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immigrant story essay
Immigrant Real Stories Essay
immigrant story essay
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Affected by my family, my background, and everything around me, I was born in a family who is the first generation to get here. My grandmother, and my parents, along with some other relatives, moved here in search of better opportunities, like those from other countries for the same idea. They started out fresh but had a hard time to get started, when I was little, I assumed it had to be somewhat easy, but for people who do not know English it is like starting from scratch, but they did well, they’ve made it. When I was a child I thought everybody’s family would be the same, just your average family like mine and yours. My life as a child was a carefree life, I didn’t care for much, except stuff like doctors or dentist, I’ve done pretty much what an average kid did, I thought we had a good life going. When I went to my classmate’s house or meet their family they seemed like they were average to me. I never thought about how us as a family would have any trouble in the world, I was wrong. My parents told me that they had a good life back at China, where they grew up, my father told me that they had a pretty nice life going on back there. Why they came here is beyond my comprehension, my father told me that they had a pretty good income back there, and life was good. Why they came here stumped me and make me thought why and so I asked, they gave me vague answers, but one of the reasons was because my parents were having their first child, which was my big sister. At China, there is this policy, the one child policy, only one child, it’s because China is overpopulated. Furthermore that boys were more favored than girls were. If they were to have an only my sister, I wouldn’t be born today nor my little brother. I later discovered that a good reason why to come here, for opportunity. As I grew older, between the transition of a child to a teenager, I learned more about my family, its culture and background, and even some back story about how they came to the United States to the first place. Back at home, my parents are certainly not home for long and everyday we weren't
Firstly, the relationship expectations in Chinese customs and traditions were strongly held onto. The daughters of the Chinese family were considered as a shame for the family. The sons of the family were given more honour than the daughters. In addition, some daughters were even discriminated. “If you want a place in this world ... do not be born as a girl child” (Choy 27). The girls from the Chinese family were considered useless. They were always looked down upon in a family; they felt as if the girls cannot provide a family with wealth. Chinese society is throwing away its little girls at an astounding rate. For every 100 girls registered at birth, there are 118 little boys in other words, nearly one seventh of Chinese girl babies are going missing (Baldwin 40). The parents from Chinese family had a preference for boys as they thought; boys could work and provide the family income. Due to Chinese culture preference to having boys, girls often did not have the right to live. In the Chinese ethnicity, the family always obeyed the elder’s decision. When the family was trying to adapt to the new country and they were tryin...
The adoption process can take more than one year and cost a family up to $18,000. Couples wait anxiously for the government’s approval, then the government assigns them a baby. Couples are given nothing more than a picture of the baby. They don’t have the child’s medical information, who the parents are, etc. Finally, three days after the arrival in Beijing, the couples get to meet their baby for the first time. Under Chairman Mao in the ‘50s and ‘60s, China’s population exploded. By 1980, Mao’s successors limited families to having only one child. Sometimes, families were allowed to have two. This was the largest human population control effort in human history. China’s population is coming under control, but there are consequences no one intended. Couples feel that they must have a boy because boys often carry on the family name, provide work and they stay with their parents at old age. Possibly, over 100,000 baby girls are abandoned every year. Many of them will end up in an orphanage. Today, 1in 4 children adopted overseas come from China. The babies adopted by Americans are only a fraction of the millions of girls believed to be missing from China’s population. While the number of girls are being giving away, the number of boys are becoming way out of proportion. Today, boys greatly out number girls and its only getting worse. This relates to cultural relativism,
Imagine having to be told by the government that you were only allowed to have one child because of your ethnicity and then being forced to pay for an additional child if it happened. China fell under Communist control in 1949 with Mao Zedong leading the country. China had just gotten out of a bad war so Chairman Mao believed that the Chinese people should have as many babies as they could; he called this plan the Great Leap Forward. Soon, China was captured in a famine that killed nearly 30 million people, so Mao told the Chinese people to have smaller families. Mao Zedong created the One-Child Policy (OCP) to help prevent large families. It seemed a great idea at the time, but would soon lead to severe social issues, gender issues, and ironically, population issues.
Therefore the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and the State Council’s Resolution Concerning the Strengthening of Birth Control proclaimed the one child policy in 1980. This policy said “the state advocates the one couple has only one child except for special cases, with approval for second birth” (Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, 1980). The goals of the policy were to have zero growth in the country and maintain the population at 1.2 billion by 2000. China offered financial and marital incentives to couples with a child and suspended them if the couple had a second child. Despite being defined as a voluntary program, the policy was enforced through administrative controls (White 2006). Be...
I have to introduce you to three individuals, not random individuals, but siblings - two brothers and a sister. They may seem just like any other people, but they have a secret that isn’t easily realized unless you know them. They belong here in the sense that they were born here, but their hearts belong to another land. They are the children of immigrants; the first generation to be born in America. It is a unique experience that to others may seem odd or exotic, but for these three is just as normal as learning to ride a bike.
Since as early as the 7th century BC, gender inequality in China has been an on going problem from before the birth of a child until after its death. The "We want a boy" mentality still exists today in Chinese thinking when it comes to young couples planning to start a family. What's even worse is that it is reinforced by nonsensical family traditions in a nation where filial piety often dictates family decisions. Parents usually desired sons in order to make familial propagation, sec...
Gender Stratification is evident throughout the film about China’s one child policy. We see that there is a very unequal access to property, power, and prestige between men and women. In the Chinese society men are viewed as better than females and are the preferred parent of most couples in China. This is mainly due to the fact that men are traditionally the ones to stick around and work and support the aging parents in a form of “social security”. The women traditionally get married and move away and are not there to support the parents in the way that men are. This has caused the favoritism of the baby boy because the couples are looking
China developed into a patriarchy society, on page 445 patriarchy is defined as a group in which men-as-a-group dominates women-as-a-group; authority is vested in males. China has over four thousand years of culture and history, being one of the oldest societies in the world. With the population of China growing out of control, China took drastic measures to get a control on the amount of people being born in China. With their being around four billion people living in the world, one in five of the total population resides in China. Food and medicine became scarce and something had to be done. Laws were put into effect that families could only have one child, and if the laws were broken families would face large fines. This became the largest population effort in history, and could be the cause of devastation on China in the near future. Instantly males became the preferred gender over females, and families would take drastic measures if they had a female first. But why is male preferred over female? Because males carry on the family name and males work to help pay bills and never leave, but instead stay to support the family. Females would be given away, sold, abandoned, or even worse, killed, to prevent being fined for having two children. This is the reason why majority of adoptions from China are baby girls. Every baby girls has a story, whether abandoned in a park, or left in the market, each has a tragic start to life. And with only 100,000 baby girls a year being tracked, what is happening to the rest of the babies? Are they being sold, given away? Maybe sweat shops, or human trafficking is the answer. None of the babies have social workers, so their stories are questionable. It could b...
With more than 1.3 billion people, China has to think about a solution and find ways to deal with its population explosion. In order to have control over population, in 1970, a policy named China’s One Child Policy was introduced. Mingliang argues that, “China, through the one-child policy, has instituted the most aggressive, comprehensive population policy in the world” (1). This policy limits all families in the Republic of China to have only one child, regardless of the sex: however, within this policy there are some exceptions. It is possible to have two children only if the first child is born with a disability, if parents work in a high risk job, if the couple lives in villages, or if the family is a non- Han, otherwise you are allowed to have only one child. In China, if a family denies this policy, it is penalized by the government. According to Bluett, “these families are slapped with heavy fines and raised taxes and they no longer received free health care because defying the One Child Policy is considered a criminal act” (2). This policy is still effective today, and it has changed the life of the Chinese people in so many ways. China’s one child policy should change because with the implementation of this policy, China has faced a significant gender imbalance, as well as violating basic human rights. Consequently, this policy also has its positive side effects, such as reducing poverty and pushing the government to do something more about women’s rights.
“I am a first generation immigrant and a woman, but I don't really write about that because I feel like I'm a human being. There are universal human experiences.” (“Evelyn Rodriguez”). As a first generation woman myself, I can relate to the notion that I am more than my background. While there are universal experiences people go through, my cultural experience is something that sets me apart from others. I believe that it is essential for me to find the balance between assimilating into American culture while keeping my cultural identity.
When the leader of China was Chairman Mao, formerly called the People’s Republic of China, the crude birth rate fell from 37 thousand to 20 thousand . This is when the One Child Policy First Started. Infant mortality had declined from 227 per 1000 births in 1946 to 53 per 10000 births in 1981, as well the life expectancy had a major increase from 35 years in 1949 to 66 years in 1967 . Until the 1960’s, the china government was encouraging families to have as many children as they can to raise population. This was because of Mao’s belief that a large population is what empowered the country; this was what started the preventing of emergence of the family planning programs that were earlier in China’s development. The population then had a major growth from about 540 million in 1949 to 940 million in 1976 . Then Beginning in 1970, people were strongly encouraged to get married at a later age and only have two childr...
My family is first generation immigrants from Iraq, life coming to America was very hard. When we first came we did not speak much english. The first thing that made it so hard for us was learning a new language then having to take our citizenship test not to long after. Some of the questions that I studied for I know many native born Americans who would know the answers. This country though gave me an oppurintity that I never had before. My dad was drafted into the gulf war and during that time Sadam Hussian would have anyone killed if they did not. So my family fled to Saudi Arabia after time in the refugee camp we came to America. I feel that my story of life is so different, but I know many of us (immigrants) can relate to parts of my experiences.
At the age of seven, my life changed forever. I was no longer living in my native country; I was now a fragment of the millions of immigrants who come to the United States in search of the American Dream. At the time, my father had recently lost his job and my mother was unemployed, which caused incredible financial stress for my family. My father decided to risk his life crossing the Rio Grande River for our family to have a better life and greater rewards.
China’s one child policy was a bad idea. It had its goods and bads, but was it
Women of China have their own opinions when it comes to their families, being under a controlled government and being told how many children they can have only makes it harder if them. Also China’s Health Ministry estimates that in the four decades since the imposition of the one-child policy more than 336 million abortions have taken place in the nation. Nora...