Global Nation at PRI is where you hear real-world stories of immigrants in the United States—their challenges, successes and how uneven US immigration laws affect their lives.Learn more.
"My dad always encouraged us to not work like he did. He was a laborer. So he encouraged us to be educated. But obviously he didn’t know how to go about the process."
"I would actually sit down and compose what I wanted to tell them, paragraph by paragraph, or maybe point by point, and then make a 30-minute tape and mail the tape to them."
"It was a very easy decision to make because I knew that they had one thing here that we didn’t, which was freedom. And I wanted that really, really bad."
"It struck me as something absolutely surreal. Not possible even to imagine. I counted 83 beers… because it was so unnatural. We were drinking in Moscow just one brand of beer!"
"I used to be really in love with all the John Wayne movies, so I thought I'm coming to see horses. That was a little bit of a surprise. There were no cowboys. Not in New York."
"For me, my strength was that for two years I was in the military in Iran. That helped me a lot. It made my skin thicker because, say, worst-case scenario, I can sleep on the street."
