Introducing The Next Generation Of Leaders And Thinkers

#WeAreSeeds

I am the daughter of undocumented Mexican immigrant parents. That means that my parents have not been to their homelands in over 20 years and that I know more about what the home they grew up looks like than them. It means that I counted down the days to turning 21, because being 21 meant that I could finally petition for my parents. It means that I fear for my parents to go out alone, because an immigration officer could pick them up, and the next time I see them they may be behind bars. It means that my dad has more than 20 years of experience in his field, but he works out his garage because he is unable to get the proper permits and licensing. It means that although my parents have had a hard time in this country, they stay and they work hard to give me the best life possible. My parents came to this country and have endured countless struggles in order to give me a chance to succeed. I am the daughter of Mexican immigrant parents and I am a seed.

One night as I was scrolling through Instagram, as I usually do before bed, when a particular post caught my eye. It was a picture of a girl holding a sign that said “Fuck weed! Legalize my Mom!” I had seen this picture many times before, but I had never seen anyone respond badly to it. Usually, I do not like to pick fights on social media, but this comment was so upsetting that tears burned my eyes. Was someone really saying that my parents didn’t deserve to be in this country because they didn’t come the “right” way? Were they really saying that immigrants only come to the U.S. to steal jobs and get government support? I was livid and I had to say something. After I posted my comment, I refreshed the page and saw that many of my friends had already fired back at the xenophobic comment. It became a full on war with words. We soon took to Twitter to further express our feelings. People quickly caught on and started posting their appreciation for their immigrant parents. In my head, I was thinking “Why isn’t there a day to appreciate immigrant parents? They are so important! This needs to be a thing!” My friends all agreed, so for the next few weeks we tried to work out all the details. After countless messages, we finally decided on May 30th and came up with the hashtag #WeAreSeeds.

The hashtag comes from the idea that immigrant parents come to this country, not only to create a better life for themselves, but for their children. They come to this country to plant their seeds. They work long hours in terrible conditions all to help their seeds flourish. They make countless sacrifices and endure many struggles in hopes that their children will be successful. While at times children of immigrant parents find this a very heavy burden to carry, we do it anyway. Our parents have been through too much and failure is not an option.

At first, I was nervous that it would flop. We had been posting about it for weeks, and only a few people had responded. We continued with it anyway. On the morning of #WeAreSeeds, I woke up and immediately started posting. At this point, I was the only one talking about it, but within minutes people started retweeting me and also sharing their own stories. Within a couple of hours our hashtag was trending nationwide! People from all over the country were sharing their stories and showing the immense appreciation they had for their parents. People with parents from all over were talking about the struggle that their parents had endured while being in this country.

We never anticipated that it was going to blow up the way that it did. We thought maybe 100 people would participate, but we never expected to get 8,000 tweets from it. Throughout the entire day, there was a sense of love and support that we felt while looking through the hashtag. People were sharing stories that hit very close to home and others were sharing things that we could have never imagined going through. For the first time in our lives we felt like our families were not in this alone. We felt that there were thousands of soldiers ready to fight this battle with us.  #WeAreSeeds became more than a hashtag. It became a community.

This movement was created to shed light on our immigrant parents, and it did that and so much more. Therefore, we intend to continue with this movement. We have many plans for this movement that include a website, social media sites, and fundraisers, amongst many other things. All which will be used to bring awareness to our cause. We do not plan on stopping here. Our parents struggle has been too long and too hard to just let it die here.  We are children of immigrant parents and we are seeds.

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