One immigrant’s journey to America

When 27-year-old Shanti, who asked that only her first name be used, first arrived in the United States from Nepal in 2004, she never imagined working as a nanny.
“Not only me, but I think every people in a third world, they dream of coming to the United States,” she said on Monday, May 21.
Shanti, who was halfway finished with her Bachelor’s degree in biology in Nepal, also wanted to continue her studies in this country. However, she soon realized that without a student visa or green card, she would need to a find job and an employer, who would not ask her questions about her immigration status.
“The first few months were very difficult for me to acclimate. Now I’m getting used to it,” Shanti said of her nanny job in Long Island caring for a four-year-old boy. Shanti stays with the family five days-per-week, even though her job is about an hour’s trip from her apartment in Sunnyside.
“My job is not that bad because I have very good employers … But there are a lot of people who don’t have good employers,” Shanti said.
Although she could make comparable money in Nepal, the conversion rate of one U.S. dollar equates to 65 Nepalese rupees, which Shanti said has much more buying power than $1.
Working five days-per-week, from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., she earns $500 a week, allowing her to pay for one bed in a three-bedroom apartment with four other roommates, food, and send small amounts of money back to her family - her parents and two little sisters - on occasion.
“Of course, when you are a doctor or lawyer, you can’t work as that here. You work as a cashier or a restaurant worker,” Shanti said, adding she also knows college students now working as manicurists and business executives working as taxi drivers.
She does not have health insurance, so when a doctor at a free health clinic in Jackson Heights told her last year that she needed six cavities filled, Shanti only shrugged. She worries that she will get sick and need to go to the hospital, but barring a serious injury, she will not seek medical treatment.
“I can’t afford to go to the dentist or a doctor,” she said. “I just go to the pharmacy.”
Although she has a nagging fear that she will be found and deported, she said she does not let that anxiety interfere with her work.
“We can’t let it interfere with our life,” Shanti said. “They [the authorities] don’t ask us anything if we don’t do something wrong.”
Because she is now here illegally, Shanti will not return home to Nepal and hasn’t seen her mother since 2004 and her father since 2005, when he visited her.
“You never know if you go back if you are guaranteed to come back again,” Shanti said, explaining that a flight home costs $2,000 and she hopes to save enough money to return to Nepal with a nest egg and complete her education.
When asked if she would pay a fee, up to a few thousand dollars, to gain legal status, Shanti said, “If it guaranteed that I’m going to be a citizen then I would do it.”
However, if the process required her to return to Nepal and work for a year before being allowed back to the United States, she said that she would not, in case she wouldn’t be allowed back into the country. Getting a tourist visa to come to the United States in the first place was an arduous and expensive process, she said, listing the cost of her six-month visa as $1,000.
Either way, she is waiting to see the results of the recent push to pass national immigration reform.
“Not only me, everyone in our community feels that. We are waiting to see what happens,” she said.