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An Immigration Story

Posted by Stuart at 11:43 PM on December 26, 2002

I leave early tomorrow AM to DC from Charlotte, so tonight my family and I drove down to Charlotte to spend the night. We had dinner at an awesome little Cuban restaurant where the food was great and so was the sangria.

The hostess (who also looked like she was in charge of the place) chatted with us a bit after dinner. She was born in Nicaragua, but was sent over to the US by her mother when she was a young girl. Her mother owned a clothing factory and two houses in Nicaragua when the Sandinistas took over in the 80s. They took one of her houses ("Why does one person need two houses?" they asked) and took control of her factory. The government supplied the fabric to the factory and took the finished clothing as well.

Since all of the fruits of the mother's hard work were taken from her, she started sending her children to the US one by one. When they were all there, she joined them and requested asylum. Of course she came to the US with nothing, since she had to leave everything behind. Otherwise she wouldn't have been able to leave the country.

It was a riches-to-rags story. The mother works in a factory now, but is no where close to owning it. Her childeren work in a restaurant. We asked the girl if her mother was glad she came over. She didn't really answer us, making us think that she wasn't really all that happy. But we still got the impression that after losing everything she had, she was glad to know that at least what she had now would always be hers.