More than an immigrant

Every life situation is a trade-off. You win some, you lose some. Either you justify the trade-off, or you regret and yearn for what isn’t. Either way, you move forward.

My first couple of years in Canada, I kept asking other more seasoned immigrants, ‘when does it start to feel like home?’ ‘When do you begin to feel like you belong?’ These questions left most of my subjects perplexed. I wanted them to tell me when it will happen for me, to give me some comforting milestones. I wanted to visualize the proverbial carrot that hangs in front of me so at least I know what I am chasing after. Was it stability or safety, confidence or feeling of worthiness? What is that number – the number of years you must bear after which you feel no more afraid than the people who were born and raised here?

I recognize that there is no unified response to these questions. And yet I was seeking one to feel like I was part of that unknown and at times undignified collective experience of being the insignificant and insufficient other. Until you cross that bridge and get to the other side, if there is one. Will I ever be able to cross?

With four years of social equity, a Canadian passport, and some career growth, I am still asking similar questions. Except this time, I am the subject and the object. The answers continue to unravel, and I suspect the unraveling will be a life-long journey. Maybe that unraveling is the carrot on the stick. Maybe feeling that sense of belonging you crave so much is a moot pursuit, at least more so than the other.

The fact that immigration and immigrants take up a charged space in daily discourse doesn’t make it easier to resolve this conundrum. Immigration remains a significant political and social issue. In the political industry, it lives as polarized debate on the goodness and badness of immigration in its various forms. In the social justice industry, it exists as one of the important pillars of the performative moral high ground. In all other industries, it manifests as a shallow concept of diversity, as one of the items on the inclusion checklist. And in society, it continues to be part of an organized belief system they either subscribe to or reject or judge according to a convenient hierarchy of rights they think we must earn. For me, it feels like a burden I may have to carry forever.

The awareness that you are a contentious issue, never leaves you. The feeling that you must prove your worth every single day to disengage yourself as the glorious exception never ceases to haunt you.

For me, one distinct way this awareness manifests is my obsession with following the rules – no matter how stupid or redundant they seem. For I know that as a newcomer who has ‘run into’ opportunities, I bear the responsibility of not fucking it up. For the sake of my own kind, and for the sake of my ‘right of passage’ in this society and its various industries. I do not have the luxury to break down or fight without the fear of grave consequences.

My own sense of ‘inferiority’ – gifted to me by my history and socialization in my country of origin and my country of displacement – remains in conflict with my confidence in my own 'superior' abilities and intellect. The two contradicting perceptions of my two realities co-exist, interlocked and entangled. They don’t cancel each other out. Both fuel my passion and action that make me the hard-working, self-deprecating, relentless South Asian immigrant who lives in constant fear of punishment or failure. And both, my complex and confidence, get triggered in interaction with the realities of the external world. In which your existence as the first generation immigrant will always be an ‘issue’, whether it is the matter of policy, legislation, political platform, social service, or employment on a macro level, or it is the case of your skin colour, accent, quirks, or the space you are allowed to claim on a micro level.

And so my question remains unanswered, begging me to stop looking for the answer, and just accept what is. But there are moments I can’t help but ask again.

Despite my hard work, contribution, smarts and sincerity, will I ever be more than an immigrant (issue) in this country?