Kindergartener Finally Literate Enough to Handle Immigrant Parent’s Passport Applications

‘They give me chocolate to do it’

HOUSTON 一 Local kindergartener Meera Gupta has begun handling her immigrant parent’s passport applications after recently completing her ABCs.

“After mommy and me got back home from school, daddy gave me a whole pile of paper and told me that he needed me to fill it out. I had to put where we live, phone number and something called a social security number,” said the 5-year old. “I don’t know what a lot of it means but mommy and daddy don’t know either and they give me chocolate to do it. But I messed up because I printed the DS-82 form but I needed to fill out the DS-11 because mommy and daddy are applying for the first time and not renewing their U.S. passports,” said an exhausted Gupta.

Anna Richards, a local kindergarten teacher, has expressed concern for Meera’s education.

“I’m a bit worried about Meera and her attention span during class. She looks drowsy all the time and when all the other kids are having fun playing hopscotch or foursquare, I see her in the classroom working on her parent’s tax forms or something,” said Richards. “I set up a parent-teacher conference and tried to talk to her parents but I think I just made matters worse because she had to translate our entire meeting,” said a disheartened Richards.

Scholars studying Asian American culture have noted a lasting trend with children completing complicated paperwork for their parents.

“Yeah this is something that happens with most, if not all children of immigrants. They go to school, spend their days grueling over shapes and animal noises, and then they come home to incredibly dense and articulate paperwork with overly technical jargon,” said Dr. Kevin Susanto. “It’s tough and it’s something I had to go through myself. You know, with how much the U.S. hates immigrants, you would think they would at least make passport applications extremely simple, but sadly that’s not the case,” said a disappointed Dr. Susanto.

A follow-up interview with Gupta revealed the passports were rejected due to the applications being written with purple crayon.