Immigration For Pakistani's

BOSTON- Shazia Khuwaja had difficulty dating boys in high school. It is hard to believe looking at the 20-year-old Boston University student as she reclines on her bed in her apartment. Her dark hair and complexion highlights her bright smile and almond-shaped eyes. It wasn’t braces or acne that caused her difficulty with the opposite sex. It was her parents.

Shazia’s parents are Pakistani, both raised in the province of Sindh. It took a while for Ali Khuwaja and his wife Rubina Khuwaja to adjust to the idea of their daughter dating. Traditional Pakistani culture frowns upon premarital relations with the opposite sex.

She told her mother and father, “You have to let me live how other kids live.” Eventually, they came around to the idea.

The hardships Shazia’s parents endured drove them to attain a better standard of life for their own family. Yet their extended family remains in Pakistan. Immigration laws make it difficult for them to gain U.S. citizenship or even visas.

Shazia’s father came from humble beginnings. He and his ten sibilings at times would be without clothing or shoes. Luckily he was a talented medical student and received his fellowship in America. In 1975 he became a U.S. citizen. Once he established his practice he and Shazia’s mother were married and in 1986 she became a U.S. citizen. 

Shazia’s mother wore the traditional “salwar kameez” over to America. An outfit comprised of loose trousers and a long tunic. She stared at a woman’s stilettos for the entire flight. Her shoes were unlike anything she had seen before. Shazia’s mother bought her first pair of heels as soon as she arrived in the U.S..

It was not an easy transition into a foreign culture for the newlyweds. Shazia remembers her mother having trouble with the greeting, nice to meet you, her mother would reply, me too.

Instead of fighting to fit into American culture like her parents did, Shazia clings to the remainder of her Pakistani heritage. No matter how long it has been since she last attended Mosque, Shazia always carries her tasbih.

Shazia reaches under the bed to grab a large purple handbag, she plunges her hand inside to pull out her tasbih. She hands me a string of beads. They are bright turquoise with small pink flowers on them. If she ever forgets Allah and the prophets, her tasbih helps her to remember them in her prayers.

Shazia has traveled to Pakistan eight times to visit her extended family. She was 13 the last time she went.

According to Shazia, “Everything [in Pakistan] was intense. There was intense poverty, intense Religion and corruption.”

She remembers long power outages that frightened her as a child. According to her father, who visited this year, his family in Pakistan now has a generator. Shazia admits the generator is progress, but it is still just, “baby steps.”

It is difficult for Shazia and her parents to see their family lacking basic needs like reliable heat and light in their homes. U.S. immigration policy makes it hard for family members to receive visas, let alone citizenship. The only time Shazia’s uncle and her cousin visited the U.S. was for cancer treatment. It took Shazia’s mother four years to get her mother a visa.

Shazia says, “I didn’t grow up with grandparents.”

She hopes someday soon she and her family will be able to visit each other more freely. Ideally she would like to see each of her family members visit her, here in America. 

“The system is too strict. It’s not fair and it has to be readjusted. I just don’t know how,” says Shazia. She will return to Pakistan in December for the first time in seven years.