When people ask me what my nationality is, I always struggle to find a quick appropriate response. Initially I respond by saying I was born in California, but my mother is from Mexico City and my father is from Boston, Massachusetts. The fact of the matter is that is the only the begging. Although my mother is from Mexico and people automatically consider me a Mexican American, I have a hard time affliating as one. My maternal grandparents are immigrants from Lithunaia, Germany, and Poland and my paternal grandparents are from Russia which is why to answer the question simply I say im a mixbreed.
To address my immigration relation from the 1960’s to present day, in the 1980’s both my mother and brother emigrated from Mexico to the U.S. starting off in New York, relocating to Canada and eventually ending up in San Diego, California where my parents first met leaving them both in the bracket of the 800,000 new immigrants in NYC during the 80’s. My mother has also been involved in government policy pertaining to Mexican Immigration for several decades now fighting as a new American citizen for the rights of illegal aliens in the U.S. and immigration laws against those from Mexico. The immigration struggle in the U.S. is one that I am directly affected by and without my families immigration history, who knows where I’d be today and what language I’d be speaking.