A family affair: like many children of immigrants, Erica Ramos helps with her parents' business.

• Author: Ramos, Erica
• Position: VOICES

Every Saturday, I get up at 6:30 a.m. to go to work. And every day after school, I go to my job. It's not a paying job, but it is a mandatory one.

My parents, who came to the U.S. from E1 Salvador 24 years ago, own a small grocery store in Washington, D.C., and everyone in our family has to help make the business work.

When my parents first came to the U.S., they cleaned houses and offices, sold jewelry, and my morn worked as a Cook in a restaurant.

They often had to work several jobs at a time to scrape enough money together. When my parents finally saved enough to open their grocery store in 2005, it was a huge change.

FRUSTRATIONS

Owning their own business was a big upgrade from cleaning people's houses, but it was also a sacrifice because it required so many more hours of work. Instead of working 9 or 10 hours a day and having Sundays off, now my parents work 12 hours Monday through Saturday, and 11 on Sunday.

For me, working at the store can be frustrating. Sometimes, I want to go out on Friday nights, but I have the responsibility of waking up early the next day, so I don't. I can never sleep late on the weekends like many of my friends do.

This year, I'm on the lacrosse team, so I have school, then practice, and then sometimes work. It gets tiring. Sometimes I have to miss practice or a game if I'm needed at the store.

And sometimes I'm annoyed that I don't get a salary for all my work. Of course, my parents would say they pay me with clothes, food, and shelter.

Allowance is not in my parents' vocabulary. Being immigrants, my parents expect me to help out a lot. In El Salvador, the children in a family always help. My dad began working in the fields when he was 10, and my mom used to go with my...