(water rushing) (group laughing) (children laughing) (knife chopping) - [Pratik] I tell people all the time I love being in the south.

I tell people I put the south in South Asian, and so very proud to be from here.

I'll take my lamb biryani with my shrimp and grits very, very happily.

And so, yeah, just really, really proud to be from here.

- Cheers.

- (speaking foreign language) Is that his burrito?

I was born in Tennessee, but I would always get the same questions asked all the time, like, "Why do you speak such good English?"

People always seemed surprised when I told them I was born and raised here in the south.

It's (laughing).

- Yummy.

It's like tomato sauce.

My dad came to study here and fell in love with the United States, and then it came time for him to get married.

He went back to Iran, met my mother there, and they were starting a family, and dad, honestly, the way he explains it, he really missed the US.

He had fallen in love with it and wanted to be here, so they came back and never went back, and so I was born three months later.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] More than a quarter of all children in the US are born to immigrant parents, and nearly 90% are born on American soil, making them birthright citizens.

According to Pew Research, these second generation Americans, also referred to as second generation immigrants, comprised 12% of the nation's overall population.

By 2050, that number could reach 18%.

These figures represent growing influence, both at the polls and in the ability to organize around issues that affect immigrant families in the communities they call home.

From getting out the vote to social activism in a free press, these second generation immigrants are laying claim to an age-old American pledge, liberty and justice for all.

- One?

- [Speaker] Well, congratulations.

- Thank you.

- Okay, let me get that for you.

- [Dulce] My parents moved to the United States around the 1990s to open Mexican restaurants, first in Alabama, and then we ended up in Franklin, Tennessee before eventually opening up the restaurant we have now in Nashville.

My family went from living in Mexico.

They were poor.

They were a family of 10, so this opportunity to open restaurants here in the United States was basically like, if it works, this is gonna completely change the entire future of the Guzman family, you know?

It's absolutely incredible the risk that we've taken and it worked out.

- [Narrator] But in February of 2021, a tragic moment nearly brought their good fortune to a halt.

A violent robbery attempt had left her mom injured and her dad in the hospital.

- When I heard my parents had been stabbed at our restaurant, I think I just went into shock, just kind of like that surreal feeling that you're not really sure if you're dreaming or this is actually happening.

But I knew I had things that I needed to do immediately, which is go find out where they are, how they're doing.

I don't think it's until I finally stopped for a second that it really kind of hit me like, oh my God, my parents were stabbed in our restaurant that we've had here for 20 years, and what is the future now?

Are we gonna have to be worried about something like this happening again?

It really destroys all sense of normalcy.

- [Narrator] Fortunately, her parents recovered from their injuries, but trauma of this magnitude can leave emotional scars and reopen old wounds.

For Dulce, it was a time to pause and reconsider the path ahead.

- [Dulce] My parents have always been there for me in my toughest times, you know, emotionally and physically, and so when my parents were in a state of emergency, I knew I had to do the same thing, is I had to prioritize them and just pay them back a little bit for all they had given me in my childhood.

- [Narrator] One of the many things Dulce's parents had given her was a shot at a good education.

After graduating from college with a degree in journalism, she had her first full-time job as a reporter, but even that could wait.

- [Dulce] After I took a break from being a reporter, I came back to my parents' restaurant to help them out again.

I mean, they always needed some assistance, but it was really take a moment for me as well to gather where I was in my life at this moment.

- [Narrator] It also gave her space to reflect on where she'd been and how her immigrant heritage had shaped not only her childhood, but who she would go on to become later in life.

- [Dulce] Some of my earliest memories as a child, I remember just feeling very different from other children and being very concerned that I was very different from other children.

But now that I think about it, I'm like, I was an only Hispanic kid in a small town in Alabama, and that automatically kind of made me estranged from everybody else.

So maybe all of that gave me more anxiety because I was trying so hard to socialize and make friends with other children, and I never really had any success, especially in my early years.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Today, loneliness and isolation have been identified as serious health risks, and research shows that several minority groups, including immigrants, experience loneliness at higher rates than other groups.

It's a problem Dulce knew well.

Despite moving from Alabama to Tennessee, she remained one of just a few Hispanic students in her class.

- [Dulce] I remember writing a letter once, kind of really putting these thoughts.

I'd be like, "Why is it so hard for me to make friends?"

And like, "It's really sad to be so lonely over here," and me thinking that there was something wrong with me, which gave me some self-esteem issues for a long time.

- [Narrator] That letter may have been a catalyst, both as a means of understanding herself and as a way to process her views on the world.

It was a precursor to the many articles she would go on to write as a professional journalist.

- [Dulce] One thing that I did notice quickly is that even if I had difficulty talking to people, I was a very good listener.

As a writer and a journalist, I wanted to communicate and socialize with people and realized that was one way to do it, is just by listening to people's stories, and I would be very interested in what people had to tell me because I would learn about what it meant to be human in that way, like learning how people made their decisions and came to conclusions.

- [Narrator] What more could we learn about the challenges and triumphs of second generation Americans?

We decided to follow Dulce as she sat down to interview other individuals who grew up in immigrant households and developed distinct voices in their communities.

(window knocking) She began by talking with Maryam Abolfazli, a recent candidate for US Congress.

- [Dulce] What was it like growing up here in Tennessee?

- Oh, for me, it was awesome, because at the end, Tennesseeans, Nashvillians, were then very warm.

I mean, they're still extremely warm, and there wasn't as much polarization.

I know that's hard to believe, but there wasn't, so they really embraced me and my family.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] As an Iranian-American activist, author and non-profit professional, Maryam's immigrant heritage is a distinct part of her identity, but like Dulce, finding her place in society has taken time.

- It was always, "Where are you from?"

And I was like, "I'm from here.

I was just born here, you know?"

But it wasn't enough.

Today we have so much diversity.

We had diversity then, but not as much.

I probably could count 50 to 100 Iranians that were here growing up in the '80s, and so I represented, my face represented a different look, and I wasn't ready to do that as a kid.

I wasn't ready to be that, you know what I mean?

As a kid, you're just trying to figure out who you are in a way, and so I always felt like I'm not blonde, I don't have the beautiful white skin.

So those differences, unfortunately, kind of stared me in the face a lot of the time.

I was always trying to kind of live under the radar and not get caught for being different.

- Hmm.

- [Maryam] Yeah.

- So you had to find a way to assimilate, basically?

- Yeah, for sure, and I still think that's the case even today for immigrant kids growing up, that there's this pressure to just like, I'm like you, I'm like you, I'm like you.

There's nothing different, there's nothing different, unless you have this community telling you it's okay to be different.

It's okay, we're good, you know?

But I think when you're new immigrants and there's not much there, yeah, you just kind of really want to be accepted.

No.

- No.

(Maryam laughing) No.

- I have two.

Don't look.

- So you grew up, you were a minority.

You had to experience all of these difficulties that the average American wouldn't.

- Right.

- How did this impact when you became a mother?

- I had time to work through all that by the time I became a mother, so then I very confidently walked into motherhood with him in terms of how are we gonna do identity?

But still, you never know what you're getting into as a mother, and he's got his own identities and he's got his own layers.

But it's been really nice because I have my parents.

He was born around them.

We all spoke Farsi to him when he was very, very tiny, so the language comes to his ear, which was really important to me.

We definitely try to be, we as in my family, my sister, you know, try to create opportunities where he gets to know the culture, and most of that is through parties and get-togethers.

That's how you learn what it's like to be around Iranians and what they value.

- And so, you had to approach parenting not only as an Iranian, but also as an American.

I'm sure that has a lot to do also with your political activism.

Could you tell us a little bit about that?

- Yeah, I think, you know, he definitely inspired another level of courage and activism, as you'd say, leadership, because once I had him, it was like nothing else mattered but making the world a better place for him.

Whatever ego or whatever I had no longer meant anything.

It was about, okay, this world is really different and changing very rapidly, and what do I need to do for him?

So I would step up over and over again with him as my source of courage.

And yeah, I think it's fun, because I'm very clear what it means to be American, super clear about the values that I love and that I'm so proud of, and very clear about instilling those in him.

Freedom, liberty, standing up for your rights, your first amendment rights, knowing how beautiful this structure is here that protects us.

- [Narrator] It's those very same values and freedoms that allowed Maryam to form Rise and Shine Tennessee following the Covenant School shooting in 2023.

It's a volunteer organization that advocates for gun safety and encourages civic engagement at the grassroots level.

- I think that's the beauty of being in the United States.

That's one of the beauties of being American, is that I can, as just a regular old mom, stand up one day and say, "Enough, I'm done, enough."

And then 1,000 moms follow and we all go and we do a rally and we keep going, and I think that's gorgeous.

That's our democracy.

I have that opportunity to do that and do that for him.

Actually, a lot of moms in mom volunteers in Rise and Shine have brought their kids into the fold, because they're not immune to this.

This isn't like a parental anxiety that the kids don't feel.

The kids feel it first, and then we're just trying to scamper to solve it for them.

Yeah, I feel like it's a privilege, it's an honor and it's a duty, it's a civic duty to stand up when this is just not even tolerable anymore.

- What's interesting is the juxtaposition between Iran and the United States, is that you escaped Iran because there was rising violence and political turmoil, and now you are seeing similar issues here in the United States, but also you really don't have the freedom to voice your concerns and opinions in Iran like you can here in the United States.

- Totally, and yet they did it in Iran, and the price was death for many, or incarceration, endless incarceration or immense anxiety to their families.

I mean, it is cruel what that government does to its people when they do just say, "Hey, I don't want to wear a headscarf anymore."

But here I can go, I can advocate, I can meet with my legislators, I can rally, I can talk about it, organize folks.

We can learn more about policy making.

We can learn about how proposals become bills and what those impacts are on all kinds of families, not just mine.

And yeah, I think that maybe is some of the motivation behind why I do it, because I can, and I know that in other places you can't.

- [Narrator] While government censorship has proven deadly in Iran, it's taken a less extreme, albeit alarming, turn in the US.

There's bans on books, the quelling of campus protests and bills that limit classroom conversations on race, history, sexual orientation, and gender.

Even attacks on journalists by public officials have become more commonplace.

For Dulce, that's cause for concern.

(soft music) - Journalists and protesters and really anyone that wants to voice any sort of opposition to what's happening around them have been almost immediate targets of violence in Mexico.

When I told my parents I wanted to be a journalist, the first thing they told me is that they wouldn't allow me to become a journalist in Mexico because it was too dangerous.

But they were a little, they felt just a little bit better that here in the United States, I had a little bit more protection.

That is basically one of the fundamental reasons why the United States is a great country, is just the ability to voice opposition or voice concerns and explore humanity without threat of violence.

It's something that is not quite as clear today as it was before.

- [Narrator] Early in life, Dulce struggled to find her voice in society.

But as a journalist, she not only found a vehicle for speaking out, she's also been able to amplify other voices.

- The point of being able to have free speech, the right to protest, the right to your first amendment rights, is the ability to make sure nobody is dehumanized.

Like being able to force the government to see people still as humans instead of these foreign objects that they can make laws against and basically treat them like rodents out in the street.

That's the whole point of why the press exists, to be able to keep people in the light and see them as people.

(soft music) - Walk forward a little more so people can get behind.

Tell me.

Yeah, just checking.

- [Crowd Member] Tell me what democracy looks like.

- [Crowd] This is what democracy looks like.

- [Narrator] Pratik Dash is the Political Director for TIRRC Votes, an affiliate of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.

(group chanting foreign language) Like Dulce and Maryam, he was born in the United States and raised in an immigrant home.

- TIRRC has been around for about 20 years, but in 2018, TIRRC Votes was born.

Hi, my name is Pratik.

I work with TIRRC, the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.

We're actually just calling to remind people to go out and vote today.

We realized that we needed a vessel to help immigrant community members create a political identity and really start doing heavy advocacy work and getting community members who look like us and talk like us and who will be champions for our communities elected into office and showing that our communities have a voice, an electoral voice in local, state, and federal elections.

- [Dulce] How are you doing?

- [Pratik] I'm doing good, how are you?

- [Dulce] Awesome.

- Well, let's go chat.

- Yeah.

- Let's just walk it over.

(gentle music) - [Dulce] Thanks for having me here, by the way.

- [Pratik] Yeah.

- Your work is especially critical this year since immigration and immigrant families have become such a divisive topic and a way for politicians to rally votes.

How do you hope to change that narrative?

- I think the first step here is just remembering that dignity and respect should be our top and most important value when it comes to these community members, right?

We want to make sure that families can stay together.

We want to make sure, again, that our communities are welcomed no matter their faith, their race, their ethnicity, that they feel that they belong in the state of Tennessee and in the United States.

- And community, I feel, is the key word of this conversation, because you have this opportunity to work with a lot of first and second generation immigrants here at TIRRC.

- Yes.

- And TIRRC Votes.

So, what do you hope to offer them that you lacked growing up here in Tennessee?

- I mean, I think first and foremost, I talked about it again, I never want anyone to feel what I felt when I was 14 years old.

That is first and foremost.

- [Narrator] It was in middle school when Pratik, along with fellow Americans, experienced the shock and horror of 9/11.

- I remember after 9/11 had happened, our school was holding a fundraiser for the victims of the families.

They had asked us to bring some money in, talk to our families, and my parents gave me $20, and I was so excited, because $20 back in the '90s was so much money, right?

I was sacrificing three Tamagotchis or whatever we played with back then, but it was really important for me to help these family members, and it was important for my parents to give their hard-earned money for this tragedy.

I went to give the money to the parent who was collecting the donations, and it was in a school cafeteria during lunch.

I remember that parent pushed my hand away and she said, "Sweetie, we don't take money from terrorists."

And she wouldn't accept my donation.

I think that was the first time in my life where I experienced just overt racism.

I felt different than the people in my class and I felt alone.

I remember not knowing what to do, not knowing who to talk to.

- Obviously it impacted you in a different way that most people wouldn't ever experience in their life.

Can you tell me a little bit more about how your high school experiences were shaped by how people made you feel other or alienated?

- What I remember the most, forgetting about the bullying and forgetting about the fights and whatever in school, I remember my own behavior changing, and I remember trying to do what I could to wear a mask so that I could fit in with my classmates.

I also remember really leaning on self-deprecation as a way to protect myself, so I would think to myself, "If I call myself a terrorist in this new group of people, that will stop them from calling me that, because I've made the joke first and I can kind of control the narrative."

And so I just assumed that, you know, if I walked in and I said, "Oh yeah, well, you know, my family's a terrorist, ha ha ha," you know, and joke about that, that that would then stop them from saying it in a moment that I couldn't control, and at least I would be able to control that moment.

I think that really kind of messed me up a little bit and really changed who I was.

And I will say, I think it brought out some of my darker times in my life.

I'm very lucky that later on in life I was able to find myself, but those moments were really hard, especially in high school.

- It sounds like going through high school, you kind of had this confusion about where you really belonged and your confusion between your two identities.

Were you ever given an opportunity to really fix that?

- Yeah, I got very lucky.

There's a point in my life where my parents needed me to go to India to stay with my grandfather, and I got to stay in my home state Odisha and stay in my home city in Bhubaneswar.

I thought I was gonna live there for about six months and I ended up staying for six years, and I stayed in the house that my mother grew up in, and so I really got to see where they're from.

I think people talk a lot about the sacrifice that people make to go to the United States and talking about economic opportunity for the kids, finding out why it's important to go, but I don't think people really understand what folks give up.

There's a sense of family and community that I did not truly understand until I got there.

The support system that was there for me thanks to my grandfather and thanks to my parents' families, I had never seen that in the United States.

- It sounds like you got something that you really needed from your experiences in India.

- Yeah.

- And kind of what was important to you.

- It's funny.

I came back from India, and my girlfriend at the time was interning at TIRRC, and she invited me to a TIRRC event in 2014.

And she said, "It's about immigrant and refugee rights and systemic oppression," and I honestly did not care.

I was like, "That's great."

I just want to kiss a girl at the end of an event and impress her, so I decided I would go and, you know, I was just like, this is how I get my brownie points.

But I got to the event, and that event changed my whole life.

I was planning to be an engineer just like my parents.

I was on that path, and you know, I think that event just made me realize that I was not the only person that had experiences like I did in 2001, and I was not the only person that felt othered and alone and that there was a collective group of people working to make this state inclusive for everyone, no matter the color of our skin, no matter how we worship, no matter what we look like.

I remember that was the moment that I was like, this is what I want to do.

A job opened up very, very shortly after I applied.

I got lucky and got accepted, and I have been here for nine years now.

- And did you get the girl?

- I got the girl, yes.

She's not only, yeah, she's my wife.

(gentle music) I think that event, I probably got the most out of it.

I ended up getting a wife and a job, and so I think that it's really critical to name that TIRRC, I think, made me whole.

It really found a way to take my two worlds that I think were coming together and tie it together and put a bow on it and help me find my full self.

(group laughing) - You guys need a secret handshake.

- We do.

- We do have one.

It's too embarrassing for Nashville Public Television.

- Wow.

- [Pratik] You know, I mentioned earlier that I was always the Indian in America.

I was always the American in India.

But when I found TIRRC, I finally just got to be me and be my whole 100% true whole self.

- If you could talk to your middle school self right now.

- Oof, okay.

- What would you tell them about the future?

- You will find people who love you, and you will find people who care about you, and it's gonna make you love them and care about them so much.

While you feel alone right now, the community that you are going to find and help build is gonna shape you to be the best version of yourself that you can be.

I would give him a really, really big hug and just let him know he's gonna be okay.

(energetic music) (energetic music continues) - [Narrator] You can watch the entire "Next Door Neighbor" series on the PBS app.

(gentle music)