Life of an immigrant in 2020
As for many others, 2020 was a year of many personal and professional changes. The beginning of last year, my H1B work visa stamping was denied. Soon after I got laid off for the same immigration issues. This led to saying good bye to many great relationships. Then, when I thought everything was starting to work out, I was denied a student visa to continue my Masters.
It’s been a very challenging time where I’ve had to overcome many obstacles because of my origins, Venezuela🇻🇪. Although there might be few benefits to come from such a poor South American country, I have learned to be more resilient, minimalist, persistent and reinvented. This would probably not be possible if I was not from this country, so I am really thankful for this.
Resilience
Early last year my H1B stamping was denied for unjustifiable reasons. Soon after, I was laid off from my Cloud Engineer job at Deloitte for these same immigration issues.
This was a pro-founding change in my long term plans of settling in the US. For 8 years, I have been working and studying very hard to achieve what I have done. Therefore, it was very frustrating to accept what I considered “home” to be taken away just because of my passport.
Nonetheless, while searching for answers to these inexplicable questions, I quickly realized that no matter what anybody said, I still believed in my passion for innovating and developing technology. No other time I have understood the importance of building up resilience, which have actually kept me standing despite all the difficulties along the way.
Resilience for me is to keep believing in what you dream while being judge. Don’t let others take away what you may love or define who you are!
Minimalism
Over the years living in the US, I accumulated so many things that I did not even know I had. I went to university and then got my first job here, so I thought I would be settling down as I had planned it before.
When I got my job at Deloitte, I had this misconception of mixing comfort with materialism. I rented an apartment with two bedrooms, even though I was the only one living there. I bought a lot of extra furniture that just fulfilled me momentarily, leaving just emptiness behind when departing.
Living on a suitcase has taught me the values of owning what’s essential. I learned that life is not about how much I had, but about how much I give. Everything else might just became an extra burden I had to get rid of. Therefore, the less things I owned, the happier and more free I became since there was nothing to tie me down.
So I would ask you to reflect on what’s truly essential. What makes you really happy without having to worry about acquiring material goods?
Persistency
After being laid off, I decided to apply for a Computer Science Masters in Canada and Europe. So last semester I started studying at Concordia University, in Montreal. As the semester progressed, I was doing exceptionally well in my classes, leading the two teams I was part of, and learning a lot about Cloud and Distributed Systems.
However, a little more than half way through the semester, my study permit was rejected for absurd reasons, once again related to my nationality. This made me feel inferior just because of where I was coming from. I thought to myself, “how in the world am I going to move forward if I cannot change my background?” Coming from Venezuela is something that it is not in my control, and seeing others reject me because of this was devastating.
However, I realized that the only way to fight this circumstance was to keep pushing towards my goals. Becoming a better engineer and more well rounded entrepreneur allowed me to overcome many challenges during this past year.
Persistency is one of the few qualities you need to have to cancel all the external noise in order to keep developing your passion and skills.
Reinvention
This past year has taught me great lessons that I will be carrying with me for next chapter of my life. What I have come to understand is that although it may seem unfair, it is not worth to get stuck trying to figure out why things happened. It’s a suffering that does not have an ending cycle, and that won’t really allow us to move forward.
Instead, we should try to understand and accept life with its complexities. Being able to adapt to different circumstances is probably the most valuable lesson we should apply. Struggling with immigration this year has given me the opportunity to experience this. Sometimes it is really hard to let the things you love the most go, but it is part of the learning lessons we should humbly accept. I am fortunate enough to have gone through this process because now I am able to see life from another perspective.
Reinventing your life may replace the heaviness of being successful by the lightness of starting new. It takes a lot of courage to accept this.
Being an immigrant trying to look for better opportunities in another country is not always easy. No matter the scenario, it takes a lot of hard work, dedication and adaptability to move to another country. However, it is a unique learning lesson to adopt new values that are attainable only through struggles.
