Fatima Sadaf Saied is a daughter of immigrants and a mother of five. She has lived in Florida her whole life. She's an executive at a nonprofit. Yet she feels that people who don't know her don't always see her as an American.
"I'm wearing a hijab — I'm automatically treated like I'm some kind of foreign creature," Saied said. "My only home has ever been Florida, and to be treated like it's not that way, it's difficult."
As part of our series Seeking Common Ground, reporters have been sitting down with small groups of people, including immigrants and second-generation Americans whose parents immigrated to the United States. The conversations reveal a timeline of the immigrant experience and how perceptions about immigrants change — or don't.
"I think we have a lot of stereotypes that are still cast on us," said Mayra Romero-Ferman, who emigrated from Mexico City as a child and lives in the Kansas City, Kan., area. But "we are worthy. We deserve a spot at the table. And if you don't like it, get out of the room. Because we are not going anywhere."
Over several weeks in the fall, reporters from 10 NPR stations hosted small groups of three to six people who had something in common and were comfortable sharing their stories. We asked every group the same set of open-ended questions to get people talking about their communities and personal experiences, rather than their political opinions.
Our partner for the project was a nonprofit called Cortico, which is affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and works to facilitate conversations and spot themes across those conversations. We used Cortico's AI tools and a prototype from MIT to help sort the dozens of hours of recorded conversations so we could listen more closely. We used the AI tools only to analyze the conversations, not to generate any content. That's NPR policy: Everything we do is written and edited by real people.
Several of the conversations involved people at different stages of the immigration journey and explored why people chose to come to the United States. The groups also talked about how the passage of time — whether days, years or even a generation in the country — affected their feelings about what it means to be an American and to be accepted as one.
First night
For the newest immigrants, the conversation started with the reasons they left home for the U.S. and how they were received when they got here.
One family from Colombia had the simple goal of finding a safer life.
Elisa, Luis and their six children left their home because they said they faced constant threats of violence and harassment from criminal groups. Our reporter talked with them last fall, on their second day in Aurora, Colo., due east of Denver. They spoke to us on condition that we'd use only their first names — to protect their identities for their safety.
"Colombia is very pretty — where I live is beautiful," Elisa said in Spanish. But "they kill a lot of people, and that's every day." The couple said they not only had received threats in Colombia but had lost family members to the violence there.
"When they started with my kids, to threaten them and all of that, it was my turn to say we should migrate here, to the United States," Elisa said. "Because one wants a more peaceful life, a better [life] for the kids, free from threats."
After a harrowing journey that lasted eight months — one that makes you "learn there's a God," as Elisa said — the family made it to the United States.
A fellow migrant had recommended an Aurora apartment complex, and once there, the family was ushered into a vacant unit that had no electricity, gas or hot water. It did have cockroaches, Luis said in Spanish.
With temperatures dropping into the 30s overnight and with only the clothes on their backs, the young family hardly slept.
That apartment complex became the focus of national attention last year when then-presidential candidate Donald Trump claimed it had been taken over by a Venezuelan gang, a claim he extended to the whole city of Aurora. Local officials have repeatedly debunked that claim, but the terrible conditions faced by new immigrants and longtime tenants in that apartment complex are real.
Luis and Elisa said that they have a court date in November and that they hope the U.S. will hear them out and ultimately grant them asylum.
Hispanic entrepreneurs
In Kansas City, Kan., a busy thoroughfare called Central Avenue is dotted with newly remodeled restaurants, auto body shops and markets, all of which advertise heavily in Spanish. The houses are a mix of brick, limestone and bright pastel colors, with patchy but well-decorated yards.
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This is home for Edgar Galicia. "I have been in the KCK area since 1985," said Galicia, a community organizer. "My family migrated from Mexico to here ... They really enjoyed the ability to invest and the ability to grow in the community that was shaping up at the time."
Others in the small group of Latino immigrants we spoke with in Kansas City have also lived there for years, even decades. They said that they've found economic success as part of the city's large working-class Latino community and that Latino immigrants brought this part of Kansas City back to life by boosting the city's falling population and opening businesses in areas that had been plagued by urban blight for decades.
Still, they said the city and its residents don't give them credit.
"I think there is a lot of misinformation about … how much economic growth and opportunity we've been able to build," said Romero-Ferman, who has lived in the area since 1996. "All of our Hispanic entrepreneurs ... have really come in and saved our county."
Latinos now make up the plurality of the city's population, outnumbering white residents by a slim margin. But they have some of the fewest seats in local government and some of the lowest rates of voter turnout. The group we spoke with said stigmas of poverty and crime stick to the community, even as the Latino community has turned blocks of blighted abandoned houses into rows of quaint single-family homes.
Several said that even after all these years building this community, they feel unseen by those outside it.
Luis Gonzalez has lived here for 19 years, and he and his wife own a cleaning business.
"If we don't fight, they don't listen to us," he said. "They just pass and don't see us."
The next generation
In Orlando, Fla., Fatima Sadaf Saied, whose parents emigrated from Pakistan, said she grew up living the American dream. "My dad had a really great business — Rolls-Royce, boat, plane," she said.
She was one of a small group of first- and second-generation immigrant women we spoke with who see themselves and their families as wholly American, even as others don't see them that way.
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Saied and the other women in the group talked about the experiences of their children. Their kids range in age from small children to young adults. They have lived their whole lives in the U.S., yet the women have different views on whether their children are still seen as outsiders, not fully American.
Sadia Qureshi, who came to the U.S. from Pakistan when she was very young and has lived in central Florida for 40 years, said her kids have made good friends outside the Muslim community.
One of her daughters "had some really hateful stuff said by a teacher — a really racist thing said by a teacher," Qureshi said, "but her friend stood up for her."
Still, Qureshi isn't sure that even this next generation is fully accepted.
"You can't shed off that identity because it's your skin color, it's your scarf," she said. "So it's just interesting how we felt like we didn't belong because of our parents. We thought our kids would feel like they would belong more. And I don't think they get that and they're not awarded that."
Saied, on the other hand, thinks her children do feel they belong. To help them fit in, Saied tried to raise them very differently from the way she was brought up.
"My friends were my other Muslim girls, Pakistani, Muslim girls, my dad's friends' kids," she said. "Those were my friends growing up. I didn't know how to make friends that were not like me because my parents wouldn't let me go to those parties. I wasn't allowed to hang out with them."
Saied's children have had more freedom. "Their friends were Vietnamese, Mexican, a white girl from Boston. Their friends were just very whoever was going to school with them because they went to public school."
As a result, "my kids are very American," she said, and "I think that's a good thing because this is their home. This is where they're from, and I want them not to feel like I did, not knowing where I fit."
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