听力课堂TED音频栏目主要包括TED演讲的音频MP3及中英双语文稿，供各位英语爱好者学习使用。本文主要内容为演讲MP3+双语文稿:美国理想化移民中的缺陷，希望你会喜欢！

【演讲者及介绍】Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez

Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez是富国银行公司和投资银行分析师。

【演讲主题】美国理想化移民中的缺陷

What's missing from the American immigrant narrative

【中英文字幕】

翻译者 Yanyan Hong 校对者 Lark Yu

Hi, everyone, my name is Elizabeth, and I work on the trading floor. But I'm still pretty new to it. I graduated from college about a year and a half ago, and to be quite honest, I'm still recovering from the recruiting process I had to go through to get here.

大家好，我叫伊丽莎白，我是一名股票交易员。但对于这份工作，我还是新手。大概一年半之前，我从大学毕业，但坦白说，我到现在还没有从当初的面试过程中回过神来。

(Laughter)

（笑声）

Now, I don't know about you, but this is the most ridiculous thing that I still remember about the whole process, was asking insecure college students what their biggest passion was. Like, do you expect me to have an answer for that?

我不知道你们怎么想，但是，我依然记得，在整个过程中最荒唐的事，就是问没什么安全感的大学生，他们最大的热情是什么。真的吗？你确定我知道怎么回答吗？

(Laughter)

（笑声）

Of course I did. And to be quite honest, I really showed those recruiters just how passionate I was by telling them all about my early interest in the global economy, which, conveniently, stemmed from the conversations that I would overhear my immigrant parents having about money and the fluctuating value of the Mexican peso. They love a good personal story.

当然，我认真回答了。而且说实话，我努力的向那些招募人员展现了我对这份工作多么有热情，我告诉他们我对于全球经济的早期兴趣，而且很自然的，这个兴趣是源于我曾无意中听到我的移民父母聊到有关钱和墨西哥比索的价值波动。招募人员喜欢动人的个人故事。

But you know what? I lied.

但是你们知道吗？我撒谎了。

(Laughter)

（笑声）

And not because the things I said weren't true -- I mean, my parents were talking about this stuff. But that's not really why I decided to jump into finance. I just really wanted to pay my rent.

并不是因为我说的不是事实——我父母的确谈到过这个话题，但这并不是我决定投身金融行业的真正原因。我真的只是想有能力支付我的房租。

(Laughter)

（笑声）

And here's the thing. The reality of having to pay my rent and do real adult things is something that we're rarely willing to admit to employers, to others and even to ourselves. I know I wasn't about to tell my recruiters that I was there for the money. And that's because for the most part, we want to see ourselves as idealists and as people who do what they believe in and pursue the things that they find the most exciting. But the reality is very few of us actually have the privilege to do that.

原因就在于，很少有人原意向雇主、他人，甚至向我们自己坦白我们很需要钱来交房租和承担成年人的责任。我知道我不会告诉招募我的人，我是为钱而去的。这是因为大部分情况下，我们想把自己当成理想主义者，并且认为人们是在做他们坚信的事，去追求他们觉得最让人兴奋的事情。但现实是，很少有人有这样做的特权。

Now, I can't speak for everyone, but this is especially true for young immigrant professionals like me. And the reason this is true has something to do with the narratives that society has kept hitting us with in the news, in the workplace and even by those annoyingly self-critical voices in our heads. So what narratives am I referring to? Well, there's two that come to mind when it comes to immigrants. The first is the idea of the immigrant worker. You know, people that come to the US in search of jobs as laborers, or field workers, dish washers. You know, things that we might consider low-wage jobs but the immigrants? That's a good opportunity.

当然，我不能代表所有人，但对我这样的年轻移民职场人士，现实尤其是如此。而这背后的原因与社会不断向我们灌输的一些叙述有关——包括在新闻中、在职场中，甚至我们脑海里恼人的自我批判声。那么，我指的是什么样的叙述呢？说到移民，我们脑海中马上就会涌现出两种说法。第一种是对移民劳工的看法。很多人来美国以劳工、外勤人员或洗碗工的身份找工作。通常是我们可能认为是低薪的工作，但移民者怎么想呢？当然是很好的机会。

The news nowadays has convoluted that whole thing quite a bit. You could say that it's made America's relationship with immigrants complicated. And as immigrant expert George Borjas would have put it, it's kind of like America wanted workers, but then, they got confused when we got people instead.

现在的新闻报道会把整件事情曲解。可以说它把美国和移民的关系弄得很复杂，移民专家乔治·波哈斯（GeorgeBorjas）的说法很有意思，大概说的是，美国想要“劳工”，但当他们得到的却是“人”时，就会很困惑。

(Laughter)

（笑声）

I mean, it's natural that people want to strive to put a roof over their heads and live a normal life, right? So for obvious reasons, this narrative has been driving me a little bit crazy. But it's not the only one.

毕竟，人们都想要全力奋斗，想要有个家，过正常的生活，对吧？所以，基于很明显的理由，这样的叙述让我有点抓狂。但这并不是唯一一个。

The other narrative that I'm going to talk about is the idea of the superimmigrant. In America, we love to idolize superimmigrants as the ideal symbols of American success. I grew up admiring superimmigrants, because their existence fueled my dreams and it gave me hope. The problem with this narrative is that it also seems to cast a shadow on those that don't succeed or that don't make it in that way, as less than. And for years, I got caught up in the ways in which it seemed to celebrate one type of immigrant while villainizing the other. I mean, were my parents' sacrifices not enough? Was the fact that my dad came home from the metal factory covered in corrosive dust, was that not super?

还有另一种说法，就是超级移民。在美国，我们喜欢把超级移民当作美国人成功的理想标志。我从小到大都很羡慕超级移民，因为他们的存在激励了我的梦想并且给了我希望。然而这种叙述的问题在于，它似乎让那些没有成功的人心里蒙上了阴影，或者让那些没有实现这种成功的人感到自惭形秽。然而很多年来，让我一直感到困惑的是，这种说法看似在赞颂一种移民，但同时却在轻视另一群移民。我是说，我父母做的牺牲还不够多吗？是因为我爸爸从金属工厂回家，全身落满腐蚀性粉尘的状态并没有什么了不起吗？

Don't get me wrong, I've internalized both of these narratives to some degree, and in many ways, seeing my heroes succeed, it has pushed me to do the same. But both of these narratives are flawed in the ways in which they dehumanize people if they don't fit within a certain mold or succeed in a certain way. And this really affected my self-image, because I started to question these ideas for who my parents were and who I was, and I started to wonder, "Am I doing enough to protect my family and my community from the injustices that we felt every day?" So why did I choose to "sell out" while watching tragedies unfold right in front of me?

别误会，我把这两种叙述在某些程度上内在化了，而且无论怎样，看到我的英雄走向成功，一直激励着我一往无前。但这两种叙述，在某些方面上均有不足，如果人们不符合特定的形象，或者以某种方式获得成功，他们就会否定人们人性一面。这也真正影响了我的自我认知，因为我开始质疑关于我父母是谁，以及我是谁的说法，然后我开始纳闷，“从我们每天都能感觉到的不公平中，我有没有尽力去保护我的家庭和社区?"那么，当悲剧在我眼前发生时，我为什么会选择向现实屈服？

Now, it took me a long time to come to terms with my decisions. And I really have to thank the people running the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, or HSF, for validating this process early on. And the way that HSF -- an organization that strives to help students achieve higher education through mentorship and scholarships -- the way that they helped calm my anxiety, it was by telling me something super familiar. Something that you all probably have heard before in the first few minutes after boarding a flight. In case of an emergency, put your oxygen mask on first before helping those around you.

我花了很长时间来接受自己的决定。并且我真的需要感谢那些为了在初期就证实此过程的价值而运营西班牙裔奖学金基金会，简称HSF的人。并且在HSF基金会——一个致力于通过指导和奖学金来帮助学生接受高等教育的组织——他们帮助我平复焦虑的方式，就是告诉我一些我非常熟悉的东西。比如在登机之后的前几分钟，你们都听过的信息：如遇紧急情况，在帮助别人之前，请先给自己戴好氧气面罩。

Now I understand that this means different things to different people. But for me, it meant that immigrants couldn't and would never be able to fit into any one narrative, because most of us are actually just traveling along a spectrum, trying to survive. And although there may be people that are further along in life with their oxygen mask on and secured in place, there are undoubtedly going to be others that are still struggling to put theirs on before they can even think about helping those around them.

现在我明白了，这条信息对不同的人有着不同的意义。但对于我来说，这意味着移民不能且将永远不适合任何一种叙述，因为我们大多数只是沿着既定轨道前行，努力生存。而且尽管有些人或许可以走得更远，位置安全，带着氧气面罩，但毫无疑问，总会有其他人还在拼命想戴上氧气面罩，顾不上考虑身边的人。

Now, this lesson really hit home for me, because my parents, while they wanted us to be able to take advantage of opportunities in a way that we wouldn't have been able to do so anywhere else -- I mean, we were in America, and so as a child, this made me have these crazy, ambitious and elaborate dreams for what my future could look like.

这一点让我印象深刻，因为我的父母，虽然他们想让我们抓住机会，并且是以在其它地方都做不到的方式——我的意思是，我们在美国，所以在我儿时就形成了疯狂的、宏大的野心，并为我的未来做出了详细规划。

But the ways in which the world sees immigrants, it affects more than just the narratives in which they live. It also impacts the ways laws and systems can affect communities, families and individuals. I know this firsthand, because these laws and systems, well, they broke up my family, and they led my parents to return to Mexico. And at 15, my eight-year-old brother and I, we found ourselves alone and without the guidance that our parents had always provided us with. Despite being American citizens, we both felt defeated by what we had always known to be the land of opportunity.

但这个世界看待移民的眼光，影响的远不止是对他们的叙事，同时也影响了法律以及社会体系塑造社区、家庭和个人的方式。我对此感同身受，因为当前的法律和社会体系破坏了我的家庭，迫使我的父母返回了墨西哥。在我十五岁那年，我和我八岁的弟弟发现我们突然变得很孤独、无助，我们失去了父母一直给予我们的庇护。虽然我们是美国公民，但我们心中所谓的“机会之地”，却让我们感到了深深的挫败。

Now, in the weeks that followed my parents' return to Mexico, when it became clear that they wouldn't be able to come back, I had to watch as my eight-year-old brother was pulled out of school to be with his family. And during this same time, I wondered if going back would be validating my parents' sacrifices. And so I somehow convinced my parents to let me stay, without being able to guarantee them that I'd find somewhere to live or that I'd be OK. But to this day, I will never forget how hard it was having to say goodbye. And I will never forget how hard it was watching my little brother crumble in their arms as I waved goodbye from the other side of steel grates.

在我的父母回到墨西哥几星期后——很明显他们不可能回来了——我不得不眼睁睁看着我八岁的弟弟被迫退学，跟父母回老家。在那段时间，我也在想，如果我回去，会不会浪费了我父母的牺牲。所以我说服了父母让我留下来，尽管无法保证能找到新的住处，或者能否独当一面。直到如今，我还是无法忘却当时与他们的告别是多么艰难，并且我永远也不会忘记看着我弟弟在他们怀里大哭，而我在铁栅栏的另一旁跟他们挥手说再见时，心中那刻骨铭心的酸楚。

Now, it would be naive to credit grit as the sole reason for why I've been able to take advantage of so many opportunities since that day. I mean, I was really lucky, and I want you to know that. Because statistically speaking, students that are homeless or that have unstable living conditions, well, they rarely complete high school. But I do think that it was because my parents had the trust in letting me go that I somehow found the courage and strength to take on opportunities even when I felt unsure or unqualified.

把我从那天起到现在所获得的这么多机会都单纯归功为我的坚韧，或许有些天真。我想让你们知道，我非常幸运。因为有数据显示，无家可归或生活环境不稳定的学生，极少人能完成高中学业。但是我觉得，是我父母对我独自生活能力的信任，让我找到了勇气和力量，抓住了机会，即使我心中惶恐，缺乏自信。

Now, there's no denying that there is a cost to living the American dream. You do not have to be an immigrant or the child of immigrants to know that. But I do know that now, today, I am living something close to what my parents saw as their American dream. Because as soon as I graduated from college, I flew my younger brother to the United States to live with me, so that he, too, could pursue his education. Still, I knew that it would be hard flying my little brother back. I knew that it would be hard having to balance the demands and professionalism required of an entry-level job while being responsible for a child with dreams and ambitions of his own. But you can imagine how fun it is to be 24 years old, at the peak of my youth, living in New York, with an angsty teenage roommate who hates doing the dishes.

不可否认，在美国实现梦想是要付出代价的。你不需要成为一个移民或移民子女就会知道。但是我知道的是，在今天，我生活在一个我父母眼中的美国梦里。因为在我大学毕业之后，我把立刻把弟弟接到美国来跟我一起生活，让他也可以接受教育。但是，我知道把弟弟接过来绝非易事。我知道平衡生活需求和需要一份基本技能的专业工作会很难，同时，我还要负担一个有梦想和雄心的孩子的生活。但是你们也能想象，在我最年轻的时候，住在纽约，有一个讨厌洗碗、焦虑的青少年室友为伴——这对一个24岁的人来说会多么“好玩”。

(Laughter)

（笑声）

The worst.

简直不能更糟了。

(Laughter)

（笑声）

But when I see my brother learning how to advocate for himself, and when I see him get excited about his classes and school, I do not doubt anything. Because I know that this bizarre, beautiful and privileged life that I now live is the true reason for why I decided to pursue a career that would help me and my family find financial stability.

但是当我看到我弟弟知道怎么为他自己发声，并且看到上学的日子让他感到欢欣鼓舞时，我的所有疑虑都消失了。因为我知道这有点奇怪，我现在所拥有的美好和享受优待的生活，是我追求事业的真正原因——可以为我和我的家人带来稳定的经济来源。

I did not know it back then, but during those eight years that I lived without my family, I had my oxygen mask on and I focused on survival. And during those same eight years, I had to watch helplessly the pain and hurt that it caused my family to be apart. What airlines don't tell you is that putting your oxygen mask on first while seeing those around you struggle -- it takes a lot of courage. But being able to have that self-control is sometimes the only way that we are able to help those around us.

我当时并不知道，但是在我和家人分开的这八年里，我戴上了氧气面罩，并用力生存下去。同样在这八年里，我只能无助地看着家人分离带来的悲伤和痛苦。航空公司没告诉你的是，当你先戴上氧气面罩时，还要同时目睹你旁边的人挣扎着想戴上氧气面罩——这需要太多的勇气。但是能够掌控自己的生活，是我们能够帮助身边的人的唯一办法。

Now I'm super lucky to be in a place where I can be there for my little brother so that he feels confident and prepared to take on whatever he chooses to do next. But I also know that because I am in this position of privilege, I also have the responsibility to make sure that my community finds spaces where they can find guidance, access and support.

现在，我非常幸运能够陪伴在我弟弟身边，以便他能够信心十足的准备好迎接自己将来选择的任何道路。但是，我也知道，因为我身处有特权的位置，我也有责任来确保我的社区能够获得指引，找到出路，并得到支持。

I can't claim to know where each and every one of you are on your journey through life, but I do know that our world is one that flourishes when different voices come together. My hope is that you will find the courage to put your oxygen mask on when you need to, and that you will find the strength to help those around you when you can.

我并不知道在座的每一个人正身处人生中的哪一个阶段，但是我知道，当不同的声音汇聚在一起时，我们的世界就会蓬勃发展。我希望你们能够找到当你需要氧气面罩时能够把它戴上的勇气，并且有能力帮助那些身边的人。

Thank you.

谢谢。

(Applause)

（掌声）