With so little time left until the election, Joe Six Pack and his neighbor Joe the Plumber are hanging onto the edge of their seats, anxious to learn who the new president will be. It's they who represent America. They are the middle, working class; their cars have dings on the doors and the dog still goes on the carpet sometimes. But looking through the picture window of the middle class is an incomplete assessment of the typical American. Barely anyone has mentioned immigrants.

America is a low income apartment complex on the bad side of town where Burmese refugees have settled after living for many years in Thailand. They are what Emma Lazarus had in mind when she wrote about the "poor, the tired, the huddled masses, yearning to be free." In Burma, these people were being killed for believing in God; here they find themselves in the majority. Their children will learn English and go to school while their parents will take the bus to their jobs at Chick-fil-A and a nearby hotel.

I never really understood what the national anthem meant by the land of the free until I started tutoring this family. They are perhaps the most courageous people I have ever known; they've been through so much yet not a word of complaint ever escapes their lips. Imagine being forced out of your own country for fear of being killed, living in a refugee camp for almost two decades and then coming to a completely different part of the world and settling in a country where absolutely everything is foreign. And then imagine trying to work and send your kids to school when you can't even read the textbooks they are learning from. Every note from a teacher, every piece of mail and every phone call is a struggle. Yet they are America. They are the people who are willing to work when Joe Six Pack needs a vacation. They are the ones who are frying our chicken, making our beds and cleaning our toilets because they want a better life. They want their children to grow up and acquire more than they could ever dream of, and only here is that possible. Here those kids can go to college and make something of themselves regardless of their religion. And here their parents can own an apartment, albeit a small run-down one, with no fear of intruders. They are what my family was two generations ago when my grandparents came here from Italy and took jobs in sewing factories and construction companies. And now, two generations later, I'm in college with a car and nice clothes and enough food with no real idea of the struggle it took to arrive at this point. Isn't that what America is? Isn't that how this country began? Why are we so critical of immigrants when our forefathers bore that title? Is it because we're no longer the poor mother, the overworked father, the hungry child? Is it because we can no longer relate to living in a tiny house and not getting anything for Christmas? I look at the kids I tutor. I look at their mother and father who want nothing but them best for them. They'll be doctors someday, I think to myself. Because that's possible in America.