In 1994, over 686,000 unauthorized immigrants are estimated by the U.

S Department

of Homeland Security to have moved to the United States, among them being seven-year-old

Qian Julie Wang. In Chinese, her mother tongue, the colloquial word used to describe an

undocumented immigrant is “hei”, which literally translates to “being in the dark”, an accurate

verbalization of the undocumented experience – one marked by fear, exclusion and hiding. In

her memoir Beautiful Country, Wang, today an author and civil rights lawyer, vividly portrays

the pervasive fear experienced by undocumented immigrant families in the United States,

illustrating how it shapes their daily lives, aspirations, and relationships. Ultimately, the

constant dread of deportation felt by undocumented immigrants has a significant psychological

toll that leads to the profound loss of their identities and voices.

Over the last decade of the twentieth century, the heavy flow of undocumented

immigration to the United States, estimated by the U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services

(USCIS) to have been of approximately 350 000 people per year, stemmed mainly from the

significant escalation of labor migration from less developed to more developed nations,

enabling immigrants entrance into the country under a work visa, followed by them staying

illegally post its expiration date. This kind of immigration was and is still frequently associated

with lower-income families in search for better economic and educational opportunities. For the

Chinese population, however, escape from political instability was the main motive for leaving

the country in the second half of the twentieth century.

This was the case with Wang’s father. As mentioned in her memoir and in several of her

essays, he moved to New York in 1992, deeply and openly discontented with the authoritarian

Chinese government, who, in turn, persecuted his family. In a lot of ways, the United States was

a beacon of hope for the persecuted – from its name, Mei Guo, meaning “beautiful country” in

Chinese, to the economic stability and prosperity that made it the most powerful nation in the

1990s.

However, the life of an undocumented immigrant is, too, marked by hardships and

persecution. Migrant communities often have to deal with acculturative stress, i.e “the stress
that emerges from conflicts when individuals must adjust to a new culture of the host society”

(Ren, Jiang), arising from a variety of factors, ranging from linguistic challenges, as a large

portion of immigrants has minimal proficiency in the native language of the host country, to

tensions between the native and host culture, difficulty in finding education and employment,

and the abrupt separation from social support systems. These migration-related stressors are

particularly harmful on children’s psychological well-being, but they can deeply impact

immigrants of all ages. In fact, a 2010 study conducted by sociologist Kerstin Lueck and

statistician Machelle Wilson using data from the National Latino and Asian American Study

(NLAAS), which involved the participation through face-to-face interviews of 2095 Asian

immigrants and Asian Americans, all over 18 years-old, found that 70% of the participants have

experienced acculturative stress in varying degrees, a statistic which poses a risk for decrease in

mental well-being and the development of mental disorders, such as anxiety and depression.

Undocumented immigrants are, thus, especially vulnerable, as their immigration status

not only directly denies them access to the same goods and benefits as legal immigrants (e.g.

health insurance and social security), but also subjects them to the constant threat of

deportation. This pervasive fear in most undocumented immigrants’ minds drives them to live in

the shadows of society, silently enduring precarious living conditions and submitting to abusive

work environments. These dynamics are consistent with sociologist Kitty Calavita’s argument,

which asserts that immigration policies often lead to intense fear of deportation and a life of

permanent anxiety for undocumented immigrants, as their very existence is criminalized, and,

when found out by authorities, punished (560). The result in a traumatic daily life governed by

distrust and anxiety, very often for the remainder of these immigrants’ lives, even in the cases of

immigrants who later legalize their status.

In Beautiful Country, Qian Julie Wang describes extensively the fear of being deported

back to China which fully permeates her parent’s life once they move to the United States, an

anxiety they pass down to her seven-year-old self. From this young age, Wang learns to run

away from police officers and to lie to her friends and teachers regarding her origins, as she is
told she cannot trust anyone with the truth. The responsibility of convincing others her family

belongs in the United States results in what could be seen as panic attacks – on one occasion in

particular, on Chapter 7, a hungry Wang joins a queue of people being handed out free food. Yet,

upon seeing people in uniforms, whom she suspects of being police officers, she bursts into a

panicked state, fearing that they should uncover her immigration status and deport her. Such

stressful experiences during childhood, a crucial period in the formation of one’s sense of self,

could bring about “more severe issues like post-traumatic stress disorder, poor identity

formation, difficulty forming relationships, feelings of persecution, distrust of institutions and

authority figures” (American Psychological Association). The episode concludes with Wang

sprinting away from the uniformed individuals, and, reflecting on that experience, the author

states: “On that run, only one thing kept pace with me, and it was not hunger. It was fear. Fear

was all I tasted; fear was all I contained; fear was all I was”.

For the sake of staying safe, undocumented people choose to live unnoticed, which

means keeping their aspirations small. Although the historic case of Plyer v. Doe made

education from kindergarten to the 12th grade free and open to all students, regardless of

immigration status, it is common for undocumented students to choose not to pursue higher

education, as their status poses legal and economic challenges. When they do decide to apply

for college, they regularly conceal their immigration status out of fear of it being investigated by

colleges’ admissions department, thereby them ineligible for financial aid programs, as the

schools cannot identify them (Cisneros 192, 193). In other cases, undocumented students apply

to schools of lower prestige and who refrain from a thorough application process. Wang’s

mother refers to them as “colleges that [do]’nt ask too many questions”, and it is precisely this

type of college she advises her daughter to apply to in her future.

A mother urging her daughter to keep her aspirations small is one of the various ways

the vulnerability of being undocumented can cause a strain on relationships. Within the

undocumented community, familial dynamics are prone to shift, due to the stress and

uncertainty associated with living without legal status – Wang’s memoir points out how her
mother’s discontentedness with their unstable life led to the distancing of her parents and to a

role-swapping in her relationship with Qian herself, resulting in the young daughter undertaking

the role of caregiver in regards to her mother, instead of the opposite.

The contact between these communities and the broader society has a considerable

impact in worsening the mental health of undocumented people. On one hand, non-Caucasian

immigrants experience exclusion in the form of racial prejudice. Being reduced to the category

of “other”, they are victims and are coerced into silence by fear. On the other hand, they

regularly face

Employment relationships are amongst those who most worsen the mental health of

undocumented immigrants, since it is regular for them to endure exploitation and abuse in the

workplace

Wang’s bold father, who, before leaving China, encouraged her to speak up and question

what she was told, meets her two years later in the United States as a shell of himself, now

urging his daughter to keep her head down and her ambitions low.
 Her mother, on the other hand, saw herself stripped away from the life she had worked

so hard to construct and the identity she had built around it, and suffered as mandarin, the only

language she could master, and associated with intellectualism in Beijing, was looked down on

by the people she now had to live among.

This culture shock, where the Chinese language and culture w

As previously mentioned, the stress