This essay was written by NPR reporter Jasmine Garsd
When you hear about immigration, you no doubt brace yourself for a story about trauma, suffering and injustice. Which, to be fair, is a big part of the reality of immigration. But this week on Code Switch, we're doing a different kind of immigration coverage. We're telling a New York story: one that celebrates the beautiful, everyday life of the immigrant. Code Switch producer, Xavier Lopez and I spent a Sunday interviewing people at Flushing Meadows Corona Park, in Queens.
Queens has historically been a magnet for immigrant communities, and is one of the most diverse counties in the nation. Xavi has a far more authentic claim to Queensdom than I do - he was raised here. I simply chose it as an adult, as it was the only place that felt like home after the home I knew was gone. But regardless of how we ended up here, we both know Queens to be a very special place, where over 170 languages are spoken, where you can have Colombian baked goodies for breakfast, momo for lunch, and go watch a South American rock band for dinner.
Flushing Meadows Corona park is at the center of Queens. It's often referred to as the "pulmones" - the lungs. And those lungs are huge: the park is almost 900 acres. Non-New Yorkers might be familiar with its iconic Unisphere, a 140 foot-tall stainless steel representation of the Earth, (spoiler: in this episode Xavi professes his undying love for the monument.) Tennis lovers know the park as host to the U.S. Open. Fans of endless suffering know it as home to the Mets stadium.
The park is a universe unto itself, filled with remnants from two historic World's Fairs. There's a giant lake, a theater, a merry-go-round, a zoo, a museum, and countless fields used for cricket, soccer and volleyball.
But what makes this park especially meaningful to Xavi and I, are the people who come here: immigrants from all walks of life – taxi drivers, construction and restaurant workers, all enjoying their often only day off. "To me Flushing Meadows is the heart of the entire city," says Xavier. He calls it "a third space" - somewhere that isn't a crowded home, or work or school. "It's a third space for a community that is increasingly in need of it, during a time when third spaces are increasingly difficult to find."
Xavi and I are both immigrants from very different walks of life. Xavi came from Ecuador at 8-years-old in 2002, right at the beginning of the Bush era. I also came to the U.S. in 2002, but as a teenager, from Argentina, following a national economic collapse. Neither of us made the migrant trek, but we did experience many of the themes of having to leave home, the yearning and the nostalgia.
So for this episode, we went searching for the joyful side of the immigrant story in Xavi's neighborhood park, where we spent a day talking to immigrants from all over the world. We met a young Ecuadorian boy riding the merry-go-round for the first time, a Sikh cricket player who drives Uber during the week and daydreams of his first vacation, and a Mexican soccer player whose unlikely victory led to a reflection on an immigrant's first year in New York.
As a reporter, I work with a lot of data. I can repeat the immigration numbers by heart: the statistics on the U.S.'s desperate need for workers, which are at odds with the polls on American voters' rising anti-immigrant rhetoric, both of which coincide with a historic displacement of people from around the world.
I was recently reporting on this displacement, out in the mountain range that divides California from Mexico, where migrants are increasingly hiking a treacherous route to avoid stringent new immigration laws.
It was a sweltering summer dawn when a mother approached me, sobbing. Her toddler seemed to be passed out near her, on the ground. I don't remember their names, only their faces. They were from Ecuador. They were here to seek asylum. They had been walking all night over the rugged terrain. The boy was having a hard time staying awake. He had the haunting, tired grimace of an old man. He had been bitten by an insect in the eye and it was swollen. They needed help.
Border Patrol agents eventually arrived to take the family away. And I was left with a single moment of their life story: a snapshot of anguish and violence. That is often all I get to tell as a news reporter.
In the days and weeks after I met them, I thought a lot about how the immigration story is so much more than that one moment. I might never hear from that family again, but their lives will unfold as life does. They will get a job. Find a place to live. Make friends. Build an existence that will be wildly different than anything they could have imagined for themselves, in good and bad ways.
On another recent Code Switch episode, we looked at the last 100 years of immigration in this country. But if you spend enough time in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, you will find it, too, tells the history of U.S. immigration. And about how much more joy there is in the immigration story than the headlines allow: for instance, in recent years, volleyball courts have popped up throughout the park, a testament to a wave of Ecuadorians and that culture's love of the game. As Xavi puts it, "there are a few things that are certain in this life: death, taxes, and Ecuadorians playing volleyball."
It was on these courts that we met Flor, a young Ecuadorian mother who came to the U.S. a little over two months ago. She used to live on a farm, but these days she spends her time in a room they rent nearby, taking care of her two small children while her husband works. Playing volleyball on weekends is her one moment of respite.
As Flor told us about how much she misses home and how much she loves this park, I noticed her digging her fingers into the grass nostalgically. In the twilight, as she spoke, I couldn't help but think about the mother I had met in the desert months ago with her struggling young boy, and wonder if they made it to where they were heading — far away from that moment of sheer terror, from the reporter with the microphone. Perhaps they, too, finally got a day as lovely as this one – a chance to rest, to play, to run their fingers through the grass of this strange new land they were hoping to call home.
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