In the Mix Host Andrea Barrow: Throughout history, America has been seen as the land of opportunity. In the past years, millions of immigrants came to America by boat, suffering horrible conditions until they reached Ellis Island. One of the first things they saw was the Statue of Liberty, the symbol of freedom. They left their old countries for a new life; for economic opportunity, for political and religious freedom. This year, about one million immigrants came to this country for the same reason. On today's In the Mix, we'll be talking to five recent immigrants. We'll find out why they came to America, the problems they face, and how they are fitting in.

Fatima: America, a free country.

Michael: The most reason my, why my mom brought me here was that, I think, was for me to have a good future.

Mohammed: Before I came here, I think America was like heaven, because you see in the movie, you see everything. You see money, you see cars and, oh, my God, I want to go there. I want to live the same way.

Anton: Before I come to America I was scared, of how I’m going to be like in a school, different language, different traditions.

Luincys: When I came, I don’t know if I was excited or sad. I didn’t know. But I knew definitely that it was going to change my life. This is my story.

Anton: This is my story.

Mohammed: This is my story.

Fatima: This is my story.

Michael: This is my story.

Anton: My name is Anton. I moved from Russia to the U.S. two years ago and I’m seventeen years old. Back home I used to wait in a line in the stores to get a meal, to get orange juice, to get bread. Sometimes there is no bread in the supermarket. You have to go to the other supermarket, and other supermarket like two miles away, so I have to walk there. It took almost five years to get my paper to get in America. Some people give me problems about, because I want to go to America, you know, to like, ‘What? You want to give up our country?’ ‘What, you want to, you want to live in another country?’ I’m like, ‘Yeh. Maybe.’

Mohammed: My name is Mohammed. I was born in Guinea, West Africa. I moved to United States in 1994. I came to America to continue my education. School was very important to me because my parents, my father and my mother, never get a chance to go to school. Like in the village where I grew up, they expect you to memorize everything you learn in the class. Sometime when you go to class, the professor take you to the blackboard. You stand there and whatever he ask you to recite, you recite everything. If you don’t, sometime they beat you or they punish you.

Mohammed: I used to live in a hut made out of mud. I have like five brothers and about ten sisters. And when I came, I came, I came by myself. But my father and brother, they were already here. I got to the airport, all my friend was coming to say goodbye, taking pictures, talking. On the step of the airplane, I turn back and I wave at everybody.

When I got off the airplane, as I was walking to the immigration booth, my heart was beating fast because back home people used to tell me, ‘That’s the place. If you pass there, you’re in.’ They let me in. I came out and said, ‘Wow! Dream come true.’

Luincys: I remember saying goodbye to my father and my uncle. I was crying. We, we were all crying. And I remember that I didn’t know when I was going to see my father again. Saying goodbye was so hard for me and getting on the plane, but I was with my sister and my mother, so I had a great support.

Luincys: My name is Luincys Fernandez. I’m seventeen years old. I was born in the Dominican Republic and I came to American in April 25, 1993. When I came, everything looked the same: round, tall, and, I don’t know, dark. Everything was totally different. I felt myself so strange and I didn’t know where I was and I just wanted to go back. I told my mother, ‘I don’t want to stay here. I just want to go back, stay with my dad, and never come back.’

Michael: My name is Michael. I’m nineteen years old. I moved to America from China. When I got here, I changed my name from Chen How to Michael. You had to change yourself to, you know, to survive here. I had been living in Chinatown for three years.

The reason my mom brought me here was that, I think, was for me to have a good future. Me and my mom live in this small apartment together. When I first walk in here, I realizing the size of this apartment’s really the size of my bathroom when I was in China. We only got two rooms, one for bathroom. It’s really amazing you could put like everything in one room, you know, your kitchen, your bathroom, your shower, your everything. It’s basically everything you need in your living room. Got my hi-fi, VCR, my TV, my own computer. We don’t need that much space for us to live. Seems to be only two people. There’s a lot of people when they get out of China, they always think that, ‘If I get out of China, I will, you know, get a better life, even though a lot of people, you know, have to work twelve hour, twenty hour day while here, which is really amazing. You can’t, you don’t do any better than you, you, as you were in China.

Fatima: It was hard when I first got here to make friends. I didn’t know whom I should talk to or whom I should call, whatever. My family is from Africa, Tanzania, but we’re Indian. My ancestors are Indian. My name is Fatima Durani. I’m sixteen years old. I moved to United States four years ago. I was twelve back then. I was nervous. I was like, ‘Oh, my God,’ you know, I’m around these people I’ve never been with.

Like in public school, where you go with, first of all, I mean, first couple of months, they look at you, either curious why you’re doing this, why you’re doing that. [points to head covering] This is a hijab. I wear this to cover my head, not to show my hair, not to show my beauty to men. Sometimes I feel like, you know, ‘Why is he staring at me? Why is she staring at me?’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, because I have this hijab on. I forgot.’ In Africa, everybody wears hijab. Almost every Muslim girl wears hijab. So it was a little different for me in United States. Sometimes I feel like, you know, going out to, not wearing this. Some people do ask me, ‘Your hair is long,’ you know, touching the floor.’ ‘No! Who told you?’ I mean I’m like a regular girl. I have short hair, layered. I mean, it’s not big deal. I can have whatever I want. It’s just that I got to cover it, not show it to people.

Anton: The first day I got here, you know, I felt very, very homesick at that time. I was like, ‘What I’m going to do?’ Nothing, no friends, no telephones. I can’t call nobody. I’m like alone, you know. I look different from the other teenagers. I like to be different, you know, like, you know, all people are different. People ask me where I’m from a lot. You know I like when the people guess, you know, like, you know, when they’re saying like, ‘Uh, Greece? Poland?’ ‘Nah.’ ‘Maybe Czechoslovakia.’ ‘Now, where’re you from?’ Like, ‘Russia.’ ‘Oh, all right.’ I just try to be myself. That’s it. Like I was in Russia, my jackets, my jeans, my hair style, I want to have the same like I had in Russia. Yeh, I want people to know I’m Russian.

Luincys: The first time I went to school it was so scary. My sister and I didn’t know what to do. I remember I was wearing, oh, black sneakers and tight jeans. It’s like I was out of fashion. People could see that I was new, I just – I was newcomer.

The first struggle was the language. I was very sad going to school and being not able to communicate with other people. And it’s – for a time, I became mute. I just listened and listened and I couldn’t figure it out, not even a word of what they were saying, not even one word. And I was, I was sweating. I was – I felt like I was getting smaller and smaller and the world was getting bigger and bigger and it was sort of frustrated for me. I pulled my hair all over and I cried. I cried for six months. I just told my mother, ‘I’m not going to school.’ I was very determined on that. ‘I’m not going and I will not go and even if you take me, I’m not staying there. I will come back to my house.’ I was feeling great pressure in a way because I wanted to do good, but I couldn’t.

Mohammed: In school, I usually sit by myself because I couldn’t communicate with anybody. In class sometimes people who speaks the language, they make fun of you. The only thing I taught myself is try to learn the language, these people don’t make any fun of you.

One time I was playing in the park, playing basketball by myself, the kids they used to throw stones at me. Brothers, they wouldn’t let me play in the park. And they used to curse at me and tell me, ‘Go back to your country.’ I think what made those people treat me the way they treated me was because they don’t know me, they don’t know anything about my culture.

Luincys: Terms like discrimination, prejudice, stereotype, I never heard those terms in my country. I learned them here. I remember someone saying that Dominicans in Washington Heights, they are all drug addicts.

Fatima: If a Muslim is a terrorist, it doesn’t mean that we all are terrorists. That’s totally wrong. That is not – you don’t know me. You don’t know me. If you want, if you want to know me, you got to come up to me and ask me.

Luincys: I remember my teacher always telling us that you should go to college, you should continue education and show the Americans that you’re not here to be a rat.

Fatima: This is my first year at Ali Mon private school. My mom, she’s like, you know, ‘You’ve been to public school. You know how public schools are. I’m not saying they’re bad or anything, but this Ali Mon is your school. You need to go there.’

At first, I was like, ‘Why do I got to do this?’ You know, why it’s me? I mean, I know some – I mean, I wasn’t very religious. First of all in this school you have to have uniform, no makeup, no this, no that. You could call it a strict school because your main point is to know your religion and to know your studies.

We have math. We have English, like all the academic classes that the public schools do, but we, we include religion and Arabic. We recite the Koran. When you’re around your people, you’re more, much more comfortable. You feel like, okay, they know. They’re not going to come up to me and ask me, ask me why am I doing this.

Michael: When I first got here, I didn’t really go to school. I work, you know, in Chinese factory for like almost like ten hours a day. Working in Chinese factory is very, very hard for anyone, no matter you young, you old. It’s really, really hard. Some people have to work twelve hours a day, make very, very little money. I work every single day, every single day, Saturday, Sunday. During that time, my mom doesn’t have a job yet, so basically I, I was the only one who made money. It wasn’t that much. It was like $3.50 an hour but I feel really great about making my own money. It was only for a couple of weeks though. My mom then – after my mom, you know, went to work and I went to school, I still keep a job, you know, just go part time after school.

When you walk around Chinatown, all the people are Chinese. You can’t even see a white face, black face. Living in Chinatown, for me, it’s bad and it’s good. The good side is I still taste my Chinese food every day, which my mom could get from the food market, but the bad side is you never touch anything about America, really.

You live in America, man, I mean where the hell’s that. I play guitar and base. I mean, in my hometown, I never, I never know anybody who plays music. It’s really amazing. Sometime I want to move, but I have to like, you know, listen to my mom. She really want to stay here. She doesn’t play any music.

A lot of people like, like my mom, they don’t go out to American community. They will like stay home, watch Chinese, you know, radio. My mom works really hard to support me so I feel like I had to help. I see a letter coming, I read the letter for her. I sometimes go hospital with her. Sometime when we watch TV together, she always ask a lot of questions. I’m always urging my mom to learn English. In that way, she could enjoy more about America.

Anton: There’s a big difference, like, you know, Americans different from Russians. You’re not supposed to smile in Russia. You have to be like, pretty like by yourself, like you know if you’re sitting in the subway like smiling, you know, at people, people start looking at you like you’re crazy or something. Some Russians, they just come here and they forget about everything that happened back in Russia, you know. But the Russians who come like from like me, like two or three years ago, they’re like, you know, they’re different from Americans. You know, they’re not smiling that much. You know, they’re like living in their small world. I want to be like much Americans. In the house and the family, we always talk in Russian. We never talk in English. Russian food. It’s important for me not to forget. You always have to remember your country, your city where you live, your street and your culture.

Luincys: Sometimes I don’t want to remember. Sometimes I don’t because I become sad, make me feel. It’s like back in mind there’re all these beautiful memories but I don’t bring it forward because then I become depressed. I just keeping on moving on with my life, which is here now.

I think the fact that my father in that same year came to United States and lived with us, made me more – I don’t know, it, it really made me move on.

So when I was in eighth grade, we were working in groups in the class. I always had my dictionary in front of me to look up words. I started to speak.

I think Dominicans are very loud. We’re a very excited people because we are always singing or dancing. I do dance, of course. I learned to dance since I was very little, merengue, which is original come from my country.

I have fifty percent of myself Dominican and fifty percent American. It’s just mixed. It’s like, for example, on Saturday’s, I make breakfast and breakfast is waffles, sometimes bagels, and that’s not the kind of breakfast we have in my country. But then when it comes to lunch or dinner, it becomes Dominican, rice, beans or chicken. It’s so good. Part of this neighborhood make me remind my country. People just go into the stores and they start talking to the owner and you know you become like friend with them, even though you’re, you’re not a regular customer.

Mohammed: Right now things are very hard for me. I have to work and go to school at the same time. I need to work to support myself and to help my family back home. When once I get money, I send money. If I have clothes, I buy some of my – I buy my brothers and sisters clothes. I can hardly get time, free time, to have fun. I put the pressure on myself because the reason is in my family nobody ever been to college. I’m the first person in my family to make it to college.

Fatima: I don’t take myself very different. Just because I have to do my Islamic duties doesn’t make me any different than any American. I go out and go to the movies. I go to the mall. I shop.

[shopping with girl]: You don’t like the color? It’s hot.

I wear jeans. I wear pants, trousers, bell bottoms, everything. Everything that’s in, that’s in right now.

[shopping]: I wore that last time. Remember?

Girl: Yeh. It looked good.

Fatima: You just got to make it loose, not wear it tight. I listen to hip hop. I listen to R&B. I try to cut down, not a lot a lot. I mean, I know you’re not supposed to but I still do. Like I said, I’m trying to be religious. I’m trying hard.

Michael: I think I’ve been changing a lot since I come here cause everything I see, everything I touch, everything I learn is totally different, totally different. I never imagine I could go back to China. I’ve been to a bookstore, was just Chinese bookstore. I read a book. It’s really, really amazing the way they talk. They don’t have to like pretend to like the government or anything about China. You couldn’t get any of those books from China. When you touch something like that kind of freedom, you can’t just go back to the old way.

Mohammed: I don’t, I don’t feel like an American teenager. Sometime I’ve tried to adapt to the way I dress, like maybe wear baggy pants, wear a hat backwards, just speak a little slang.

Mohammed to girl: Hi. Come on, one more time.

Mohammed: I would like to be an American citizen. If I become one, there’d be a lot of opportunities for me.

It feels really good to come in United States. I mean, thank God, immigrants could come in, not like, oh, you know, ‘This is my country, nobody could enter.’ It feels good because some people can be grateful to America to let me in here.

Fatima: My dream was to come here to study, to know my, myself. Over here, you know your dreams can come true by working hard for it, not just dreaming about it.

Fatima: I consider myself as African American Indian, I guess, cause I was born in Africa, my ancestors are from India, and I’m living in America. So I guess African American Indian. All three of them and I like it.

Fatima: I definitely want to live here for the rest of my life. I don’t want to move anywhere else. Like I tell my mom, I’m not moving nowhere.

Anton: I don’t know if I want to live in America for the rest of my life. I always dream about my country and my friends again. I like about America a lot, a lot of that stuff. You know, you just like you can go everywhere, you can sit everywhere you want. I see myself go to U.S. Army. I would fight for this country. It’s all right. I’ll smile more when I live in America. You always have to smile.

Michael: My mom probably doesn’t want me to change a lot, turn into a, you know, totally American. But, you know, I have my own life. I couldn’t do whatever people expect me to do. I definitely think I will have a better life over here than in China cause in China it’s like everybody the same, totally same, you know. Nobody expect you to be authors, nobody expect you to be a rocker. I didn’t want to just stay in Chinatown like rest of my life. I really kind of enjoy the way American do things, you know, see the way I dress, the way I talk, the way–music I listen to. It’s really, it’s really like America.

Luincys: Two years ago, I really didn’t want to become a citizen. It was that kind of feeling: am I going to lose my Dominican tradition? Am I going to lose my Dominican part of myself. Eleven years of my life were there, my childhood is entirely there. I think the peaceful side of myself is there in the struggle, when the child years and the achievements of myself since I was growing up here, they’re still here. I mean, they’re building up here in the United States.

I want to be somebody with a profession that could help the community, not only Hispanic community, but the whole community, because I think that since we’re all human beings, we have to help each other one way or another.

Andrea: The face of America is constantly evolving. What immigrants bring to this country is diversity. Their different cultures and backgrounds blend together to make America what it is. We are a nation of immigrants.