I cannot share her name because I do not have permission to share her story. I will also fuzz-up or omit details that would make it possible to identify her.
This woman was one of my care-givers in the hospital. From age two-years-old to age fifteen she lived in a refugee camp with her family. Then the family was allowed to legally immigrate to the US.
The refugee camp was in the "first safe country" near the border of her home country. It is reasonable to assume that the people of the host country were not overwhelmingly overjoyed to have a refugee camp in their back yard. That said, I am 99.9% sure there were "jobs" available in the sex industry for girls.
The country her family left at age two regularly makes every list of 10-Most-Repressive in the world. Her base culture can be characterized as her home country's version of Appalachia: rural and mountainous.
Ten years later she has a Bachelor of Science in a medical profession and a job in that profession. She will have no problem paying back any loans she took out.
I asked her why she was successful while so many others fell short.
She answered "My Parents"
It is an easy trap of only looking at the worst failures and feeling hopeless. Hope is found in the "contrast". What was different between the successful and the least successful?
I've met so many of these people.
ReplyDeleteFrom Vietnamese techs I worked with in the early 80s, to Indian programmers in the 90s, to Russian techs in the 2000s, to the Chinese now.
To a person, they simply took advantage of what was freely available in our country. Most barely spoke English, coming here in their teens.
That vietnamese dude working in the 7-11, put his kids through college, who are now professionals and whose kids are becoming doctors.
I'd often wonder that these people figured it out, what's the matter with the natives?
It's the parents. Who work hard to boost their kids, who take care of them when they are older.
Anyone can succeed in our society - if they work for it. The problem is that many want success handed to them.
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