A Realistic Safe Day Hannah is a 42 year old housewife. She cooks all meals, does her family’s laundry, and in her spare time watches telenovelas. Everything she does is the same as other housewives, except that Hannah’s curtains are always drawn. Day and night, those straw colored curtains block out the fear that others like Hannah live with: the fear for their safety as illegal immigrants. Since the beginning of President Obama’s campaign in 2008, the topic of immigration reform has been vastly debated by supporters and opponents of the reform within the public forum. Supporters, like the National Network for Immigration and Refugee Rights (NNIRR), seek to improve the immigration policies for all immigrants, regardless of legalization, whilst …show more content…
Individuals like Donald Trump voice the concerns and beliefs of those like him, which stirs the concept of xenophobia: the intense or irrational dislike/fear of people from other countries. These organizations animosity of immigrants has become the building blocks of the fear that illegal immigrants feel throughout their daily lives. As the number of people who charge illegal immigrants for the current problems in the U.S. increase, the repercussions that illegal immigrants face has increased as well. Through Hannah’s eyes, the life of an illegal immigrant is much harder once xenophobia is found in the community and workplaces surrounding these immigrants. “There have been times where small brawls have broken out on the street because of local citizens accusing people who have been walking down the street to their houses of being illegal immigrants,” describes Hannah. These incidents are withdrawn from the press’ view because of the way that authorities will describe the fights; as small …show more content…
Hate crimes against Hispanics made up 52.6% of all ethnicity charged hate crimes within the U.S. in 2013, but the Hispanic immigrant community troubles were not broadcasted to the public forum, which consequently led to a fear that they were not allowed to express, worried of the creation of tougher treatments. With the recent onset of increased terrorism in the U.S., immigrants face growing persecution as those who fear them believe that they are the cause for the increased terrorism. This belief filters into the protection agencies which have begun enforcing tighter regulations on illegal immigrants. According to the Fiscal Year 2015 Immigration Removals statistics 96,045 illegal immigrants alone were removed with no criminal charges against them. However 139,368 illegal immigrants were convicted criminals and thus deported to their native countries as well. Along with these statistics, the report, created by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement division, overlooked the inclusion of the data on what crimes these alleged criminals had been charged of while within the U.S. borders. As anyone can be charged of participating in suspected criminal activity, the common questioning glance that all have witnessed is especially detrimental for illegal
Part Three of the book “Just Like Us” written by Helen Thorpe is comprised of illegal undocumented individuals residing in Denver Colorado. The individuals consist of a group of four Mexican young adults all with the dream of one day attending college and finally obtaining a legal status within the United States. In this portion of the readings, Yadira, Marisela, Clara, and Elissa are entering their senior year at their University and have defined the odds of successfully completing college while maintaining an illegal status. Helen Thorpe clearly demonstrates a passion in tracking individuals that are determined to become legal citizens within society; however, lack the proper advocacy and documentation to do so. Part Three of the book envelops the complexity of maintaining a legal status among society members through the lives of these four influential young ladies striving to achieve higher education in the
In Lives in Limbo, Roberto G. Gonzales dissects the disastrous effects of US immigration policy on young Latina/os struggling in the often untouched, unnoticed, uncared for, American underbelly. Through a striking ethnography, Gonzalez examines 150 illuminating case-studies of young undocumented Latina/os, shedding light on their shared experience in the struggle for legitimacy in the United States - their lives, effectively, in limbo. He develops two major groups with which to classify the struggling youth: the college-goers, like Cesar, who received strong marks in high school and was able to land himself a spot within the UC system, and the early-exiters, like Silvia, who was unable to attend college, resigned to a paranoid life plagued
As has been demonstrated by Ochoa and Rios’s findings, labelings’ repercussions are negative and assign expectations that in turn limit life opportunities. In Gonzales and Tobar’s books, we see the over reactions and distorted views that labeling migrants as criminals creates. The repercussions of this is to further propagate fear to quell dissent within the migrant population.
Xenophobia derived from the Greek word for stranger, means the fear of outsiders or foreigners or of anything that is strange and/or foreign (Winters). Foreigners tend to scare people because people usually do not like change and it takes awhile to adapt to and understand how and why people are the way they are. People fear outsiders because the fear of otherization and the unknown scares people and “turns them off” from those who are different, and causes people to form stereotypes from events that have happened throughout the past.
Latino/a immigrants share similar experiences of anti-immigrant rhetoric just like other immigrant groups. Many Latino/as in America have faced negative comments based on their identity. For example, Rush Limbaugh, a radio host, expounds negative comments toward Latino/as, particularly Mexicans. He claimed that Mexicans are “a renegade, potential[ly] criminal element” that is “unwilling to work” (Media Matters for America, 2/28/06). These malice comments were similar to that of other immigrants. As other immigrant groups of non-English descent started arriving in America, there was an immigrant phobia towards the newcomers. During the mid-1700s, Benjamin Franklin said ...
The policies implemented by the United States to strengthen the border and enforce immigration policies have led to the abuse and profiling of undocumented immigrants. Undocumented immigrants live in constant fear of deportation and are subjected to multiple human rights violations as they are abused, exploited and discriminated against. Immigrants are racialized and stereotyped. The US government has passed laws that discriminate against undocumented immigrants, making it harder for them to live and survive in America. These laws are due to the perception that undocumented immigrants are a burden on the US economy, but on the contrary undocumented immigrants provide an economic benefit to the US, and due to the benefit they provide society
... they are trying to enforce and protect. She is a part of the same people as all the men, but they do not see her this way. They are trying to cast her out. “…but only from their confusion, impatience, and refusal to recognize the beautiful absurdity of their American identity and mine…” Our narrator is an intellectual feminine immigrant who’s self image allows her to see that she is in fact the very same as the men; she is an American. The very idea of being an ‘American’ relates directly to immigration; the United States of America was founded by immigrants exactly like the narrator; the “beautiful absurdity” is the blindness of the men about who they truly are when she already knows “…and knowing now who I was and where I was and knowing too that I no longer had to run…”. She is in a safe place hidden from the Ras’s and the Jack’s, right now she is invisible.
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).
What would it be like to wake up everyday knowing you would get bullied, mistreated, and/or abused just because of where you were born? Discrimination still exists! “Discrimination remains and there is an increase in hate crimes against Hispanics, Latinos and Mexican-Americans, as one of the perceived symbols of that discrimination, the U.S.-Mexico Border Fence, nears completion. Instead of pulling together in these difficult times, we may see a greater polarization of attitudes” (Gibson). But why are hate crimes increasing towards Latin and Hispanic aliens and what types of discrimination are occurring against them? Understanding violence towards the Hispanic and Latin alien is divided into three main classes; the difference between legal and illegal aliens, the attacks and effects, and the point of view of different people towards aliens.
Vaughan, Jessica M. “Aliens Who Overstay Their Visas Are a Serious Security Threat.” Opposing Viewpoints: Immigration. Eds. David M. Haugen, Susan Musser and Kacy Lovelace. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2009. 182-193. Print.
Carter, Sara. "Study Finds Nearly 70,000 Criminal Illegal Aliens Released Back Into the U.S." The Blaze. Mercury Radio Arts, 31 Mar. 2014. Web. 03 Apr. 2014.
The study also took a close look at how the courts deal with the issue, the administrative interpretation of the law, and the application of the reform to be very critical and increasingly impossible. The author discovered that immigration reform has chronic problems, citizens’ disinterest to participate in the political process, government inefficacy, and centralized decision making away from the very communities imparted. The lack of enforcement is mounting pressure on states’ budgets (appropriation and allocations) of resources as the number of beneficiaries for social services increased. On the other hand, Dorsey and Diaz-Barriza (2007) studied President Barack Obama stands on immigration when he was then senator and compared them to conservative and liberal position. In the research, the author lamented that then senator Obama called for a comprehensive immigration reform that would deal with the issues of border security, employers sanction for hiring illegal individuals and a path to earned citizenship. Both sides agreed in part, but disagreed with the issue of path to citizenship which created gray lack. Today, the debate continues between the both political parties and the states leading the president executive action on immigration in recent
Someone commits a hate crime every hour. In the most recent data collection, 2014, a reported 17, 876 hate crimes were committed. This is a national crisis that we cannot allow to continue.
Different media outlets perpetually remind society of the state of “crisis” at the border—a crisis that is rarely understood as a repercussion of macro-level factors that displace, push out, and, as is often the case, force people to immigrate out of their home countries for survival. Media instead focuses on criminalizing and dehumanizing the population by accentuating their impact on society thus easily promoting the need for increased policing and deportation. However, President Trump’s focus on mass deportations will have a profound effect on the economic stability of the United States (Humphrey-Jenner, 2017) that is overlooked. Coupled with policy, reflecting mainstream cultural norms, values, and beliefs, sets the stage for the social perception of undocumented immigrants, creating many of the dire social and economic conditions they experience. Ratts, Toporek, and Lewis (2010), point out that in our work the internalization of these external factors can impact a person, helping them externalize them is important just as much as creating an understanding that systems are the source of many
One of the major issues surrounding border security is illegal immigration, “For the past two decades the United States, a country with a strong tradition of limited government, has been pursuing a widely popular initiative that requires one of the most ambitious expansions of government power in modern history: securing the nation’s borders against illegal immigration” (Alden, 2012). Many people are trying to enter the United States without the proper documentation and everyday they risk their lives and others just to make it across these borders. To avoid this law enforcement and other border security has threatened these illegal immigrants with detainment and arrest and different forms of punishment. In the efforts to deter the problem, it has been far beyond feasible because they still manage to get across and it does not change their intention...