What’s My Type? Immigrants.

“I don’t think I could date someone that’s not from an immigrant family,” my friend said to me the other day.

There are all sorts of qualities people check off their list when looking for an ideal partner: tall, long hair, no hair, educated, must be obsessed with The Office. But for my friend, not being from an immigrant family might be a big red flag.

There’s a lot of pressure on first-gen kids. Typically, our families migrated to America for a better life in pursuit of financial stability. Oftentimes coming from much less developed countries. Third world countries, countries plagued with communism, the list goes on. The histories live and breathe in the homes of first-gen kids. Living with parents that grew up across the globe can be the ultimate recipe for anxiety.

It’s essentially what our lives revolve around. There seems to be a lingering weight on our shoulders to move the family forward as first-generation Americans, whether our parents meant to put that pressure on us or not. It can be a huge burden.

Take growing up as the first one in your family to have gone through the American education system. Filling out a FAFSA form with a foreign parent, having no prior family members to help guide you? Pure torture. The hairs on my arm stand up from the memories of my mom screaming out of frustration because, I too, didn’t understand what the hell the FAFSA was asking. Or take growing up in a household that speaks a different language. I pronounced fruition with a hard T until my early twenties. The only person I heard saying certain words was my mother, who despite being in America for 20+ years, still has a heavy accent.

Or growing up in a household without the American classics. I still don’t get half of the references when I’m socializing. The classics weren’t a thing in my house — my family and I were, in a sense, learning them together as I was growing up. I’m still learning them in my late twenties.

That’s scratching the surface. A lot of us had to start working from a young age to be able to afford things like college. The American college experience for a lot of us was not living in a dorm and joining sororities, but living at home and working.

First-generation usually means your family doesn’t have roots in this country. No professional connections, no property, no one who has gone through the American school or work system before, no one who has paid into American taxes long enough to truly understand how it works, no one in your family who has ever had a 401k or in some cases, even health insurance. The concept of saving money and a credit score are things you are learning for the first time together or things you had to discover on your own. Topics like mental health? They may even be things you end up teaching your family.

It shapes who you are. It can feel like you’re starting life with a disadvantage. Without a doubt, there are wonderful benefits: growing up speaking a different language, the amazing food, growing up with a worldly perspective, and an acute appreciation for culture and travel. The bonds you create with people along the way who are from the same place. Growing up first-gen is beautiful, but not always a breeze.

In the eyes of my dear friend who is from the Dominican Republic, being with someone who hasn’t endured some of these experiences is hard to imagine. She can swipe right on someone not first-gen that lives across the street from her in Queens, but they may as well live worlds apart.

This article is originally being published by me here on this platform: https://medium.com/illumination/whats-my-type-immigrants-8101deb4b505