Opinion

Virginia Tech Tragedy: A Wake-up Call for Immigrants?
By Siddique Malik
Louisville, KY

Is there a lesson to be learnt by immigrant parents from the Virginia Tech tragedy? While it is utterly wrong and unfair to attribute the tragedy to its perpetrator’s ethnic background, there is nothing wrong to analyze this sad event from every angle, so as to obtain optimum understanding of what caused one to wreak death on innocent people around him.
Let me clarify right off the bat that my description below of certain habits of immigrant parents is completely general in nature, and I am not at all implying that the parents of this young man have these habits or applied these on their son.
Cultural anxieties and the resultant pent up frustrations might have triggered the Virginia Tech shooter’s emotional and psychological demise which led him to murder 32 innocent people and then kill himself on the fateful day of April 16, 2007. Cho Seung-hui was only eight years old when his South Korean parents along with him and his sister moved to the USA, 15 years ago. Voluminous material has been written on immigrants’ struggles to adapt to their adopted country. These theses basically glorify immigrants -- and justifiably so. However, virtually missing from these tributes is any mention or even an acknowledgement of the mental trauma that children immigrants must endure – generally quietly -- as a consequence to a decision that their parents made and in which they had no consequential say.
The general belief is that children can adjust to environmental changes faster and more easily than adults, but the reality is not so simple. Some Asian immigrants have rigid customs that they habitually force upon their children. Add to this, the religious insecurities of immigrants from certain countries, and the situation becomes quite complicated.
It is much easier for Asian immigrant adults to get accustomed to their life in their new country than it is for their children. These adults find their cultural ghettos and almost never socialize with the indigenous population. It is their children who get caught between two conflicting cultures, and nobody ever knows their resultant pain. While these children strive to learn the ways of their new country, their parents pressurize them to stick with the old ways. Even a slight deviation by children from the culture that they and their parents left thousands of miles away is considered a serious offense. This must give rise to tremendous anguish and conflict in these children’s psyche. By the way, the psychological plight of those children who are born in America to some Asian immigrant parents is not much better, either
One attribute of Cho’s discomposed personality that continues to reverberate in my mind is his utter lack of verbal and social skills. He almost never talked; did not even respond to a hello. I am not a psychologist but I have an idea about how this shortcoming might have developed. I have seen many immigrant parents inflict a serious emotional injustice upon their children. Since these parents generally do not have a good command over English, they, in the name of culture-preservation, make their children talk only in their native language, (again, I would like to make it clear that this is a general description only and I have no reasons to believe that Cho’s parents fall in this category). Their kids who communicate in English at school suddenly have to switch to another language, upon entering home. Many times, I have seen a child excitedly start a conversation in English with his/her immigrant parent only to be rebuffed and reminded of the rule of no English at home, and the innocent excitement withers, quickly, followed by an early closure of the conversation that perhaps could have continued much longer in English. In such a situation, how could children freely express themselves to their parents? I am sure this plays havoc with an immigrant child’s verbal and social confidence, even though he/she soon comes to learn perfect English.
Here is my request and suggestion to immigrant parents, especially Asian immigrant parents: Please communicate with your children on every subject and in any language, and help them cope with their tensions, especially their inter-cultural quandaries. You can relieve your anxieties in your places of worship, ethnic get-togethers and restaurants or at your specialty grocery shops, but your kids have other interests (or at least they should) besides having to live your antiquated life, which in all fairness does and should not mean too much to them. Let them be themselves; culture-preservation must not degenerate into culture-imposition. You owe this flexibility and open-mindedness to your children and to your adopted country.
Perhaps, the government can do something in this area, too. English language skills – especially the ability to speak in English -- should play a pivotal role in potential immigrants’ suitability to America. The reason some immigrants do not speak with their kids in English is that they simply cannot. The kids cannot fluently speak in a language that is not the language in which they are being schooled, and without effective communication between a child and his/her parents, he/she is a tragedy waiting to happen.
Also, children of immigrant families should be monitored at school for signs of culture-related anxieties and given opportunities to lighten their chests and obtain knowledge about remedies to their predicaments. If these anxieties are traced back to parents, the parents should be strongly encouraged to participate in the resolution process. Immigrant success stories would not emerge if immigrants’ children become the cost of their parents’ decision to migrate to America.
American history is the history of successful immigration, but this is no reason to be ambivalent to genuine related issues. It takes just one disturbed kid to wreak the carnage we witnessed at Virginia Tech. If an attitudinal change by immigrants and the society to which they migrate, and a change in immigrant acceptance criteria could avert a tragedy, it would definitely be worth the try.

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