Family History

         There is a complicated relationship in my family history. I immigrated to the United States when I was about 13 years old, but my parents told me that they turned in the application forms of immigration to the staff before I was born, actually both of my parents did know my mom was pregnant at that time. That means it took 13 years to get a stamp at my immigration passport. I always feel funny about how my parents turned the application form in before I was born, since they don’t have any information of me yet and it took such a long time to add my name onto the list after I was born. Sometimes, I feel special somehow about the time it took to work on the immigration passport on me.

       Start with premise of how a person has his or her qualification to apply for immigration to the United States. First of all, the person needs guarantors that are in the United States who also have stable income every month, which means it is impossible for a person to apply for immigration if there are no guarantee on the other sides. “Having a stable income” prevents the case of people immigrate to United States, but don’t have an enough income for their life, and ask the government for relief money. The nation fears that people will do such things, so they publish a law of having guarantors in order to apply. So then the guarantors need to relieve if the people they guarantee for 10 years if they cannot make money in any cases. Second of all, there is a very complicated procedure to check if a person’s health is good, but this is not really relating to the story.

Well, back to the idea, who are the ones guarantee my family 14 years old in order to provide an opportunity applying to the staff? I asked this question to my parents last week, and they told me it was my uncle who is on my mom’s side, apply my family to United States; and when I asked them who apply my uncle to United States, they told me to ask my uncle. Later at the night, I called my uncle(I have no blood relationship with him because he is my aunt’s husband.), and asked him how he got to United States, and he has been silence for a while, and started to tell me his history:

So, my uncle’s father was a mayor in Zhongshan, a big city in Grangzhou. During the Cultural Revolution in China during 1966 to 1976, under Mao’s leading, the upper-officers tried to find out the corrupt in every city with every kind of torture. So, they not spared to get information from different city and people, to find out the Corrupts. As I know, many loyalty workers also die during that period, because the governors did not give so much patients or trustings on them. Unfortunately, my uncle’s dad got attention from those people, and getting into a big trouble—those people wanted information of how people corrupted each one no matter you did it or not—of course everyone would say they never did so, which the officers would use torture on the mayors, until you make something up and they have enough evidences to “kick” you into jail. This is what really happened to my uncle’s family, when he was a teenager. It was impossible for his father to escape anyway, at the end; his father asked one of his best friends brought them away as far as he can because he feared that his family would get involved into it. Thus, my uncle follower his two brothers, from China, then shipping to Macau, to Hongkong, and lastly took airplane to United States. However, after he was going to United States, the government considered him as illegal immigration and did not give him any identity at all. Since they did not know when the Cultural Revolution would be ended, so they started to work in the United States. My uncle started his first job in a Chinese Restaurant in Chinatown and he lived in downtown Oakland. He had a very low paying job because he did not have any identifications or ID. So he struggle and struggle everyday—thought when he could go back to China at the time the Revolution end, and learned English at the same time. After 10 years, the Revolution started to get decreasing, and my uncles were deciding whether stayed in the United States since he already adapted to it. At this time, he finally got identification from the government somehow, but I heard that he paid a lot of money for getting it. And after three’s decisions, all of them went back to China—my uncle’s two brothers stayed in China for their rest of the lived, but my uncle, married my aunt, and brought her back to United States. He started his new life in Oakland. He injects the restaurant he worked for a long time, and became one of the bosses.

Later on, they have their first children, my second oldest cousin. So, he considered as “ABC”, American Born Chinese. And at the year he was born, 1993, was the day my aunt and my uncle apply my family for legal immigration. When my aunt was having the second baby, they went back to China. So, my older cousin started to get education from United States back to China, of course, his grade was bad because he cannot catch up on every subject. After 4 years, my aunt decided to bring both her kids back to America, because they were not really trying their best on their schools. Fortunately, both of them were doing well in United States, so my aunt chooses to stay in the America, and goes back to China with her family in the summer every two years. And after many years, when I was 14, they received a letter, which asked my family to get an interview for the immigration.

I think this story is really important to my family history because it shows the matter of immigrations in my family and how it effects to my family. And it also expresses how terrible and bad the Culture Revolution was in the past. It is just so hard and meaningful to my uncle of his life.

 The first year I came here was 2008, after about 10 years of staff organizing and working, my family finally had the permission to immigrate to the United States. My parents bought a house in Bay Farm, in order to offer me to go to Lincoln Middle School for the first year of School in the United States because there are ESL classes available in the school. In addition to recompense to my aunt’s family, my mom invited them to live with us, and they can have more income by renting their house in Oakland. Thus, now there are 2 families live in my house. And this is my AMAZING family history.