> She's the one who made it, unlike thousands of others, who worked equally hard, and didn't.

Data?

Immigrants continue to do very well in the U.S., often succeeding to a greater extent than people born here.

Is working 12 hours a day so you can afford to live what you’d describe as doing “very well”?

I don’t know why you decided to compare immigrants to natives. I made no such distinction. Nobody, immigrant or not, should have to work 12 hours a day just to survive.

What's your argument/ statement based on? At least link a study after accusing someone else of misrepresenting a topic.

Exactly. And this story will be used to harm. Ppl will say „look they can just get out and collect cans from the side of the road“. I had a high school teacher that vilified ppl on welfare and said this. My parents and my siblings did this and my parents especially my mother and me are scarred by precarity. I hate the these stories they just do harm.

Not only that, but when she graduates, she might not be able to get a well-paying job and subsequently find a home. She may well be living below the level of a factory worker from the 60s.

It took both parents working 12 hours a day. But the story appears to be set in New York City.

Isn't living there a choice, not something they are forced into?

Who gets to define "made it"?

Did the electrician or garbage truck driver who's parents came from just as much not also make it?

Why is it implied in so many comments around here that anyone who didn't go to college and get a white collar job pushing papers/code/spreadsheets didn't make it?

You're the one who, when trying to come up with examples of people who other people would think haven't made it, came up with electricians and garbage truck drivers.

What are you arguing here? That all people are equally comfortable and all jobs are equally good, and that implying that suffering is bad is demeaning to the people who suffer? It's like upside-down wokeness. While some people are arguing to put in wheelchair ramps, this is like instead insisting that implying that wheelchair users can't walk as well as everyone else is prejudiced.

Oh FFS.

My point is that it's unrealistic to expect people to go from refugee to hedge fund manager in one generation. Refugee to stable blue collar is reasonable.

Electricians probably make more than half of the folks commenting on HN.

The "average techie" income curve is generally shifted higher than the "average electrician" bell curve though the shapes are different and there's some close areas and intersections.