How the Latinx Immigrant Community Must Reshape Their American Dream
By Laura Soto Andrade
Photo: Getty Images
When my family and I stepped out of O’Hare International Airport in December 2009, the ground was adorned with thousands of snowflakes. I was excited. This was not only my first time seeing snow, but it was also my first time in the United States. It was the new beginning of a new life — a better life.
We drove from Chicago to Milwaukee, where we would stay with my aunt and her small family for roughly a year, a total of ten people living in a three bedroom apartment. Once my dad saved enough for us to live on our own, my family moved into another apartment, one down the block from my aunt. Eventually, we managed to consider Milwaukee our home. The American Dream, as cliché as it might sound, is what drove us to trade our small, familiar town in Jalisco, Mexico and its tropical weather for one of the most segregated cities in the nation and below-zero winter temperatures.
Over the past decade, I’ve witnessed endless sacrifices by my parents in their efforts to make the American Dream a reality for me and my siblings. They started from scratch in a country that at times made them feel isolated, at times made them question their sense of belonging because they possessed a different skin color, language, and customs.
For generations, the uninhibited patriotism of the United States has been promoted through mass media and popular culture, along with the concept that hard work can lead anyone to success and upward mobility: the American Dream. My family has resided in this country for over ten years, and my father has worked here for almost forty, working in the agriculture sector and more recently, in the landscaping industry.
Yet, our current situation does not reflect the promises of the American Dream. To this day, my parents do not master the English language. They are not homeowners. Their joint bank account balance does not reflect even the potential for social mobility.
Within the first five years of our arrival to the U.S., my parents realized their dream of owning a home and climbing up the socio-economic ladder was not obtainable. They were forced to re-evaluate. Their initial plans and goals were reshaped and reduced because of their realistic unlikelihood. The barriers that Latinx immigrants encounter when they arrive in the United States force them to drastically shift their perceptions about the American Dream — it can no longer mean aspirations for wealth or material possessions. “Making it” means just that: making a life, one only slightly better than life back home. No striving for a six-figure job, instead, striving to put food on their tables and a roof over their heads... something that many Latinx immigrants did not have access to back home.
My parents were motivated to immigrate to the U.S. by the opportunity to provide my siblings and I with a better lifestyle and better education than they experienced growing up. But the reasons as to why Latinx immigrants leave their motherlands to start anew in another country varies. In their 2013 essay “Latin American Immigration to the United States,” sociologists Marta Tienda and Susana Sanchez write that migration is part of a demographic response to unequally distributed social and economic opportunities that are determined by unpredictable forces. Immigrants are often pushed to leave their countries due to factors out of their control, such as civil wars, natural disasters, and unstable economies and governments. In comparison, the United States seems to be a land of endless opportunities — not just a place of refuge to escape a troubled country, but a place to access better living conditions and better work opportunities. Media and news depictions of the U.S. paint a picture of a thriving, advantageous economy. Success stories about how good life is on the other side of the border are relayed from other immigrants. The impulse to compare the homeland may not always be explicit, but these stories can unconsciously spark a pursuit of the American Dream.
However, for the Latinx immigrant community, education levels highly influence the type of American Dream that they are able to achieve. A study conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2017 found that approximately 71% of foreign-born Latinx immigrants only possessed education equivalent to a high school degree or less. The low level of education that immigrants earn is one of the largest factors that affects the types of jobs and wages they are able to secure in America. My father is 56 years old with a high school diploma. Throughout his life, he has only worked in agriculture and landscaping. Since the age of 18 he’s worked 40 hours a week, and at times, even 60. He’s the definition of a hard worker — but because his highest level of completed education is high school, he’s unable to access better paying jobs. More than half of the Latinx immigrant population hold lower education levels, which means their job opportunities are limited to lower-paying jobs such as agriculture work and manual labor, placing further restrictions on their ambition.
Language barriers are another determinant of whether we can achieve the typical, idealized version of the American Dream. According to the same 2017 Pew Research Center study as mentioned above, only 36% of foreign-born Latinx immigrants demonstrate English proficiency. A lack of fluency in English further limits the job pool; Latinx immigrants are often disqualified for or rejected from jobs due to a language barrier that can drastically range in size. Both my father and oldest brother currently struggle to communicate in English, an impediment they are forced to take into account whenever thinking of applying for a new job. Aware that an office job would require extensive English communication skills, they avoid those listings and instead settle for jobs that require little to no communication. Those jobs are the ones that require more labor — and more time under the sun.
Even while making every effort to succeed, English deficiency and minimal education make realizing the American Dream unfeasible for the Latinx immigrant community. These constraints force a reconsideration of their vision of the American Dream, and force them to reshape and adapt the expectations they have set for their lives in a country of fraudulent promises. The American Dream, then, no longer involves entrepreneurship, homeownership, and luxuries or wealth. The American Dream for Latinx immigrants means sustenance. It means survival. It means only a slightly better life than the one they left behind.
