To me, I would call America my home. I have a house and a family here. I live in Worthington, MN. Also, I have worked at JBS for a long time. I have lived in Worthington, MN for 24/25 years. Before that, I was in Washington DC for 1 year. I was in Saudi Arabia before that and I loved it. I had many different occupations such as being a chauffeur. There was no occupation that I did not have. I was born in Ethiopia.

I’m from Thomassique, a small town located in central Haiti, where I lived until I was about 12. I mostly lived with my grandma, aunts and uncles while my mom traveled for work. I was the only niece around, so I felt very loved and valued. School was a 15-minute walk, and I had the same teacher for almost six years, which was great, he really understood us.

“What is home?” That is a question I've been thinking about a lot lately. At first, I thought home was the place that was most comfortable. Recently since graduating, I believe that home is where my family is. A lot of the things that I know and do now, I’d like to thank my parents for. I identify as a second-generation Mexican Immigrant and first-generation to go to school. Being able to go to university was because of my parents. So I owe a lot of love and respect to them, especially my siblings.

Home for me is not necessarily a defined location because as an immigrant I have developed the idea of having the concept of home as fluid. For me, home is where I am located at one particular time in my life. I called Kenya home because that is where I was raised and that is where my family is. But at the same time, I also call Minnesota home, because that is where I am at at the moment. When I am in Kenya, I am home. When I am in the U.S, I am home.

I think I can call Minnesota home. Growing up I've moved around a lot. I've lived here for around 12 years now. I moved here when I was 12 or 13, so I've lived here for a while. Out of all the places I've moved, my favorite is Minnesota. I think a few years before I was born, my parents moved from Mexico to the United States. Spanish was my first language, and since there were barely any people of color, It was hard for me to communicate.

My wife Sara and I still call India home. Home, to me, is a good place to live and raise our two kids and family. I am a first generation Asian Indian. I have lived in Fairmont for just one year now. I grew up in Kerala, a state in South India, in a place called Nedumangad. It’s nature is totally different. It’s smaller than Fairmont, but population wise, it's bigger than Fairmont. The population density is much much greater back home than here because it's a highly populated town.

My name is Yudith Carlson. I'm from Worthington, Minnesota, but I was born in Michoacan, Mexico. I came to the United States in 1999, and I didn't know a word of English. When I first left Mexico, everything was different, completely different when you don't know anybody. You pretty much start from zero. It was hard. I cried every day. I wanted to go back. Before my family came to the United States, my dad was the first to work here as he'd come to the United States to work in the California fields. He'd travel back and forth.

I was born in Burma in a small town. I went to get an education in the city when I was in my teen years. I went to school until I was in 10th grade. That's when I graduated high school at the grade level in Burma. Our life growing up over there is very different from growing up in America. Over there, education and getting more knowledge of things is not caught up with what we have in America. Employment-wise nothing is special about it, but over there, it is different from here.

I was born in Noe Poe Kee, Burma. I have six siblings: three of which are girls and four boys. While in Noe Poe Kee, my mom was a Buddhist. When she got married to my dad, she got baptized and had us.. As we got older, we witnessed the fighting going between the soldiers in our home. We had to flee from where we were staying. The eldest kids had to carry our younger siblings and run through the hills and valleys. My younger siblings kept crying, and we were all scared.

I’m Angie Del Carmen Hurtado Rivera and I'm 16 years old. I'm a first-generation Mexican-American. My parents are from Mexico, and I was born and raised in Worthington, Minnesota. The story of my family landing in Worthington started with my dad and mom writing letters to each other all the time. My dad had been in the states before my mom--he'd travel back and forth. He lived in California for a few years while he was a teenager. And eventually, my parents married, and my mom and dad moved straight to Worthington.

My dad was the first of his family to migrate to the US. He was what I would call a free spirit. He knew he couldn’t go the traditional route of marrying in his early twenties and taking care of our orange garden. He knew there were bigger dreams for him to pursue, so he began his journey in Sudan as a refugee and from there he was able to get a visa to the USA. First he ended up in California but ultimately he ended up in Worthington.

My parents are from Jesus Maria, Aguascalientes, and I was born in Worthington, Minnesota. My dad chose Worthington because my grandpa came here to work at the meatpacking plant. My mom also arrived here with a friend she met in a southern state because of JBS. I think people see me as a quiet person, but I also like to be outgoing. I guess I'm someone that's in between being introverted and extroverted.

I was born and raised in Worthington. My parents were both born in Durango, Mexico and they met there. Before both my parents crossed the border my father worked as a seasonal field worker in California. For awhile he traveled back and forth. Both of my parents wanted to raise their children in Mexico but they knew it wouldn't be ideal. They finally decided it was best to raise a family in the states and so they moved to Fresno, California.

I've always been aware I am a Latina because my parents have always spoken Spanish at home. I struggled with language, so growing up I spoke Spanglish. I remember reminding myself as a kid thinking, "Hey Spanish at home and English everywhere else." When I was in Elementary school that's when I learned more about the culture from the teachers who taught in schools. I know growing up my parents didn't talk too much to me about our culture.

My immigrant story starts with my grandpa, he moved to California in the 80s. He was a farmer there and then there was a law that was passed to give farmers an opportunity to bring families and be able to be a citizen or not citizen but have a legal status. He ended up applying for my grandma and my aunt. My uncles were already here, but my grandpa didn't know that I was born and my mom had gotten married.

My family moved to Worthington in 2001 after living in Fresno, California. My dad is a construction worker at Barn Doctors construction site and my mom is a stay at home mom. Growing up in Worthington was hard in the beginning because when I first started school I didn't know English so my first language was Spanish. In Kindergarten, I had an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher, for about three months to teach me how to speak in English.

Husband: I grew up in a very poor family - very poor. My mom told me that we would eat an apple a day and sometimes nothing but water. There were six in the family. My parents do not have a profession. They worked in the fields but there is no work in the lands where we grew up - the land did not give much product to live on. My brothers immigrated to the United States. At that time I married my wife. We got married when I was 18 and she was 17.

I arrived in the United States in 1987. I first arrived in California and then in Minnesota. In California we lasted about 10 years and the main reason we were there was because my oldest daughter was born with a congenital problem. Out of many doctors in Mexico, none of them wanted to treat her and we went with many doctors and they all told me that they had to remove everything she had been born with. She was born with a giant mole starting from the back, it was black with hair, to her whole body.

I was 9 years old when I entered the first year of school in Guatemala. There the culture is different, it's like the Mayan culture because normally there were no Castellanos. There were indigenous people, but then the Spaniards came in and everything became mixed. So those who are Castellanos, they put their children in school at age 5 like here, but like us, the indigenous people still have the mentality that education is no use.

I was born in Worthington. My dad is from Haiti and my mom is from Iowa. They started their relationship in Haiti, but my dad wanted his children to have a better life so when my mom got pregnant with my older brother Kevin, she moved to the United States and returned to Minnesota. My parent's enrolled me in a private school for the first 8 grades at St. Mary's Catholic School. Attending private school was nice but the majority of the students that I was surrounded by were white.