In “The Good Immigrant Student” the author, Bich Minh Nguyen, speaks of her experience as an immigrant child in school. She was often bullied in school because she wasn’t American. She was very shy, silent, and obedient as she states in paragraph 8. In paragraph 28, Nguyen says, “I would like to make a broad, accurate statement about immigrant children in schools. I would like to speak for them (us). I hesitate; I cannot.” I think she’s trying to say that she can’t speak for everyone because not everyone had the same experience as her just because they’re an immigrant. Even if they did, not everyone would react the way she did. Just because she chose to become invisible doesn’t mean that every immigrant would make the same choice. Take her sister for example, she chooses to be rebellious as stated in paragraph 28.

When speaking for an entire group of people, one can never make a “broad accurate statement”. Not every immigrant child gets bullied in school and not every child reacts the same to the same experiences. Let’s look at the LGBTQ community, another minority group. Oftentimes you hear how people have a hard time coming out to their families. However that’s not the case for everyone. You also hear how people within the community are bullied and made fun leading to suicidal thoughts but there are people who stand up for themselves. You can’t make a broad ACCURATE statement for an entire group of people because that statement wont be true for everyone.

In “The Good immigrant Student” by Bich Minh Nguyen we get a better understanding of what immigrant kids are dealing with in school especially in English because it’s not their native language. We get to understand the struggle they go through every day. Nguyen states “Kids today has the advantage of so much collective cultural wisdom, that they are so much more socially and politically aware than anyone was when I was in school.” Immigrants kids have the chance to do better and learn so many more things that people like Nguyen couldn’t have to learn when she was younger. However, the problem is that it’s hard to motivate the kids they either really start to focused and they want to better themself to a great degree. Or they decided to quit and fade away and accomplished nothing. Nguyen feels powerless because she doesn’t know how to help the kids that gave up and it scared her because she can see them give up like a flickering light that will fade. She states “that some kids will always want to disappear and disappear until they actually do.” She doesn’t want the same thing that happens to her happen to other kids she was bullied because she didn’t know as much as the other kids and because of that she really couldn’t defend herself, the kids also made fun of how she looked which cause her to question herself to the point that I affect her daily life. She wasn’t able to defense for the kids and support their future right away and she always regretted it but now that she had the power and the education she wants to be the voice of the immigrant’s students and wants to make sure that they never have to suffer again.

In “The Good Immigrant Student” by Bich Minh Nguyen, the author shares her story of being an immigrant student in the United States. In Paragraph 28 Nguyen says “I would like to make a broad, accurate statement about immigrant children in schools. I would like to speak for them (us). I hesitate; I cannot.” By that I think she means she would like to speak on what its like being an immigrant child attending an American school but thinks she cannot speak on behalf of the rest of them. Mainly because she thinks that everyone has their own emotions and views things separately. Everyone has different experiences. Also in the text Nguyen says “I wanted to disappear. I was not brave enough to shrug my shoulders and flaunt my difference: because I could not disappear into the crowd.” This shows that she is different from the students in terms of the way she goes about social interactions. Which is why she cannot make a broad accurate statement because she does not have the same experiences as everyone else.

In the passage “Outlaw: My Life in America as an Undocumented Immigrant” by Jose Antonio Vargas, it states the power and connotations of the words “undocumented immigrants” and “illegal aliens”. These words are wrong to call an immigrant. It may make the immigrant feel unwelcomed or that they do not belong here. These words are offensive because it can assume that an immigrant does not have the legitimate authentication to be in the country, they want to be in.

In the passage,” Outlaw: My Life in America as an Undocumented Immigrant,” Jose is from the Philippines and migrated to the United States when he was middle school. He shares his story of how he found out he was undocumented until he was in high school. He expresses his life limitations and the missed opportunities he would not achieve because of his illegal documentation. He has to hide this fact from people which caused him to have anxiety and paranoia. He worked hard to earn his citizenship to stay in America to get his better chances.

In Jose’s situation, he should be referred to as an undocumented immigrant. The reason for this is because he is still a person with feelings and rights. Also, because he should not be called anything else that makes him sound like a criminal.

In the passage, “The Good Immigrant Student”, Minh Nguyen writes about herself growing up and learning the difficulty immigrant children have. She had to fit in school and act like the other kids there. From an early age she had to “Americanize” because her mother believed that the American culture will take over. She could not live the double life like other immigrant kids because she wanted to go through school unnoticed. As she grew up, she forgot who she was. She became anxious and shy because she had to act like the “good immigrant student.”

In paragraph 28 Nguyen states, “I would like to make a broad, accurate statement about immigrant children in schools. I would like to speak for them (us). I hesitate; I cannot”. The meaning of this is that she wants to send a message to all immigrant students who struggled just like her growing up, but she cannot. Her experience can be different from those who went through the same thing. She realized she cannot speak for everyone in her community, because they could have gone through something completely different like her sister. Nguyen states, “My own sister for instance, was never shy as I was – she chose rebellion rather than silence.” This clearly points out that even though they had the same backstory and were raised the same way, she went through a different experience than her sister.

By this quote, the author means she wishes she can make the journey of finding yourself and coming to love yourself and culture easier for all immigrant students. This will be hard for her to do because everyone’s journey is different. Her journey consisted of years of trying to not just blend in with the crowd but to be completely covered by it. She would be deathly afraid of being called on by the teacher but gained a bit of confidence with her Spectrum group. The author states, “I know that some kids want to disappear and disappear until they do. Sometimes I think I see them, in the blurry background of a magazine photo, or in a gaggle of kids following a teacher’s aide across the street. “ This is demonstrating how she sees what the other immigrant students are going through clear as day since she suffered from this since her adolescence. Shes have been going this feeling since the first grade. She is now a high school student who learned to wear her skin proudly and wants to spread confidence to other people in this category of immigrant children. Preferably without the long journey of shyness, keeping her opinions and insights to herself, and the feeling of wanting to disappear.

After reading ‘’The Good Immigrant Student ’’ by Bich Minh Nguyen where the author expresses her experiences in being an immigrant student in America she made a statement  In paragraph 28, “I would like to make a broad, accurate statement about immigrant children in schools. I would like to speak for them (us). I hesitate; I cannot.” Which to me she meant she couldn’t speak for all immigrant students living in America because each individual goes through their own experiences. Like Bich herself, she was a very shy girl who had low self-esteem in school because of her acknowledgment she knew she differed from the rest in her class she made a statement on how she was,  “I was nearly silent, deadly shy, and wholly obedient. My greatest fear was being called on, or in any way standing out more than I already did in the class that was, except for me and one black student, dough-white. I got good grades because I feared the authority of the teacher; I felt that getting in good with Mrs. Alexander would protect me, that she would protect me from the frightful rest of the world. “Which was a very different experience than people like her sister or the two Indian girls that were her friends. She explained how her sister handled being considered as someone who’s different from the rest. “My sister, for instance, was never as shy as I was. Anh disliked school from the start, choosing rebellion rather than silence.” And using the friend’s experiences,  “Indian friend of mine who told of an elementary school experience in which a blond schoolchild told her teacher, “I can’t sit by her. My mom said I can’t sit by anyone who’s brown.’’ And another friend, whose family immigrated around the same time mine did, whose second-grade teacher used her as a vocabulary example: “Children, this is what a foreigner is.’’ And her speaking for every immigrant student just based on her experiences or people around her might leave other immigrant students who can’t relate left out because their immigrant students who can have the potential to actually have a better experience than what she has stated she could even contradict herself. 

In Bich Minh Nguyen’s “The Good Immigrant Student”, she takes us through her earliest memories in the American school system as she had to balance her new lifestyle and languages. She was often the minority in her classrooms, so she casted herself out in order to fit in with the “good boys and girls”. Going onto her later elementary school years, her classmates would make fun of her and tourture her based on their perceived knowledge of Vietnamese people. Her childhood was made up of shrugs and sighs because of this desire to disappear from her classmates. This attitude continued into high school, where she recounts not fitting into her rich, white peers with their fancy cars and their cliques. 

In paragraph 28 Nguyen states, “I would like to make a broad, accurate statement about immigrant children in schools. I would like to speak for them (us). I hesitate; I cannot”. Nguyen wants to send a message to her community of immigrants and foreigners as an attempt to categorize them. However, she realizes that she cannot make due on this classification because it ignores the efforts those immigrants have made to categorize themselves. Although they may have similar feelings and struggles, the way an individual reacts to a new environment can vary. Making a statement can neglect a person’s experience and stereotype them in a way they wouldn’t want to be. Nguyen knows she wouldn’t want to face the same neglect and assumption that she had to endure as a child. 

Nguyen tells her experience as an immigrants child attending school in an English classroom. The struggle of trying to fit in and avoid standing out was difficult. She was a quiet student in most of her classrooms and wanted to disappear in efforts to avoid getting called on and teased for her appearance and Vietnamese background. In paragraph 28 she writes, “I would like to make a broad, accurate statement about immigrant children in schools. I would like to speak for them (us). I hesitate, I cannot.” She is unable to make a statement regarding immigrant children because they experience so much hate, disappointment and rude comments, that speaking on ones situation would never justify every immigrants experience in school. Nguyen feels powerless as an immigrant in another country, she feels that her voice is not enough. In the text Nguyen writes, “Some kids want to rebel; other kids want to disappear. I wanted to disappear. I was not brave enough to shrug my shoulders and flaunt my difference: because I could not disappear into the crowd.” The thought of wanting to disappear was constant but as an immigrant, Nguyen was bound to stand out regardless of the choices and sacrifices she made. Though she attended multiple schools, she was never able to completely fit in. She was teased and mocked for her appearance making her ashamed of her immigrant background, also causing her to feel self-conscious which lowered her self-esteem. Nguyen did not speak up for immigrants in school because she was not able to assimilate fully in an English classroom, she was not able to be seen like the other students. Being scrutinized for her background allowed her to believe she didn’t have a voice powerful enough to speak for others. Nguyen knew that her experience differed from other immigrants and her story was not comparable.

In paragraph 28 when Nguyen says ”I would like to make a broad accurate statement about immigrant children in schools I would like to speak for them (us).I hesitate: I cannot I think she means she cant speak for every immigrant because they all have different experiences even though they all might be immigrants you don’t if they each went through the same thing. Nguyen cant make a ”broad accurate statement because what she went through as a immigrant can be different from what some one else went through as a immigrant.  In paragraph 28 she also says ”Still, I think of an Indian friend of mine who told an elementary school experience in which blond school child told the teacher ” I cant sit by her. My mom said I cant sit by any one whos brown”. And another friend, whose family immigrated around the same time mine did, whose second grade teacher used her as vocabulary example Children, this is what a foreigner is”. with that being said Nguyen was trying to point out that she cant speak for every immigrant because  not every immigrant has the same story.