Case Study of an Immigrant
“We are all immigrants. Our only difference is that some of us arrived earlier and some of us later” a great quote from Ruiz (1997). From the 1930’s to the 1970’s most people that immigrated here were from Europe, it is only recently that people from Mexico began immigrating here (Christie, 1998). The only difference is, when people were emigrating here from Europe, they already had high income and educational levels (1998). People that are emigrating here now from Mexico have trouble keeping the economy up (1998). Economists Beverly Fox Kellam and Lucinda Vargas (1998) wrote in a recent report for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, “U.S. immigrants, on average, earn less that native workers, and the deficit has been growing-mainly because the gap in education and skills has been widening.” However, that does not stop many Mexican immigrants from coming to the U.S. in hopes of find a good job. Moreover, people of Mexico put their lives on the line every day to reach the other side of a 2,000-mile international boundary (azcentral, 2001). They see it as the U.S.-Mexico border as separating the haves from the have-nots” (2001). People that live in Mexico view the U.S. as full of wealth, hope, and economic vitality (2001). They know that the jobs in the U.S. have higher wages and more job openings, even if they are undocumented (2001). It is said that in a years time, more than a million people will get caught trying to sneak illegally into the U.S., most of them seeking work with higher pay than Mexico (Dennis, 2001). Unfortunately, more than 1,100 people have died since 1997 trying to reach this land of opportunity (2001). With all this said, my paper will focus on an illegal immigran...
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Ruiz, Ramon Eduardo (June 1997). Asymmetry. Retrieved from the World Wide Web: http://www.jsri.msu.edu/RandS/research/ops/oc16.html
The Arizona Republic (2001). Dying to Work: Highlights: Illegal Immigration Poll. The Arizona Republic on the Web. Retrieved April 23, 2003 from the World Wide Web: http://azcentral.com/news/specials/migrants/poll.html
The Arizona Republic (2001). Dying to Work: Interactive Report. The Arizona Republic on the Web. Retrieved April 23, 2003 from the World Wide Web: http://www.azcentral.com/news/specials/migrants/multimedia/html
Wagner, Dennis & Flannery, Pat ( 2001, August 26). Dying to Work: Dying to Work. The Arizona Republic on the Web. Retrieved April 23, 2003 from the World Wide Web: http://www.azcentral.com/news/specials/migrants/overview.html
Robert D. Kaplan’s articles “Travels into America’s Future” present a description of Tucson, Arizona as it stood in 1998. His articles are based entirely on his personal experiences with the city and with it’s Mexican neighbors to the south, and while somewhat entertaining, contain vast oversights and discrepancies that make his outsider standing obvious to any native reader.
Illegal immigration has been a problem that has plagued the United States for many years. This problem is not new to the country because thousands of immigrants have crossed over the oceans and Mexican border since our country was founded. The underlying problem is the lack of assimilation to the American ways of life and the acceptance of existing rules and laws. With the already fragile economy and the largely growing unemployment rate Americans must make every effort to close its borders to undocumented workers to ease the strain and retain any available jobs for unemployed Americans and legal workers. Aviva Chomsky writes “immigration plays a much more complex role in the employment picture, and many different factors affecting employment and unemployment.”(4). Chomsky so on to say, “it indeed seems to be the case that immigrants and low-skilled citizens are competing for the same jobs”(11). Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants enter the country and start working either under illegal names or take agricultural jobs in which they are paid under the table. Chomsky solidifies this fact when she say “some immigrants work in the informal economy, and are paid under the table in-cash, so they don’t have federal and state income taxes, or social security taxes, deducted from their paychecks”(36).Which a lot of employers are catching on to because on doing this they don’t have to pay taxes and can turn more of a profit This also hurts the country’s economy because no one is paying their taxes and so there is no money flowing to pull the country out of the current recession. This burden indefinitely falls on the shoulders of the rest of the legal citizens of America who are inevitable paying the way for this one sided labor for...
For many Mexican immigrants, crossing the border into the land of freedom and the American dream is no easy task. Some immigrants come over illegally by means of hiding in cars to cross borders, using visitor visas to stay longer, marrying to become citizens, and having babies as ‘anchors’ to grant automatic citizenship. Other immigrants gain green cards and work visas and work their way into becoming US citizens legally and subsequently gaining citizenship through paperwork for their families back home. After escaping harsh living and working conditions in Mexico, immigrants come to America prepared to gain education, opportunity, and work. This American dream unfortunately does not come to pass for most.
“I do not believe that many American citizens . . . really wanted to create such immense human suffering . . . in the name of battling illegal immigration” (Carr 70). For hundreds of years, there has been illegal immigration starting from slavery, voluntary taking others from different countries to work in different parts of the world, to one of the most popular- Mexican immigration to the United States. Mexican immigration has been said to be one of the most common immigration acts in the world. Although the high demand to keep immigrants away from crossing the border, Mexicans that have immigrated to the U.S have made an impact on the American culture because of their self sacrifices on the aspiration to cross over. Then conditions
The change in demographics in Mexico is labeled as one of the larger reasons for the increased number of immigrants coming to the United States from Mexico. Ojeda cites that, over the past forty years, one-third of the immigrants come due to high birth rates in Mexico. Howe...
In Marcelo M. Suarez- Orozco and Carola Suarez- Orozco’s article “How Immigrants became “other” Marcelo and Carola reference the hardships and struggles of undocumented immigrants while at the same time argue that no human being should be discriminated as an immigrant. There are millions of undocumented people that risk their lives by coming to the United States all to try and make a better life for themselves. These immigrants are categorized and thought upon as terrorist, rapists, and overall a threat to Americans. When in reality they are just as hard working as American citizens. This article presents different cases in which immigrants have struggled to try and improve their life in America. It overall reflects on the things that immigrants go through. Immigrants come to the United States with a purpose and that is to escape poverty. It’s not simply crossing the border and suddenly having a great life. These people lose their families and go years without seeing them all to try and provide for them. They risk getting caught and not surviving trying to make it to the other side. Those that make it often don’t know where to go as they are unfamiliar. They all struggle and every story is different, but to them it’s worth the risk. To work the miserable jobs that Americans won’t. “I did not come to steal from anyone. I put my all in the jobs I take. And I don’t see any of the Americans wanting to do this work” (668). These
Therefore, with the decline of industrial work in the inner city, densely crowded areas of recently arrived migrants changed to communities abandoned by the working and middle classes. Many cities have watched the decline of
The United States of America, being a country founded by immigrants, is known all over the world as the land of great opportunities. People from all walks of life travelled across the globe, taking a chance to find a better life for them and their family. Over the years, the population of immigrants has grown immensely, resulting in the currently controversial issue of illegal immigration. Illegal immigrants are the people who have overstayed the time granted on their US, visa or those who have broken the federal law by crossing the border illegally. Matt O’Brien stated in his article “The government thinks that 10.8 million illegal immigrants lived in the country in January 2009, down from a peak of nearly 12 million in 2007.”(Para, 2) While some argue that illegal immigrants burden the United States of America and its economy, others believe that they have become essential and are an important part of the US, economy.
Most of the United States (U.S) is comprised of immigrants—including those who have migrated to the States from another country and those whose ancestors freely travelled to the States in search of a fresh start. Every year, the U.S. grants a limited number of people around the world the opportunity to immigrate to the States each year. As a result of the restriction, citizens from neighboring countries cross the border illegally. According to an article by Jens Manuel Krogstad, 11.3 million unauthorized immigrants reside in the U.S. in 2014. This whopping number has stirred controversy both politically and economically for America’s government officials. As a result, many people argue whether illegal immigrants should or should not be aided
2. Parker, Laura, USA just wouldn’t work without immigrant labor, (July 2001), retrieved 4 Jun 2007, from: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/july01/2001-07-23-immigrant.htm
Jordan, Miriam. “Latest immigration wave: retreat: an illegal worker realizes dram, briefly; fewer are sneaking in.” Current 507 (November 2008): 27-29. Academic OneFile. Web. 21 March 2011.
At a young age, my teachers and parents taught me to believe that I could do and accomplish anything that I set my mind to. I grew up thinking that I was unstoppable and that the only limit to my achievements was the sky. However, during my second year in high school, I began to realize that I was not as unstoppable as I had thought. I began to experience the consequences of my parent’s decision of bringing me to the United States illegally. Among those consequences were, not being able to apply for a job, obtain a driver’s license or take advantage of the dual enrollment program at my high school, simply because I did not possess a social security number. I remember thinking that all of my hard work was in vain and that I was not going to
Mexico has been no stranger to economic hardship; despite the efforts to modernize it in the image of the United states since the late nineteenth century under Porfirio Diaz and up to the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement, it has failed and consequently forced the exodus of many of its people in search for economic opportunity. That some of these efforts towards modernity and development have helped a small fraction of the population is undeniable, but they have often come at the expense of those most vulnerable living in the Mexican countryside. In a struggle for economic survival, many Mexicans have immigrated to the United States and become part of the American working class in order to assume the role of their family’s
Whenever we lose something, we seem to appreciate its value more than when we had that said item. This concept can also apply to people. It can be losing a valued employee and realizing how much your business relied upon that said individual. The 2004 film A Day Without A Mexican directed by Sergio Arau relies very much on this concept of losing a people or a whole population of people. Sergio Arau’s 2004 film A Day Without A Mexican demonstrates the value the Californian Mexican population for industries relating to food, taking a part certain stigmas that are attached to the Hispanic population, and displaying the use of the Mexican people as a prop for further capital gains.
There are a variety of push and pull factors that bring these migrant farmworkers into the fields. Those fields are, to them, overflowing with freedom and gleaming opportunities, welcoming them and their hungry families. To farm owners and large corporations, they are nothing but disposable units of cheap labor who are easily exploited out of their desperation and a lack of say amidst their situation. Millions of Mexican men, women and even children, for example, choose the life-or-death decision of crossing the border every year, risking everything they have and throwing themselves into the unknown: what they do not foresee will be the biggest Hunger Games of their lives. They leave their families behind, trekking across the deserts of Arizona for days at a time without food or water, or swimming through the Rio Grande with the treacherous risk of getting caught by U.S. officials and, more common than most may think, the odds of meeting death along the way (Bauer 2010). These unfortunate fallen remain anonymous as they are reduced to bones in the desert, and their fate