Nikki Garcia
What was the hardest thing that your family encountered as immigrants coming to the United States?
“When my parents first came here, they told me stories about the holidays. They didn't really understand the holidays, specifically Thanksgiving. They told me that they were at a restaurant on Thanksgiving and the restaurant was empty and the waiter was treating them a little weird. They didn't understand why until they talked to my uncle who had been in the States for some time. He explained that it was a very serious family holiday where everyone got together and usually people spend it at their houses.
My parents didn’t really go out. It was really uncomfortable for them, I think. My parents both speak Spanish, and in Miami, everyone speaks Spanish or it feels like everyone speaks Spanish, so it's not so much that the language is a barrier, but it becomes harder to learn English. My dad studied for some years in Canada, so he knows how to speak English well, but my mom, to this day, has a heavier accent than my dad.
Back then, my mom didn't speak English at all, but what she ended up doing was teaching QuickBooks, which is a financial software. And she taught it in English. She learned how to communicate better in English and even though she still has her accent, she can communicate a lot better than she could back then. So language was a barrier in the sense that it was harder to learn English.
