The Culture Gap: The Role of Culture in Successful Refugee Settlement

Unaccompanied
was written in 2018 by Javier Zamora, a Salvadoran refugee, 
about his journey from El Salvador to the United States when he was just nine years 
74
“In El Salvador, you don’t know if you’ll make it home alive at the end of the day,” n.d.
75
“What TPS means for a young Salvadoran family,” n.d.

---

33 
old.
76
Zamora writes that he feels he can never return and that he felt pressure to marry 
for papers against his wishes, which shows how legal barriers can create hard choices and 
social pressure.
77
 He writes how his experience with violence as a child, both familial 
violence and gang violence, led him to have violent episodes when he became intoxicated 
as an adult.
78
This is a psychological impact of trauma that ideally, the government of the 
country of asylum would create policy to mitigate. 
Zamora also describes his experience with integration and the legal system. About 
receiving a deportation letter, he writes "The words Notice to Appear flap like a monarch 
trapped in a puddle. Translation: ten years in a cell cold enough to be named Hielera.”
79
He describes “waiting in that line at the US embassy when I tried and tried for a visa like 
Mom like Dad like aunts and we all got denied” and that his whole family was “working, 
Mom Dad Tía Lupe Tía Mali working under different names.”
80
 These experiences 
account for the difficulty and fears involved in obtaining legal status to live and work in 
the US. About the desire to fit in, Zamora says that he “was ready to be gringo speak 
English own a pool Jeep convertible," but that he had “always known this country wanted 
[him] dead.”
81
 He writes that “more than once a white man wanted me dead a white man 
passed a bill that wants me deported wants my family deported."
82
 There is a desire to 
integrate and even assimilate, but a feeling of alienation by the government and the 
people around him. 
76
Zamora, 
Unaccompanied
, 1-80.
77
Ibid., 27. 
78
Ibid., 69.
79
Ibid., 71. 
80
Ibid., 79-80.
81
Ibid.,
78.
82
Zamora, 
Unaccompanied
, 78.

---

34 
As of 2013, Salvadorans spoke more Spanish at home than other Hispanic people 
living in the United States.
83
Salvadorans also had lower levels of education and annual 
personal earnings than other US Hispanics and the overall US population. Foreign born 
Salvadorans were less likely to have earned a bachelor’s degree or higher than US-born 
Salvadorans. The poverty rate of Salvadorans is higher than the overall US rate but lower 
compared to other US Hispanics. Salvadorans have less health insurance and lower 
homeownership than all Hispanics and the US population. Meanwhile, approximately 
half of Salvadorans see themselves as “very different” from typical Americans, while 
close to one-third see themselves as typical Americans. This compares to about half of 
Hispanic adults who see themselves as a typical American and 44% who see themselves 
as “very different.” Finally, the US overall employment rate in 2013 was 8.4%, while it 
was 9.9% for Hispanics, 14.6% for US-born Salvadorans, but only 6.8% for foreign-born 
Salvadorans (which may be due to Visa requirements for legal status or be due to 
characteristics of immigrants and refugees in general).
84
These statistics paint a generally 
negative picture of social integration outcomes. The cultural distance is high and the 
social integration is poor, which supports the second hypothesis.