Threesome
This won't be that interesting.
They probably never are.
I decided against applying to IRGS and switched to Latin American Studies. It's pretty prestigious at UT so it still gives me what I want and has some relation to immigration. Seeing as I want to go into immigration law, I feel like that's pretty useful.
Since I decided not to apply, though, I have an unused application essay. So I'm sharing that here, because it's sad to have writing go unread:
My mother became an American, at first, by bus. She had been in the United States to work before, but had gone back home, as so many immigrants do, to resume her life. Finding that life unsatisfying, she steeled herself to the thought of a new one in the foreign land she’d been working in. The people she met there had been kind. They helped her in school and took her to church. In Mexico she recognized no opportunities were available for someone from her background. There was no one kind and able to lift her up. So, at a time well before 9/11, she boarded a bus and, when they asked her to declare her nationality as it crossed, she said, simply, “American.” A few decades later she would proudly take the test that would grant her that status in the eyes of the law.
My father came over the “traditional” way one imagines: through the river. He made the dangerous, often deadly, trip across driven by the same chance at a better life my mother saw in the United States. These two angry, battered, disenfranchised young people made a great life for themselves in a very different climate. If granted admission into IRG I would like to explore how the threat of terrorism has been used to shape our narrative toward the southern border.
It is my perspective that under the current administration of the United States of America this is an area of study that could never have too much attention. I can remember in my lifetime there was a point where I was able to cross with my mother, so that she could get dental work less expensively, and I did not need a passport. There was no fear that we would not be allowed entry back into the country. I can also vividly remember the disgust on my mother’s face the day one of my cousins had the gall to ask for my birth certificate to try to get back and forth. As a Mexican-American the path of my life is linked into the fence that runs across as our current line of defense. My history and my legacy cannot be separated from the border and its evolving definition of security.
I hope to eventually turn my time at UT in IRG to the path of immigration law. My focus in my research would be over the changes in attitude toward the border, and what implications that had toward our approach to securing it, as well as how we may go about securing it in a way that feels less nationalistic. I am curious as to whether, in a world marred by the threat of terrorism, it is quickly becoming impossible to have more open borders. Borders like the ones that allowed my parents across.
They probably never are.
I decided against applying to IRGS and switched to Latin American Studies. It's pretty prestigious at UT so it still gives me what I want and has some relation to immigration. Seeing as I want to go into immigration law, I feel like that's pretty useful.
Since I decided not to apply, though, I have an unused application essay. So I'm sharing that here, because it's sad to have writing go unread:
My mother became an American, at first, by bus. She had been in the United States to work before, but had gone back home, as so many immigrants do, to resume her life. Finding that life unsatisfying, she steeled herself to the thought of a new one in the foreign land she’d been working in. The people she met there had been kind. They helped her in school and took her to church. In Mexico she recognized no opportunities were available for someone from her background. There was no one kind and able to lift her up. So, at a time well before 9/11, she boarded a bus and, when they asked her to declare her nationality as it crossed, she said, simply, “American.” A few decades later she would proudly take the test that would grant her that status in the eyes of the law.
My father came over the “traditional” way one imagines: through the river. He made the dangerous, often deadly, trip across driven by the same chance at a better life my mother saw in the United States. These two angry, battered, disenfranchised young people made a great life for themselves in a very different climate. If granted admission into IRG I would like to explore how the threat of terrorism has been used to shape our narrative toward the southern border.
It is my perspective that under the current administration of the United States of America this is an area of study that could never have too much attention. I can remember in my lifetime there was a point where I was able to cross with my mother, so that she could get dental work less expensively, and I did not need a passport. There was no fear that we would not be allowed entry back into the country. I can also vividly remember the disgust on my mother’s face the day one of my cousins had the gall to ask for my birth certificate to try to get back and forth. As a Mexican-American the path of my life is linked into the fence that runs across as our current line of defense. My history and my legacy cannot be separated from the border and its evolving definition of security.
I hope to eventually turn my time at UT in IRG to the path of immigration law. My focus in my research would be over the changes in attitude toward the border, and what implications that had toward our approach to securing it, as well as how we may go about securing it in a way that feels less nationalistic. I am curious as to whether, in a world marred by the threat of terrorism, it is quickly becoming impossible to have more open borders. Borders like the ones that allowed my parents across.
The title is inspired by British comedies, which I am on a kick of- I am currently on Some Girls, but I loved Threesome so much.
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