The mission · The founder
I Am an Immigrant began with one person's movement and grew into a place for everyone's. The story below is the origin. The model that follows is what we do with it.
The story
Haiti to the United States at age twelve. Builder, learner, husband, father, listener. The founder of this project writes under the name that let him tell the truth without performing it.
Read the full introductionHaiti
Before anyone called him an immigrant, Jeff Magloire was a child with a street, a language, a grandmother's kitchen, and a place where he was simply known. Migration did not begin his life. It interrupted it.
Age twelve
He arrived as a child who had to translate himself daily: accent, name, food, and silence. Arrival is not a single day. It is years of being partly understood.
The achieving years
Like many immigrants and children of immigrants, he answered displacement with performance: study harder, build more, need less. It worked, and it was not enough.
The turning
Loss, rejection, fatherhood, and love asked questions that credentials could not answer. He began listening instead of proving, first to his own history and then to other people's.
Dr. Lucas
Dr. Lucas is not a disguise. It is the name for the reflective, steady voice that emerged when the boy from Haiti and the man in America stopped arguing with each other.
The mission of the website
We listen across countries, languages, legal statuses, races, classes, and generations. We do not claim one universal immigrant experience. We build recognition, understanding, and a foundation for real support through a growing library of books, a documented model, open data, and the voices of families.
01
Somewhere a person can be fully known without penalty.
02
The right to carry language, food, faith, and memory forward instead of trading them away.
03
A real say in one's own life, not only compliance with systems.
04
Work, housing, healthcare, and status secure enough to stop surviving hour to hour.
05
A believable future for the children who inherit the move.
The Relational Home Model
Volume One is here. More volumes follow the cycle through every family role.
See Volume OneMothers, fathers, children, elders, and those who stayed experience the same move differently.
Hear the voices