How Far We’ve Come

The concept of “making it” can be a bit amorphous. “That can mean so many things for so many people,” Inti Martínez-Alemán says.

For Areti Georgopoulos, it meant her family becoming naturalized citizens. For Anu Jaswal, it was when her family bought a home. For Julie Le, it meant simply continuing her education beyond the common cutoff point in Vietnam.

“Parents said, ‘Girls don’t need education. All you need is to know how to cook, clean and maybe pop out a baby,’” she says. “But over here, I get to go to school. It’s an amazing thing.”

For Viorel Ureke, the fact that “making it” is even a possibility is “a dream,” he says. “I have my own firm with two paralegals. Comparing that to when I came and my English sounded like gibberish? Now I’m figuring out how to have a quality life with my family. So have I made it? Yes, probably.”

These are the stories of five immigrants who live and practice law in Minnesota. Here’s how they made it.

Origin Stories

Julie Le, Erickson, Bell, Beckman & Quinn, Roseville; Workers’ Compensation; Vietnam: I got to the U.S. on February 23rd, 1993. I was 14. My family immigrated through the American Homecoming Act, which was a bill passed because, after the Vietnam War, U.S. men left a lot of kids behind. So the intention was to bring the Amerasian children and their immediate relatives, which is me, to the U.S.

Areti Georgopoulos, Harmony Law Firm, Minneapolis; Employment & Labor; Greece: It was in the ’70s, and I was 4. My parents were scientists and doctors who had tenured positions at the University of Athens, but they wanted to do research and got offers at Johns Hopkins University. We lived outside Baltimore until the early ’90s, when they got appointments at the VA Medical Center and U of M.

Inti Martínez-Alemán, Ceiba Fôrte Law Firm, St. Paul; Business Litigation; Honduras: I came to Western New York for college back in 2003. Before that, I would come occasionally in the summers as a tourist. In Honduras, I went to a U.S.-type school in the sense that all my teachers were American or Canadian, so my inclination was to continue that.

Viorel Ureke, Ureke Law Firm, Minneapolis; Immigration; Moldova: I grew up in the former Soviet Union bloc. So I tasted a bit of the old communism until my last year in high school, when it fell. I grew up in a Christian family, and any people of faith suffered. All those lands that belonged to the people were confiscated by the government and, if you resisted, which my grandfather did, you were sent to Siberia. Many never returned. Today, when you say, “How do people live in Iraq or Syria or Ukraine or Afghanistan?” They don’t know any other life. You live there because you have no other options.

Anu Jaswal, Nilan Johnson Lewis, Minneapolis; Immigration; India: I came in September of 1995. My dad gained permanent residence and petitioned for me, my mom and my brother. I was two months under 5, so I don’t have a lot of recollection of moving. When we landed in New York City, there was a U.S. flag, and I thought we were coming to a wedding because usually in India, when there’s a bunch of flags up, they’re associated with a wedding. I didn’t know we were in another country. My parents came here to pursue the American dream—wanting their kids to get a better education and jobs. They wanted us to become something.

First Impressions

Le: Terrifying. The experience of going places and not being able to communicate with other people, you look like you’re lost all the time, you stand out in the group. Back at home, when we were talking about the U.S., we were talking about heaven on earth—plenty of food, plenty of money, a house, the people would be so nice. But we had to work so hard. I remember my brother worked an entire week mowing lawns and got paid $20. It’s just not enough to survive. So all that vision just disappears.

Martínez-Alemán: The first time I came to the U.S. was in 1995, to Oklahoma City. I was accompanying my dad on a business trip, and I visited the site of the building that Tim McVeigh blew up. It was very gory and horrifying—that was my earliest memory.

Ureke: I came a week after September 11th. I looked at the TV and I was like, “These Hollywood people really come up with crazy ideas.” Then my friend is telling me, “This is real.” I thought it was a movie. In Moldova, we looked at the United States as a place where you can believe whatever you want to believe—freedom in thought, freedom of expression, not being afraid your neighbor is going to snitch on you. My first impression was it all being a bit surreal.

Jaswal: I don’t remember exactly when I started school, but I know I was afraid to go because my parents told me that in India the teachers beat you. So I didn’t want to go. But then seeing how nice everybody was and that I was not going to get beaten, I was relieved.

Georgopoulos: I have one really clear memory: the first day of preschool. I remember my mom dropping me off and waving goodbye and walking out the door, and everyone around me speaking a language I couldn’t understand. I just remember bawling and being really scared.

Early Challenges

Jaswal: My dad knew a little bit of English, but no one else did. With my family, I spoke Punjabi—even now. I think my peers and other kids and teachers were like, “We don’t know what she’s saying,” but I was young enough that I learned quickly.

Le: Back in my home country, and especially with my family, they only valued boys. My parents were not invested in me because there were no returning profits. Once you marry, you belong to your husband’s family, making money and serving them. So they were focused on “What can you do to make the most money before you get sent off to marry someone else?” But in the U.S., it was a requirement that we go to school. So, I got a second chance in life. I did not take it for granted.

Ureke: Initially, I wasn’t sure if it was going to work. It’s a new language, and I was not young anymore. I was 23 or 24. I was a bit looking at it as a mountain to conquer. So I worked all day and studied all night for 13, 15 years—whatever it took. It was a busy, busy, busy life. Both my wife and I went to school, and my parents helped us raise the children. That was a huge help. I kept pushing myself. I said, “I’m healthy. I have two hands and I have a brain that is working. This is my challenge, and I think I can do it.”

Martínez-Alemán: Understanding the Minnesota passive-aggressive culture. I thought people were just shy. It’s not shy. It’s non-confrontational. If you have an issue, you don’t address it. You talk to everybody about it except the person who’s supposed to be doing it. So dealing with that—and yesses being nos, and nos being yesses—was difficult. I represent primarily Hispanic business owners, and one thing that is very normal in our culture is just sitting down at the table and talking to resolve issues. Not here. You have to have mediation in two or three separate rooms. You have no idea how many cases I’ve settled when I’ve asked for all of us to be in the same room. Within 15 minutes: case resolved.

Georgopoulos: I definitely felt like an outsider—just different enough. Like my name is unfamiliar to people, so everyone called me Artie. In college, I wanted a fresh start, so I introduced myself as Areti. I have a friend who said, “You know how I remember? I think ‘I am a coffee, you are a tea.’” I love this, and now I use it when I first meet people.

The First American Thing You Loved

Martínez-Alemán: Cheese in a can. I never thought about nutritional facts or ingredients. I thought Americans were just extremely brilliant. ‘I don’t have to cut up cheese and put it in the fridge. I can just keep it in a can and spray it on my crackers as needed.’ I fell in love with that for a semester of college. I later learned that’s not healthy, and I don’t eat it, by any means, anymore.

Ureke: Free highways. In Italy, I had to be in this traffic all the time because of paying. What I didn’t like is the public transportation. That one was not such a good impression coming from Europe where you don’t even need a car. You just jump on a bus, on a train, and you go.

Le: Chicken. In Vietnam, for you to be able to purchase leg quarters or two for the entire family, number one, it costs a lot of money. Number two, you don’t have the right to the entire quarter to yourself. Two legs will be for the 10 people in your family. So you get a little piece of it. Here in America, we’d buy 30 pounds at once and it was cheap back then. So we had it boiled, fried, stir-fried, everything.

The Path to Law

Jaswal: I was watching TV shows with these strong female lawyers, and they’re using the law to help people. I wanted that.

Ureke: Growing up as I did, that injustice kind of sticks with me. What’s wrong, what’s right, and fighting for the most vulnerable—it’s instilled in me. I wanted to do law school in Moldova because I was inspired by one of my teachers and because of my family being suppressed. But I was faced with a choice: stick with my values or bribe them to get into higher education. I chose to join friends in Italy, work and save some money, then look for other ways to accomplish my dream. I had family who already immigrated to the U.S., so I came to join my family.

Georgopoulos: In college, I volunteered as a legal advocate for battered women, then worked for Tubman Center’s legal advocacy program. I decided, “If I’m ever going to come back, I’d want a law degree.” So I applied and took an immigration course at the U, and I loved it. I loved the idea of helping immigrants, and it just felt like where I needed to be. When I got laid off during the Great Recession, I thought, “Do I want to stay with immigration?” I enjoyed working with the clients, but I was unsatisfied working the cases because the law felt very archaic to me. So I shifted gears into civil rights and employment law. I opened my own firm in 2012 and, a couple months ago, I accepted a position as an unemployment law judge.

Martínez-Alemán: As a child, my late mother would take me to court with her. Toward my senior year of undergrad, I felt a very clear calling of going back to Honduras to study law. I practiced for about five years, and then things got extremely dangerous. Lawyers and journalists were particularly targeted for uncovering stuff, advocating, spreading news, etcetera. Lawyers were getting murdered left and right. So, in 2012, I went back to my alma mater to teach. After that year, I went back to Honduras. Things were still terrible. So I moved to Chicago and applied to 22 law schools.

Le: Because there were no jobs in California for immigrants, we ended up in Des Moines, Iowa, where they had a lot of meat-packing companies back then. In Vietnam, it’s OK to beat up your kids or the husband to beat up a wife. When I was in that situation [here in the U.S.], I decided to run away from home. I was in 10th grade. I lived in shelters, and decided to graduate early because I had enough credits. So I graduated, got my A.A. degree, B.A. degree, and M.S. Law school was a daring challenge between me and my kids. I always encouraged them to try new things, and one was like, “Mom, you always tell us to do this and to do that, but you never try new things.” So I applied.

Finding a Foothold

Martínez-Alemán: Just being able to start and thrive in my own solo practice—which I have crafted by choice and by my own design—that gives me a lot of satisfaction.

Georgopoulos: I felt good about some cases I worked on in terms of getting people approved for asylum, getting people’s green card applications approved, helping professionals get H-1B visas so they could stay and do their work here, helping people naturalize, get their citizenship. It’s very moving. But going out on my own—that was a big risk for me, and so gratifying.

Ureke: After finishing my paralegal school, I took an internship with an immigration law firm and did an asylum case for someone who helped our government. So now I primarily do immigration work, and I look at it as representing people the most in need.

Jaswal: I was a good student and got good grades, but standardized testing was really challenging. I took the bar exam multiple times. But it was good to overcome that hardship and finally become a lawyer. For three years, I practiced family-based immigration. Then I wanted something new and different, so I accepted a position as a corporate immigration attorney.

Le: We decided to move to Minnesota simply because I wanted to go to a place where I can relax and have a break during law school. One day I stepped into a sandwich shop in St. Paul, and one of the cashiers recognized me from leadership trainings and he’s like, “We need your help.” And I can’t say no. So I was right back to serving the community. Serving people, it’s just in my blood or something. The good work that you do spreads through the community. When you really want to serve people, people will find you.

Maintaining Tradition

Ureke: Food and some aspects of the music I still like today. The food and baked goods are a big part of holidays like Easter. We’re definitely keeping that.

Georgopoulos: We celebrate Greek Easter—we dye the eggs red and make a special braided loaf of bread called tsoureki. It’s always food, food, food. There are so many traditions around food and gathering family and music. There’s a lot of celebration. Easter, Christmas, Greek Day of Independence, those are big; I share the positive aspects of our culture with friends and colleagues whenever I can.

Jaswal: I come from a Sikh family, and I love Indian food. I go back to New York frequently to eat my mom’s food—samosas, parathas, pakoras and things like that. And we go to the gurdwara a lot with my mom, which is in Queens. I also went back to India eight to 10 years ago, and I have a trip planned for next year.

Le: I have three kids, and all three know how to cook pho, any kind of soup, egg rolls, rice.

Martínez-Alemán: Daily staples and elements of my Honduran culture are incorporated in our meals because my wife is also a Honduran lawyer. Another is having a slow December. We craft it so we do the least amount of lawyer work possible and focus more on family and friends. You have to intentionally craft that space or you burn out. In Honduras, the judiciary always takes a break the first half of July and the second half of December. Everything stops except domestic violence, criminal court, and extreme cases. That’s one thing I wish the U.S. would have. It’s very healthy and admirable.

Advice for Those Who Come Next

Jaswal: Don’t give up. It can be challenging, especially if you’re a first-generation college student or if you have language barriers or if you were in a low-income or middle-class family and you don’t have the resources. Just don’t give up.

Ureke: Take more risks. Expose yourself to different areas of practice and do a clerkship in the courts, just to explore different experiences.

Georgopoulos: When you’re not part of the dominant culture, you can feel out of place—like there’s something wrong with you. But try not to think of it that way. Feel a sense of pride, while being open to embrace the new world you’re in.

Martínez-Alemán: Stay true to your passion and your desires without being close-minded to other opportunities. When I first went to law school here, everybody was doing OCI and applying for corporate jobs and government jobs. There was zero suggestion of, “How about you open your own law firm?” That was unthinkable. If you want that corporate job because you’ve always dreamed that, go for it. But if you just apply to big law because everybody’s doing it, you are going to be miserable.

Le: Just last week I met a woman who has five kids, was considering law school, but is so afraid of the barriers. I was like, “It’s all right to be afraid, but you’ve got to try. Unless you give it a try, you’ll never know the outcome.” Even if we fail—as I have many times in the past—all the struggles, all the challenges made me stronger and better. It’s very, very hard. I’m not going to B.S. about it. But it’s doable. And if I can do it, anybody else can do it, too.