Being an immigrant is not an easy. People immigrating to another country do not do so because of good situation in their home country. Most people are driven in their immigration decision based on their search for a better life, or at least better than the one in their home countries. In that regard, no matter how bad it was back home, people still feel connection with their land which sometimes result in a two-sided situation, where people are torn in establishing the country they belong to.
A similar situation is found in the biographical article “Two ways to Belong in America” by Bharati Mukherjee, which describes two different perspectives on how immigrants perceive themselves in America, based on the opinions of the author and her Sister Mira. The article was written as a response to the proposal, which was eventually defeated, to deny legal benefits to resident aliens, and accordingly this paper analyzes these different perspectives based on the difference between the perceptions of the two sisters, stating that belonging to another country implies more than legally living there.
The position of Bharati is mainly that the way she belongs to America is complete, i.e. being a citizen. She does not hold that bond anymore, where she even “welcomed the emotional strain that came from marrying from [her] ethnic community” (Kirszner and Mandell, p. 416). Bharati became a citizen for the United States and the proposed policy did not affect her as she had no intentions to go back to her homeland India, and as her sister think, she erased her “Indianness”.
Mira, on the other hand, represents a legal resident, an immigrant whose only bond is to take “the permanent protection and economic benefits that come with living and working in America.” This status was fine with Mira, as long as she could go wherever she wanted to maintaining her own identity. The propose policy, even though it was defeated, just revealed the truth that the other way of belonging to America does not make her an immigrant, where she is just “expatriate Indian”.
In that regard, the difference in the sisters’ perception comes from that with that policy proposed, there is no really two ways to belong to America. There is only one way in which you become not only a citizen, but also opting for changes from the conditions left behind, which for Bharati were the fluidity, self-invention, and cultural marriage rejection. Other than that, it does not matter that you pay your taxes, obey the rules, or speak English with fluency, you will remain an alien, and as Bharati said, it is a price that they are willing to pay. Accordingly, even if Mira obtained citizenship, she would do so just to have the advantages of a citizen, not because she wants to devote her life to this country.
It can be concluded, that the situation presented in Bharati’s article demonstrates that no matter how hard it was for people in their homeland, they still have that bond. It is only that the policy did not differentiate between citizens and legal residents in treatment that such people thought that it is possible to belong in America in two ways, maintaining the citizenship and enjoying the benefits. As soon as such policy changes, there is only one way to totally belong to America, and that implies more than just living there.
Works Cited
Kirszner, Laurie G., and Stephen R. Mandell. Patterns for College Writing : A Rhetorical Reader and Guide. 10th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006.