Boston college law school - Law

Grad's guide to graduate admissions essays - Colleen Reding 2015

Boston college law school
Law

“We just want to be together during this hard time. She has cancer and she won’t make it much longer. Is there anything we can do?” As the client told me her story and I prepared an application for travel documents that would allow her sibling to enter the United States, I began to understand what this visit would mean to them. Despite the geographic distance their respective citizenships implied, these three sisters had maintained their close relationship over the years, and when one of them had been diagnosed with aggressive, stage IV endometrial cancer with a prognosis of less than 2 months, they prayed for the opportunity to be together one last time. When I received notice that the U.S. consulate in Mexico had approved the application, I understood the extent to which immigration law has the potential to transform the lives of its clients.

I also witnessed an attorney’s ability to protect not only familial bonds but also cultural ties through language. Both my personal and work experiences have demonstrated the profound cultural power of language and its effect on a community. With the unrelenting dream of hearing his grandchildren speak his native language, my grandfather adamantly refused to speak to me in English despite his fluency in both languages. Sadly, it was not until after his death that I began to feel his passion for my estranged culture.

With a Cuban mother and a Mexican father, hearing Spanish was a part of my life, but never being forced to speak it distanced me from a part of my own heritage. Immersed in a culture similar to my own, my study abroad experiences in Argentina demonstrated the cultural significance of a shared language and linguistically reconnected me to my grandfather’s passion for his cultural ties. Though the peculiar combination of my mother’s rushed Cuban phrases, my father’s Mexican clarity, and my unique Argentine accent resembles little of the past my grandfather treasured, the reality of our common language unites our experiences.

I can only begin to imagine the difficulties my grandparents faced when they emigrated from Cuba and Mexico, building a life from scratch while trying to maintain a connection to their culture and language. Constantly moving from one relative’s house to another, unsure of where they would end up, my grandparents never had anyone to provide any hope of stability or constancy. I want to be an immediate reminder to immigrant families that they do not have to relinquish their culture even though they are far from home.

The most conspicuous and lasting reminder of a culture is a language that provides a stable connection to a home country. By providing a sense of constancy, language plays a formative role in the establishment of a new home. Through a law degree and a career as an immigration attorney, I want to reach out to immigrant families, Hispanic families in particular, by establishing an immediate connection through a common language. I want to be a constant for families experiencing displacement due to their homeland’s inability to offer stability and security.

For immigrants, language can also serve as a divisive force and result in isolation. Rather than perpetuating their existence at the margins of society, these families should be integrated into our system that already heavily relies on their presence as workers. By emphasizing the strong linguistic and cultural continuities that exist between homeland communities and those in the United States, these new Americans can promote greater social incorporation rather than segregation.

By giving my time to these immigrant families, I can relate my personal experience of reconnecting to my own heritage. By taking full advantage of the opportunity to attend law school and applying the knowledge while reaching out to immigrant families, I hope to establish community through a common language that can help create a new home and maintain strong ties to unique cultures.