Bangladesh—where’s that?

Bangladesh - where's that? That was the question that very often encountered when we talked to friends or acquaintances about our first mission.

I remember at that time reading an article about the challenges the immigrants from Bangladesh face in the United States.http://www.bu.edu/today/2011/probing-the-bangladeshi-diaspora/


The article discussed Bangladeshi immigrants and how many are over qualified for the low-level jobs they take in the US, in hopes that their children will have a better live. However, after the 9/11 attacks, most of these Bangladeshi immigrants are met with anti-terrorist sentiments and face adverse health and economic conditions due to their jobs and relocation into major cities. The article makes the statement:

"Bangladesh is kind of invisible in the U.S.,” says Kibria, who, like many of her fellow Bangladeshis, is sometimes mistaken for Hispanic. Or, in the eyes of many Westerners, Bangladeshis inhabit a limbo between East Indians and Pakistanis."

As an immigrant myself, I have nothing but respect and admiration for people like them. For the ones I had the privilege to meet, U.S. is their only country, and they have an undivided loyalty towards their adopted motherland. I feel that, like myself, their patriotism for the United States is probably more mature than that of many born Americans just because they made the conscious decision to become a citizen of the country rather than getting born into it.