Carlos Alejandro was born in Maracaibo, Venezuela in 1993. The eldest of 4 brothers. From a young age, he carried a sense of responsibility for being the firstborn. After high school, he studied Mechanical Engineering in the University of Zulia. He graduated with the hope of starting his professional career in his home town. But before he could even take his first step into the workforce, Venezuela’s economic crisis pushed him to make a difficult choice: leave the country he loved to save his family.

 

Jobs were scarce. Insecurity was growing. And vital needs were slowly stopping to be met; electricity, water, gasoline, and even food. For many young Venezuelans, the only way forward was to leave. Carlos’s first destination was Lima, Peru, where he arrived in 2016. There, he worked in informal jobs, earning better salaries than he could at home, but quickly discovering that life abroad brought its own set of challenges. Discrimination followed him everywhere, work conditions were not optimal, and despite his best efforts, he could never feel truly comfortable. When he lost his job, and the zone where he was living with his roommate drastically increased rent prices, he returned to Venezuela for a short time, spending nearly a year trying to rebuild and look for new opportunities. But the conditions hadn’t improved — if anything, they were worse.

 

It was then that Carlos made the decision to move to the United States in 2019. Arriving in a country where he didn’t speak the language, he faced the uncertainty of starting from zero. He stayed with an uncle who offered him a temporary room and began working in fast food restaurants, taking any job that would help him stay afloat. “Before I used to work to live,” he recalls, “then I was feeling that I was living to work.” Part of his salary was sent back to Venezuela to help his family, money that covered the medical expenses of his parents and supported his younger brothers, who were still in school at the time. Even while struggling himself, Carlos never stopped thinking of them. Slowly, his determination began to pay off. He found more stable work in construction, workshops, and other trades, gradually affording a new car, then renting his own place downtown. Eventually, he secured a job that allowed him two days of rest a week, easing the constant physical exhaustion.

 

The most important change came when his brothers were finally able to join him in the United States. With his family by his side, he began to feel the warmth of the home he had been longing for since the day he left Venezuela. That sense of belonging grew even stronger when he met the woman he married and slowly started a family of his own.

 

Life in the U.S. was still demanding — the struggles of being a foreigner in a harsh country never disappeared — but now he had a place to return to at the end of the day, a place that truly felt like his. “I thought many times of going back to my country,” he says, “but then I realized that there is a life I want to achieve, and back there I’m not able to.”

 

Today, Carlos reflects on his journey:

 

“There’s no place that will feel the same as home. But that home we talk about is not a place itself — it’s a period of time, and unfortunately, time doesn’t come back. That’s why we have to give everything to make a new home, a new place for memories, and new people to love.”

 

From the streets of Maracaibo to the cities of the U.S., Carlos’s story is one sacrifice and love — proof that even when you leave your homeland behind, you can still build a life worth calling home.