Dear Immigrant: The First Winter

Letter 04

Re: The First Winter

Dear Immigrant,

If you are going somewhere with winter, the first winter will be unlike anything you have experienced. I do not mean this only in the obvious sense of the cold, though the cold is real and it is more total than you have imagined. I mean it in the sense that winter will reorganize your interior life in ways you have not prepared for.

In winter in the northern hemisphere, the sun sets in the early afternoon. You will leave work in the dark. You will wake in the dark. The days will be short and grey and the cold will make going outside a transaction rather than a habit. The world will contract to the distance between the places you must go. You will spend more time alone than you have ever spent in your life.

The combination of isolation and darkness and cold produces something in immigrants that I have heard described many ways — as depression, as homesickness, as culture shock — but that I think of simply as the body registering an absence. You have left a place that had warmth and density and the constant presence of people who knew you. The winter makes that absence physical. You feel it in your chest when you walk outside. You feel it at four pm when the sky goes dark and you are not yet home.

Some things help: finding a community — a church, a cultural association, a sports team, anything that puts you regularly in the presence of people who will eventually know your name. Maintaining a physical routine. Getting outside even when it is cold, because the light, however thin, is better than the absence of light. Cooking food that connects you to somewhere warm.

The winter ends. They all end. But the first one is long, and I want you to know it is coming and to prepare your interior for it, not just your wardrobe.

From someone who made it through several winters,
A former immigrant

dearimmigrant.com

Dear Immigrant: What the Visa Does Not Give You

Letter 03

Re: What the Visa Does Not Give You

Dear Immigrant,

The visa gives you permission to be present. It does not give you belonging, safety, stability, or the right to be treated with dignity. Those things are separate from the visa and some of them are not guaranteed by anything.

I want to be precise about what legal status gives you and what it does not, because the conflation of the two — the assumption that the visa solves the problem rather than simply opening a door — is one of the most common and most damaging misunderstandings I have seen immigrants carry.

Legal status means the government has agreed to let you be here under certain conditions. It does not mean the society has agreed to welcome you. It does not mean your employer will treat you fairly, your landlord will maintain your apartment, your colleagues will include you, your neighbors will acknowledge you. These things happen or they do not happen based on the specific people involved and the specific conditions of the place you have arrived in. The visa is not a guarantee of any of them.

The gap between legal permission to be present and actual belonging is the gap you will spend years trying to close. Some immigrants close it. Some do not, and not because they failed but because the society they arrived in was not structured to receive them fully. Both outcomes are possible. The visa does not determine which one.

Know what you have when you have the visa. Know what you still need to build. The visa is the beginning of the work, not the completion of it.

The door is open. What is behind it is still to be determined.

From the other side of several doors,
A former immigrant

dearimmigrant.com

Dear Immigrant: The Paperwork Is the First Test

Letter 02

Re: The Paperwork Is the First Test

Dear Immigrant,

The first thing the new country will ask of you is not your skills, not your intelligence, not your character. It will ask for documents. The right documents, in the right order, submitted to the right office by the right deadline, accompanied by the right fee. This is the first test and it is not a test of anything you were trained for.

The paperwork is designed for people who already understand the system — who know which form follows which form, which office handles which application, what the difference between a received receipt and an approved receipt means for your status. If you do not already know these things, you will learn them the way immigrants always learn them: by making mistakes and by asking people who made mistakes before you.

The paperwork is not fair. It is deliberately complex in ways that advantage people with resources — people who can pay lawyers, who have time to navigate bureaucracies, who speak the administrative language of the country fluently. If you do not have these advantages, the system will be harder for you. This is not an accident. Immigration systems are designed to filter. You are being filtered. Knowing this does not make it easier, but it makes it less personal.

Find the organizations that help immigrants navigate the paperwork. They exist in most cities. They are usually underfunded and oversubscribed. Use them anyway. The people who work there have seen your situation before and they know things that you do not know yet.

Keep copies of everything. Every document you submit, every receipt you receive, every letter they send you. Keep them in a folder. Keep the folder somewhere you will not lose it. Your administrative record is your legal existence in the new country. Treat it accordingly.

The paperwork will end. The life will continue. Get through the paperwork.

From someone who learned to keep better records,
A former immigrant

dearimmigrant.com

Dear Immigrant: Before You Pack

Letter 01

Re: Before You Pack

Dear Immigrant,

You are going to pack too much. Everyone does. You will pack for a version of the destination that exists in your imagination — a version assembled from photographs, from stories told by people who went before you, from the things you have seen online. That version of the place is real in some ways and wrong in others, and the things you pack for it will reflect that mix of accuracy and imagination.

I am not going to tell you what to pack. You have people who will tell you what to pack. I want to tell you what you cannot pack, because these are the things that matter and the things that the lists do not mention.

You cannot pack the ease of being understood. The way that people in the place you are leaving know you without explanation — know your family, your neighborhood, your school, your accent, what your name means, what your people eat, what you do at funerals. You will leave all of that behind and you will not be able to carry it with you. It will be there when you come back, but it will not be with you in the new place. Not for a long time. Maybe not ever in quite the same way.

You cannot pack the assumption that you belong. At home, belonging is ambient — it is the air around you, not something you notice because you have never been without it. In the new place, belonging is something you build, slowly, through consistency and presence and the patient work of making yourself known to people who did not know you before. It takes longer than you expect.

Pack what you need for the body. Understand that what you need for the interior will have to be rebuilt from scratch. This is harder than the packing. It is also the actual work.

The flight is the easy part.

From the other side of that flight,
A former immigrant

dearimmigrant.com