I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American. I've failed.

And yet, now six years out of college and nearly 10 years past that moment, I’ve begun questioning things I hadn’t before: Why did I “make it” while so many others haven’t? Was this conventional version of making it what I actually wanted? I’ve begun to realize that our society’s definition of making it comes with its own set of limitations and does not necessarily guarantee all that I originally assumed came with the American dream package.

I interviewed several friends from immigrant backgrounds who had also reflected on these questions after achieving the traditional definition of success in the United States. Looking back, there were several things we misunderstood about the American dream. Here are a few:

1) The American dream isn’t the result of hard work. It’s the result of hard work, luck, and opportunity.

Looking back, I can’t discount the sacrifices my family made to get where we are today. But I also can’t discount specific moments we had working in our favor. One example: my second-grade teacher, Ms. Weiland. A few months into the year, Ms. Weiland informed my parents about our school’s gifted program. Students tracked into this program in elementary school would usually end up in honors and Advanced Placement classes in high school — classes necessary for gaining admission into prestigious colleges.

My parents, unfamiliar with our education system, didn’t understand any of this. But Ms. Weiland went out of her way to explain it to them. She also persuaded school administrators to test me for entrance into the program, and with her support, I eventually earned a spot.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Ms. Weiland’s persistence ultimately influenced my acceptance into Brown University. No matter how hard I worked or what grades I received, without gifted placement I could never have reached the academic classes necessary for an Ivy League school. Without that first opportunity given to me by Ms. Weiland, my entire educational trajectory would have changed.

The philosopher Seneca said, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” But in the United States, too often people work hard every day, and yet never receive the opportunities that I did — an opportunity as simple as a teacher advocating on their behalf. Statistically, students of color remain consistently undiscovered by teachers who often , intentionally or not, choose mostly white, high-income students to enter advanced or “gifted” programs , regardless of their qualifications. Upon entering college, I met several students from across the country who also remained stuck within their education system until a teacher helped them find a way out.

Research has proved that these inconsistencies in opportunity exist in almost every aspect of American life. Your race can determine whether you interact with police, whether you are allowed to buy a house , and even whether your doctor believes you are really in pain . Your gender can determine whether you receive funding for your startup or whether your attempts at professional networking are effective. Your “foreign-sounding” name can determine whether someone considers you qualified for a job. Your family’s income can determine the quality of your public school or your odds that your entrepreneurial project succeeds .

These opportunities make a difference. They have created a society where most every American is working hard and yet only a small segment are actually moving forward. Knowing all this, I am no longer naive enough to believe the American dream is possible for everyone who attempts it. The United States doesn’t lack people trying. What it lacks is an equal playing field of opportunity.

2) Accomplishing the American dream can be socially alienating

Throughout my life, my family and I knew this uncomfortable truth: To better our future, we would have to enter spaces that felt culturally and racially unfamiliar to us. When I was 4 years old, my parents moved our family to a predominantly white part of town, so I could attend the county’s best public schools. I was often one of the only students of color in my gifted and honors programs. This trend continued in college and afterward: As an English major, I was often the only person of color in my literature and creative writing classes. As a teacher, I was often one of few teachers of color at my school or in my teacher training programs.

While attending Brown, a student of color once told me: “Our education is really just a part of our gradual ascension into whiteness.” At the time I didn’t want to believe him, but I came to understand what he meant: Often, the unexpected price for academic success is cultural abandonment.

In a piece for the New York Times , Vicki Madden described how education can create this “tug of war in [your] soul”:

To stay four years and graduate, students have to come to terms with the unspoken transaction: exchanging your old world for a new world, one that doesn’t seem to value where you came from. … I was keen to exchange my Western hardscrabble life for the chance to be a New York City middle-class museum-goer. I’ve paid a price in estrangement from my own people, but I was willing. Not every 18-year-old will make that same choice, especially when race is factored in as well as class.

So many times throughout my life, I’ve come home from classes, sleepovers, dinner parties, and happy hours feeling the heaviness of this exchange. I’ve had to Google cultural symbols I hadn’t understood in these conversations (What is “Harper’s”? What is “après-ski”?). At the same time, I remember using academia jargon my family couldn’t understand either. At a Christmas party, a friend called me out for using “those big Ivy League words” in a conversation. My parents had trouble understanding how independent my lifestyle had become and kept remarking on how much I had changed. Studying abroad, moving across the country for internships, living alone far away from family after graduating — these were not choices my Latin American parents had seen many women make.

An official from Brown told the Boston Globe that similar dynamics existed with many first-generation college students she worked with: “Often, [these students] come to college thinking that they want to return home to their communities. But an Ivy League education puts them in a different place — their language is different, their appearance is different, and they don’t fit in at home anymore, either.”

A Haitian-American friend of mine from college agreed: “After going to college, interacting with family members becomes a conflicted zone. Now you’re the Ivy League cousin who speaks a certain way, and does things others don’t understand. It changes the dynamic in your family entirely.”

A Latina friend of mine from Oakland felt this when she got accepted to the University of Southern California. She was the first person from her to family to leave home to attend college, and her conservative extended family criticized her for leaving home before marriage.

“One night they sat me down, told me my conduct was shameful and was staining the reputation of the family,” she told me, “My family thought a woman leaving home had more to do with her promiscuity than her desire for an education. They told me, ‘You’re just going to Los Angeles so you can have the freedom to be with whatever guy you want.’ When I think about what was most hard about college, it wasn’t the academics. It was dealing with my family’s disapproval of my life.”

We don’t acknowledge that too often, achievement in the United States means this gradual isolation from the people we love most. By simply striving toward American success, many feel forced to make to make that choice.

3) The American dream makes us focus single-mindedly on wealth and prestige

When I spoke to an Asian-American friend from college, he told me, “In the Asian New Jersey community I grew up in, I was surrounded by parents and friends whose mentality was to get high SAT scores, go to a top college, and major in medicine, law, or investment banking. No one thought outside these rigid tracks.” When he entered Brown, he followed these expectations by starting as a premed, then switching his major to economics.

This pattern is common in the Ivy League: Studies show that Ivy League graduates gravitate toward jobs with high salaries or prestige to justify the work and money we put into obtaining an elite degree. As a child of immigrants, there’s even more pressure to believe this is the only choice.

Of course, financial considerations are necessary for survival in our society. And it’s healthy to consider wealth and prestige when making life decisions, particularly for those who come from backgrounds with less privilege. But to what extent has this concern become an unhealthy obsession? For those who have the privilege of living a life based on a different set of values, to what extent has the American dream mindset limited our idea of success?

The Harvard Business Review reported that over time, people from past generations have begun to redefine success. As they got older, factors like “family happiness,” “relationships,” “balancing life and work,” and “community service” became more important than job titles and salaries. The report quoted a man in his 50s who said he used to define success as “becoming a highly paid CEO.” Now he defines it as “striking a balance between work and family and giving back to society.”

• Vox First Person: If ambition is ruining your life, you need to read Thoreau

While I spent high school and college focusing on achieving an Ivy League degree, and a prestigious job title afterward, I didn’t think about how other values mattered in my own notions of success. But after I took a “gap year” at 24 to travel, I realized that the way I’d defined the American dream was incomplete: It was not only about getting an education and a good job but also thinking about how my career choices contributed to my overall well-being. And it was about gaining experiences aside from my career, like travel . It was about making room for things like creativity, spirituality , and adventure when making important decisions in my life.

Courtney E. Martin addressed this in her TED talk called “The New Better Off,” where she said: “The biggest danger is not failing to achieve the American dream. The biggest danger is achieving a dream that you don’t actually believe in.”

Those realizations ultimately led me to pursue my current work as a travel writer. Whenever I have the privilege to do so, I attempt what Martin calls “the harder, more interesting thing”: to “compose a life where what you do every single day, the people you give your best love and ingenuity and energy to, aligns as closely as possible with what you believe.”

4) Even if you achieve the American dream, that doesn’t necessarily mean other Americans will accept you

A few years ago, I was working on my laptop in a hotel lobby, waiting for reception to process my booking. I wore leather boots, jeans, and a peacoat. A guest of the hotel approached me and began shouting in slow English (as if I couldn’t understand otherwise) that he needed me to clean his room. I was 25, had an Ivy League degree, and had completed one of the most competitive programs for college graduates in the country. And yet still I was being confused for the maid.

I realized then that no matter how hard I played by the rules, some people would never see me as a person of academic and professional success. This, perhaps, is the most psychologically disheartening part of the American dream: Achieving it doesn’t necessarily mean we can “transcend” racial stereotypes about who we are.

It just takes one look at the rhetoric by current politicians to know that as first-generation Americans, we are still not seen as “American” as others. As so many cases have illustrated recently, no matter how much we focus on proving them wrong, negative perceptions from others will continue to challenge our sense of self-worth.

For black immigrants or children of immigrants, this exclusionary messaging is even more obvious. Kari Mugo, a writer who immigrated to the US from Kenya when she was 18, expressed to me the disappointment she has felt trying to feel welcomed here: “It’s really hard to make an argument for a place that doesn’t want you, and shows that every single day. It’s been 12 years since I came here, and each year I’m growing more and more disillusioned.”

I still cherish my college years, and still feel immensely proud to call myself an Ivy League graduate. I am humbled by my parents’ sacrifices that allowed me to live the comparatively privileged life I’ve had. I acknowledge that it is in part because of this privilege that I can offer a critique of the United States in the first place. My parents and other immigrant families who focused only on survival didn’t have the luxury of being critical.

Yet having that luxury, I think it’s important to vocalize that in the United States, living the dream is far more nuanced than we often make others believe. As Mugo told me, “My friends back in Kenya always receive the message that America is so great. But I always wonder why we don’t ever tell the people back home what it’s really like. We always give off the illusion that everything is fine, without also acknowledging the many ways life here is really, really hard.”

I deeply respect the choices my parents made, and I’m deeply grateful for the opportunities the United States provided. But at this point in my family’s journey, I am curious to see what happens when we begin exploring a different dream.

Amanda Machado is a writer, editor, content strategist, and facilitator who works with publications and nonprofits around the world. You can learn more about her work at her website .

First Person is Vox’s home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines , and pitch us at [email protected] .

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18 Essays About The Immigrant Experience You Need To Read

These stories illuminate what it takes, and what it means, to uproot your life in one country and begin it again in a new one.

BuzzFeed Staff

Growing Up American In Gaza Taught Me What We Owe To Refugees — Rebecca Peterson Zeccola

"In Palestine, we could so easily have been treated as the enemy, but we were welcomed like family."

I’m Not OK With Being One Of The Lucky Muslims — Romaissaa Benzizoune

"This weekend’s immigration order doesn’t apply to me or my family; I’ll be fine. But so many others I know and love will not."

I Grew Up In The Rust Belt, But I'm Not In Any Of The Stories About It — Alia Hanna Habib

"It’s strange to see the media turn its attention to places like my hometown in coal-country Pennsylvania and find that my experience there, as part of the non -white working class, is still invisible."

Here’s What I’m Telling My Brown Son About Trump’s America — Mira Jacob

"Sometimes I wish I could ask America when, exactly, it made its mind up about us. The myth, of course, is that it hasn’t, that there is still a chance to mollify those who dictate the terms of our experience here, and then be allowed to chase success unfettered by their paranoia. To live, as it’s more commonly known, the American dream."

There’s No Recipe For Growing Up — Scaachi Koul

"My mom’s Kashmiri cooking has always tethered me to home. So it’s no wonder she won’t give me (all) the secrets to doing it myself."

How I Learned That Beauty Doesn’t Have To Hurt — Sonya Chung

"Growing up in a Korean American family, I absorbed the idea that any feeling of pleasure comes at a cost. But as I get older, I’m realizing it doesn’t have to work that way."

Why Brexit Has Broken My Heart — Bim Adewunmi

"As a child of immigrants, I am deeply ashamed that this is who we are."

I Found A Home In Clubs Like Pulse, In Cities Like Orlando — Rigoberto González

"I cherish the time I have spent in clubs like Pulse in cities like Orlando, where gay Latinos — the immigrants, the undocumented, and the first-generation Americans alike — gravitate because we love men and we love our homelands, and that’s one of the places our worlds converge."

Making Great Pho Is Hard, But Making A Life From Scratch Is Harder — Nicole Nguyen

"After fleeing Vietnam, my parents turned to food to teach us about what it means to be Vietnamese."

When Home Is Between Different Countries And Genders — Meredith Talusan

"I moved to the U.S. from the Philippines when I was 15, where I had been raised as a boy. About a decade later, I started to live as a woman and eventually transitioned. I think of migration and transition as two examples of the same process – moving from one home, one reality, to another."

I Found The House My Grandparents Abandoned in 1947 — Ahmed Ali Akbar

"So many Americans go to India to find themselves. But I went to find the history my family lost in the subcontinent’s Partition."

How I Became A Southern-Fried Nigerian — Israel Daramola

"I once felt torn between Nigeria and Florida, between jollof rice and fried alligator, but there is no real me without both."

Learning To Mourn In My Father's Country — Reggie Ugwu

"After my brother died and my father was partially paralyzed, my family traveled 7,000 miles in search of an old home, a new house, and the things we’d lost on the road in between."

How To Get Your Green Card In America — Sarah Mathews

"When you perform the act of audacity that is consolidating an entire life into a couple of suitcases and striking out to make your way, what is not American about that? When you leave the old country so that your daughters can have a good education and walk down their streets without fear, what is not American about that? When you flee violence and poverty to come to a land of plenty, when you are willing to learn new languages, to haul ass, to do twice as much work, what is not American about that?"

A Childhood Spent Inside A Chinese Restaurant — Susan Cheng

"Being one of the few Asians in my school was hard enough. Working at my parents’ Chinese restaurant didn’t make it any easier."

How I Learned To Celebrate Eid Al Adha In America — Zainab Shah

"I bent over backward to explain myself. 'From Pakistan,' I would say. 'Not a terrorist,' I almost added. But I didn’t — the joke would only be funny if racial profiling didn’t exist."

Texts From My Parents: What It Was Like To Leave Vietnam — Nicole Nguyen

"They did it for us, and I'll spend the rest of my life trying to make the most of it."

What It’s Like Speaking A Different Language From Your Parents — Zakia Uddin

"My parents and I communicate in an incomplete mash-up of Bengali and English. I sometimes wonder what we are missing."

Topics in this article

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When These Latinos Tell Immigration Stories, They Push Beyond Fairy Tales

Leah Donnella

Cecily Meza-Martinez comes from a small family — her grandmother was born in Mexico and worked in the fields in Southern California before transitioning to factory work. Her grandfather's family is from Spain, and he worked construction on many different projects throughout Southern California — including Disneyland. Chelsea Beck/NPR hide caption

Cecily Meza-Martinez comes from a small family — her grandmother was born in Mexico and worked in the fields in Southern California before transitioning to factory work. Her grandfather's family is from Spain, and he worked construction on many different projects throughout Southern California — including Disneyland.

It's easy to believe in a definitive American immigration story. So much of this country's mythos is built on that idea. ("Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free ...") It foretells a fairy tale ending where parents have worked hard, sacrificed much, and settled their children into the new country. The family has assimilated, and the life that came before is a distant memory.

But it's more complicated than that. The telling of immigration stories exposes a rich array of experiences: loss, longing, duality, triumph and contradiction.

When Latino colleagues from across NPR shared their families' immigration stories for Hispanic Heritage Month, their essays were full of things achieved and things surrendered; cultures celebrated and cultures lost; decisions made by choice and by coercion. Camille Salas, a librarian, wrote about her grandfather's decision to join the Navy in exchange for U.S. citizenship. Cecily Meza-Martinez, of News Operations, wrote about her family's hardships and achievements, which included a role in building Disneyland. Producer Ana Lucia Murillo wrote about how her father crossed the border from Mexico to the U.S. in the bottom of a van marked "Laundromat."

Ana Lucia Murillo's grandfather spent a few years in Chicago in the 1970s to earn money. When Murillo's father was 17, curiosity got to him and he made the trip to Chicago, too. He took a number of buses to the border, and then coyotes helped him hide in the bottom of a van marked "Laundromat" as he was driven across. Chelsea Beck/NPR hide caption

Ana Lucia Murillo's grandfather spent a few years in Chicago in the 1970s to earn money. When Murillo's father was 17, curiosity got to him and he made the trip to Chicago, too. He took a number of buses to the border, and then coyotes helped him hide in the bottom of a van marked "Laundromat" as he was driven across.

Every family came to U.S. with an idea in mind of what its experience might be. But what shines through in these stories is the stark difference between expectation and reality.

We'll share some of their immigration stories here with you. Then, if you have one, we'll ask you to tell us yours .

Intern Monica Itxy Quintanilla's story captures some of the longing and some of the triumph:

"I was raised on stories of mango trees, waterfalls and machetes. My dad, who grew up in a small village in Honduras, glamorized his immigration to the U.S. by decorating his tales with magical realism. For the majority of my childhood, I wholeheartedly believed that mi papi flew into Los Angeles hanging onto the wing of an airplane. ... "My mother's stories were characterized by a similar sense of adventure and freedom. Born and raised in Guadalajara, Mexico, my mom's urban upbringing made for tales filled with street outings, botanas mexicanas and celebrations. She'd decorate her childhood stories with sparkling eyes and adjectives like 'friendly,' 'exciting' and 'communal' — all antonyms to the words she'd use to describe the United States. With my parents' overt admiration for their homeland, I inevitably begged the question, 'Then why did you leave?' "

Camille Salas is a third-generation Chicana/Tejana/Latina. Her maternal grandfather became a U.S. citizen after joining the Navy during World War II. He and other sailors of Mexican descent were asked to cross a line in the sand if they wanted to become American citizens, and so they did. Chelsea Beck/NPR hide caption

Camille Salas is a third-generation Chicana/Tejana/Latina. Her maternal grandfather became a U.S. citizen after joining the Navy during World War II. He and other sailors of Mexican descent were asked to cross a line in the sand if they wanted to become American citizens, and so they did.

Nicole Cohen, a producer on the Arts Desk, illustrates her family's competing desires in her story. When Cohen's parents moved to the U.S. from Argentina in 1982, "They never planned to stay," she wrote, and it "wasn't until I was in middle school that my dad stopped talking about moving back."

Cohen didn't see it that way. She was born in the U.S., was "stubbornly against" the idea of moving to Argentina, and sometimes refused to speak Spanish at home. But after years of annual visits to Argentina, her perspective shifted. Now, Cohen speaks Spanish with a strong Argentine accent and says that "the sounds, tastes and smells of Argentina conjure home almost as much as the U.S."

Even when it was difficult, many families worked hard to hold on to some remembrance of home. Rekha Patricio, who leads the marketing and branding team, grew up in Venezuela, but her parents, who are from India, gave her a Hindu name to remind her of her heritage.

Rekha Patricio and her two siblings were born in Venezuela to parents who immigrated there from Kerala, India. As a teenager, she and her siblings moved to the U.S. for a better educational opportunity while their parents stayed back home in Venezuela. Chelsea Beck/NPR hide caption

Rekha Patricio and her two siblings were born in Venezuela to parents who immigrated there from Kerala, India. As a teenager, she and her siblings moved to the U.S. for a better educational opportunity while their parents stayed back home in Venezuela.

When she was 16, she moved to the U.S. with her brother and sister. At first, they didn't know where they fit in. Strangers often wanted to categorize them as just one thing — usually Indian, since that's how they looked. But as Patricio grew older, she realized she didn't have to choose one identity over the other, either for herself or, later, for her children:

"I've never considered myself fully Latina or fully Indian. It has always been a juggling act between two cultures and multiple languages. Moving to the U.S. further complicated my identity, as there were more immigrants here and it was easier to label me as 'Indian' because I physically fit that box. It took a few years to get to a place where I felt comfortable enough straddling both worlds and answering the question 'Do you feel more Indian or more Venezuelan?' "

Even when they've managed to straddle two worlds, some things were still left by the wayside.

Dustin Desoto, a producer with All Things Considered, is a third-generation American with roots in Spain and Mexico. He wrote about the loss of language. When Desoto's parents were growing up, he said, they'd be hit with a switch for speaking Spanish in school. To avoid punishment, they spoke English as much as possible, even at home:

"This unfortunately trickled down to my sister and me," Desoto wrote. He never learned Spanish.

As a young man, Dustin Desoto's grandfather joined the U.S. Army in 1941. He fought in World War II and was one of the few Latinos/Chicanos to serve under Gen. George F. Patton. He fought in both the Battle of the Bulge and the invasion of Normandy. Chelsea Beck/NPR hide caption

As a young man, Dustin Desoto's grandfather joined the U.S. Army in 1941. He fought in World War II and was one of the few Latinos/Chicanos to serve under Gen. George F. Patton. He fought in both the Battle of the Bulge and the invasion of Normandy.

Other families lost connections, friends, status, belongings. Even the pursuit of U.S. citizenship had a price. Robert Garcia, who leads the Newscast division, was born in New York City in 1957, about a year after his parents left Bogotá, Colombia. Garcia's parents moved back home, but his mother, Stella, returned to the U.S. to escape Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar's reign of terror. Eventually, she applied for American citizenship, but things didn't go as intended:

"The process was so long, bureaucratic, and convoluted that it outlasted her and she died in 1999 before she was fully naturalized. Some six months after her passing, Stella received a summons to appear in court for deportation, despite the fact that the [Immigration and Naturalization Service] had been mailed her death certificate. We patiently explained that neither her court appearance nor her deportation would be physically possible, and after [we received] two more increasingly threatening notices of impending deportation, the U.S. government ... finally let her rest in peace. For the record, you don't get the $700 application fee reimbursed."

Sometimes, though, the immigration story gets a little closer to the fairy tales. Which brings us back to Quintanilla. In the end, her story has the longing, the duality, the contradications, all fused to create a new, more complex American dream:

"Now, decades later, they've finally settled into a country they once felt out of place in. My dad no longer wears his beret with a red embroidered star á la Che Guevara and my mother has grown to love su casita . But their strong value of education and preservation of their culture remains intact and present in both their lives and my own. "After years of attempting to assimilate into a world I felt both included and excluded from, I've learned to stop categorizing myself into just one label. I am my Mayan ancestors, my great-grandparents, mi mami and mi papi, and myself."

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The hidden mathematics of Olympic success—an interview with Amandine Aftalion

Our podcast on science and technology. the mathematician and author explains how maths can optimise performance in sport.

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A t the Olympics , athletes strive for victory, compete for medals and try to smash records. Behind those Olympic champions are teams of scientists who study every aspect of a sport, looking for anything that can provide an edge over an opponent. What’s the best lane in which to run a 400m race? What’s the best angle to throw a shot put? What’s the fastest object in sport? In this episode, we uncover the hidden mathematics behind sporting success.

Alok Jha, The Economist ’s science and technology editor, interviews Amandine Aftalion, a professor of applied mathematics at the French National Centre of Scientific Research in Paris and the author of “Be a Champion: 40 Facts You Didn’t Know About Sports and Science”.

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