Make Sure You Learn Your English

By Anonymous / Spring 2022

It was a typical hot summer night in Vietnam. My parents were busy preparing to close our small at-home convenience store around midnight, while I was watching my TV show before going to bed. My brother caught our attention by running down the stairs with his iPad in hand, with a big smile and breathing hard from the run, he told us “We’re going to the interview, I just checked my email”.  It was already past my bedtime and I didn’t know what he was talking about, so I turned my eyes back to the TV screen before my parents could realize that I was still awake. But my parents started blinking their eyes and smiling along with my brother. They knew exactly what interview he was talking about, as they have been waiting for this news for thirteen years. With joy, they immediately called my grandparents and uncles, who have lived in the States for the past almost 20 years, to share the good news.

The interview was set for the next month at the U.S Embassy building in Saigon, which was 10 hour by bus from where we lived. My parents got everything settled a week before we were leaving for the interview, my brother was helping them out with preparing the paperwork to get ready for the interview, I was getting all excited because we were going on a trip and that we might be moving to America soon. On the day of the interview, we woke up extra early, getting all dressed up, we went to the American Embassy building, which was about half an hour of riding motorcycles from my aunt’s house. Went inside the building, we were all fascinated by how big and extravagant the Embassy building was, my dad said with wonder, “this is definitely the American style, everything is put together and so fancy”. After about three hours of waiting, it was finally our turn, we met two interviewers, a Vietnamese translator and an American man. My parents were asked many questions which my parents answered almost perfectly; then the American interviewer turned his eyes to me and started asking what my name was and how old I was, and to which I could not answer because I didn’t have the speaking and listening skills at all. For a moment, I thought I messed up the interview, but the man smiled and I still vividly remember he said “make sure you learn your English”, then turned to my parents and said “congratulations and good luck with your life in America”, it was then translated to us by the translator, we let a huge sigh of relief off our chest with a big smile and said thanks to the interviewers. It was midnight in America but my grandparents stayed up the whole night waiting for our call of the good news, my mom teared up a little while calling them and telling them that we were going to see them soon.

After the interview, we got all the vaccinations and health check-ups required before entering the U.S, we sold everything left in our little store, my parents said goodbye to their longtime customers, we sold the house, said goodbyes to everyone and got everything packed up. I said goodbyes to my friends, everyone congratulated me and told me I was going to be an American girl, which got me even more excited about America. On September 20th 2013, we stepped foot in America through the LAX port of entry. We reunited with our family members here, all with joys and hopes of starting a new and better life, in our eyes we envisioned the American dreams in the future awaiting ahead of us. As we started to settle our new life here in the States, the new life that all four of us thought will be all bright and pink started turning on the opposite side. Like what people usually say, there is no rose without a thorn, like the rose, my family, four sprouting seeds of roses started seeing many obstacles as we paved our way to achieve the American dreams.

It is estimated about 66% of Vietnamese immigrants over the age of 5 have limited English proficiency (Alperin and Batalova). Similar to those Vietnamese immigrants, my family is among those that have very limited English skills. With that, communications and language became one of our very first struggles here in the States. My parents have told us many times that it almost felt like they were illiterate people because they are not able to communicate with anyone besides some of our fellow Vietnamese. They could only rely on me and my brother, but both me and my brother could only understand and speak very little of the language because what we learned back in Vietnam was not practical in a fully English-speaking country like America. Even till this day, after almost nine years of living here, my parents are still illiterate in English. Though my brother and I, as we have been through schools and work here, which took us a lot of time and efforts, we are still not fully fluent with the language as we still don’t understand some of the words said by peers around us.

One thing led to another, by not knowing English, it prevented my parents from getting better paying jobs. My parents’ shop in Vietnam got them working all day long, they never closed their shop even during the holidays. Their shop was busy all the time and along with the tropical heat of Vietnam, they were covered in their own sweats all day long which got them exhausted, and that we barely had time to spend together as a family. My grandparents in America were already retired while both of my uncles are engineers, so every time we think of America, we think of an educated place where almost everyone either has stable jobs or at least be able to work at a company in a clean environment. With that in mind, when we were certain about moving to America, my parents hoped that they would be able to find a job at a manufacturing place or a factory. But of course, it was only in our visions of the American dreams. We faced the reality that we did not know any English, could barely drive ourselves around, my parents could not get the jobs they always dreamed of. After about a month of applying to whatever jobs were posted on the Vietnamese newspaper, my dad got his job at a Vietnamese supermarket as a stock worker, and my mom got a job at a Vietnamese restaurant as a chef. Even though the jobs they got were nothing like what we have imagined, or even worse from our thoughts about the American dreams, at least it gave them a job, and it gave us the money to pay for many expenses such as rent, food, car insurance, etc. We were happy that things finally started to settle down a bit, but then again it almost felt like the American dreams were collapsing in front of our eyes when my parents started working. For the first two weeks of working, my dad worked the usual eight hour per day for six days a week, but with no payments because they said it was their training period. Yes, we were upset and sad, but what could we do when this is not our country, we don’t speak their language, we don’t know the laws, so my dad just had to quietly endure through those first two weeks because he did not want to lose the job. On the other hand, my mom had to work under the table, for roughly ten to twelve hours per day, which she got paid around sixty dollars a day and at that time when the minimum wage set by the state was nine dollars. Like Morpheus said to Neo in the movie The Matrix, we are all part of this social matrix, we are slaves that set ourselves into a bondage, an invisible prison, a prison of our mind. I’m sure my parents were not the only ones that have experienced these kinds of jobs. I’m sure everyone is in that same hustle, working at every job they could, as long it gives themselves a job to grow their families, to pay their rent. Coming from a developing country, we thought the economic situation in a fully developed country like America was better, but to our surprise, it was worse. Or maybe that was just what we thought, maybe the jobs and treatments that we got were not part of the American dreams that we dreamed of.

You might be asking why my mom is taking the risk by working under the table as it is illegal to do so, and she could get fined by the government anytime if they trace out that she is not following the law (Dolyna). Health insurance was one of our main concerns when we first got here as we were informed that we had to have some kinds of insurance to help us with going to the doctor or the hospital. At first, we tried to buy a plan for our health insurance, but it ended up costing us around ten thousand dollars for a family of four which we could not afford at all. We were worried that we could not afford the insurance and we would not know what to do in case of a medical emergency. But then, as we talk to other people around us, we were told about applying and getting government-benefit health insurance, or we usually call it Medi-Cal. Medi-Cal is a form of health insurance covered by the state, provided to those low-income families. Medi-Cal seems like it is the only solution to our healthcare problem. But there is always a limitation in the solution. To be eligible for Medi-Cal, we must be a low-income family. According to the state’s Department of Healthcare System, the annual income of a family of four must be within the 138% poverty level, which is around $36,000 per year, or around $3000 a month. I was only thirteen years old so I did not work, but the other three family members did, including my 19-year-old brother who had also gotten a job position as a cashier at where my dad also worked at. Since my dad and my brother already worked at the supermarket, where they only pay them by paychecks, and both of their paychecks combined would make it to right below the mark, around $2800 a month. My dad and brother’s income combined left almost no more room for my mom’s paychecks because if she did work earning paychecks, it would have exceeded the qualifications for Medi-Cal, ending my mom with two options, either to stay home or to work but receive cash for unreported income so we continue to get covered under medi-cal. Again, this was out of our scope, that we did not include in our American dreams. The America we dreamed of had the best medical care among all countries in the world, but such almost unaffordable insurance and medical bills leave people like my family, who are in the lower class, with no choice but to illegally work under the tables, facing many dangers in order to receive healthcare.

Just having my dad and brother working was not enough to pay all the bills in our household, so my mom would also have to join them and work. Restaurants and those in food services usually prefer to pay their workers cash, knowing that my mom got a job at a Vietnamese restaurant after seeing their hiring flyer in the newspaper. Unlike my dad’s, my mom is paid for a whole day of working, it was about sixty dollars a day. With sixty dollars a day, even if she works for eight hours like other people, she is still underpaid because it would only come out to be around seven to eight dollars an hour, but she works for ten to twelve hours daily, giving her only around four to five dollars an hour. Everyday, she would go to work at 8:30 in the morning and only come back around 9:30 to 10 o’clock. There are many times that she had told me she only ate once for the whole day because the restaurant was so busy that there was no time for her to at least chew something while working. It is also very risky to work in such an environment where it can get so hot from the cooking heat, while running around on a wet and slippery floor. By getting cash, there are no benefits for workers like her. Even if she gets into an accident at work, there is no such thing as workers’ compensation. It is ironic that she is putting herself against the law, in a dangerous environment that could get herself injured at anytime, so that we could be able to get covered by the government’s covered insurance. But did she have any other choices? I doubt so. Even if she had worked at another place, getting paid minimum wage, by paychecks like my dad or an average American, it figured that we still would not be financially stable enough to pay for medical insurance and expenses. That was her only choice, it is my family’s only choice to get some more money for the family and to stay under the healthcare coverage.

That was the reality. That was part of the American dream. The United States of America, the land of our dreams, the land of freedom, the land of equality, the land for a better economy. Coming to America, we expected many things to be hard for us at first as it is the usual norm when we settle a new life in a new country, but deep down we still expected it to be a positive and fulfilling experience for us. We spent thirteen years dreaming of this land, only to experience the harsh reality of being an immigrant America. In those thirteen years, we did not expect to find ourselves struggling to get health insurance. We did not expect my parents to have to work so hard just to get the minimum wage payment or in the case of my mom, getting paid almost 40% less than the minimum wage. We did not expect my mom to get unreported income just so we use government benefits to protect our own health. We did not expect to squeeze four people into a small one-bedroom house in a redlining area. We did not expect to experience any of these issues, nor any immigrants would expect to go through the same experience as us. My family was not the only family with those dreams. There are many other families out there who are also chasing the American dreams, are also going through the same experiences as we did, some could even be worse than ours. There are many times that we have asked ourselves if the dream that we are chasing would even be worth it. The answer is still unknown. Instead, every day we wake up, we always tell each other that today will be another day of hard work, another day of trying, another day of tracking down the answers to our American dreams. Being able to go through and experience these events for the past nine years have taught me many lessons. Like Noam Chomsky has broken down a list of principles of concentrated power and wealth in the U.S in his documentary, Requiem for the American Dream. Through his list, he pointed to where the American dream, the dream of wealth and equality, is shifted more toward the top 1% class of society, which is the super-rich people. He also mentioned that people like my family have these American dreams that we will be wealthy, we will get rich as long as we work hard enough. But while that is only our philosophy, the American economy is built merely upon politics, the wealthier people get, the louder their voice is heard, and thus they will be more powerful than anyone else. This documentary really reflects on our experience of the American dream. America is indeed the top country in the world, but it is only the best for the higher middle class and up. Such big income inequality like mentioned by Chomsky is the main reason why the American dream is not as dreamy as it sounds. In this country, people like my family, must try so hard just to get us enough to live day by day; we either have to be very rich to live in the dreams, or we would have to keep ourselves very poor on the lower class and keep trying everything we could to achieve the dreams that we always dreamed of. Again, the dreamy American dreams of every immigrant seems like it is almost right in front of our eyes, yet it is so far away from our reach.

Works Cited

Alperin, Elijah, and Jeanne Batalova. “Article 2018: Vietnamese Immigrants in the United.” Migration Policy Institute, 13 September 2018.

Dolyna, Lana. “Working "Under the Table" Consequences FAQ.” Tax Shark.

“Do You Qualify? | Medi-Cal Eligibility.” DHCS, 28 February 2022.

Huchison, Peter D., director. Requiem for the American Dream. Netflix, 2015.

The Wachowskis, director. The Matrix. 1999. Warner Bros, 1999