Chapter 17 thoughts and observations

            Chapter 17 deals with the contemporary issue of immigration and its trends. The most revealing thing I found were the deficiencies evident in the INS. My specific interest was the question of illegal immigration and how we will go about defining the problem and then working towards a solution. One of the first issues that was brought to my attention in the chapter was how difficult it is to determine how many undocumented immigrants there are in the United States. The lack of reliable data makes it difficult for the INS to accurately estimate how many immigrants there are in the United States and where they are from. The chapter goes on to explain that public opinion has been increasingly mercurial in regards to how immigration should be legislated. I believe that this constantly changing opinion on immigration is due to the changing trends in immigration. The more immigrants there are in the country I am willing to assume the more resistance there will be for allowing new immigrants into the country and the more people will want to see undocumented immigrants removed. I believe that in regards to immigration out of sight is truly out of mind for the majority of people. As long as there is not a lot of attention being paid to the number of immigrants in the United States it ceases to be much of an issue or at least is not part of the national conversation. This is one of the reasons I think September 11^th has had such an impact on the national conversation regarding immigration. The intense scrutiny that the attack garnered brought focus to how the terrorist had entered into the country in the first place. This brought the discussion on immigration into the realm of national defense. The problem with this development is that the leeway we give legislators to protect us is much more than what we would give legislators to help protect our safety. As a result more restrictive laws for immigrants can be passed under the guise of protecting American lives. The opponents of immigration can successfully paint immigrants as a threat to our national security, and deemphasize the fact that the overwhelming majority of undocumented immigrants are hardworking people who provide an immense value of service to our country. Often times it is too easy for the opponents of immigration to frame the debate in a way that favors their position. There is a massive difference between securing borders and dealing with the question of immigrants, which are linked far too often. Allowing the hard-working undocumented workers in this country to stay here does nothing but benefit America. The textbook goes a long way in showcasing how America was built on the backs of immigrants. For the entirety of our history immigrants from various nations have played a vital role in the ongoing development of our country. Every domestic born American citizen has benefited from the open policy of immigration that has existed since our countries inception. As such it is our duty as a country to keep that policy alive and allow immigrants a chance to bring their dreams to fruition, just like our ancestors did.

thoughts on chapters 15-16

            Chapter sixteen was of major interest to me because it spoke to the dramatic shift in political ideology our country has gone through. From the end of World War II until the 1980s America was fairly consistently ideologically liberal. The overall movement or trend of the country was to the left. Social reform movements like the Civil Rights Movement, or the Women’s Liberation movement were all possible because the country was moving in a progressive direction. This progressive movement had a positive impact on immigration and the willingness to let people from different countries share in American society. As was mentioned in a previous chapter when people in the country are more optimistic about their future they are more receptive to accepting immigrants. The 1950s and 1960s were both times of great hope and optimism that America and the world could be made into a better place. It was during this era that laws were passed that enabled more people to immigrate into America. The period of the 1970s saw the beginning of the disillusionment of America, and began a period of cynicism in the United States that has continued unabated for a number of years. By the 1970s all of the great revolutionaries from the 1960s had died. Men like Robert and John Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. had all lost their lives struggling for equality. By 1975 the United States had ended the Vietnam War and with it much of the progressive spirit in the country died down because they no longer had a grand cause to champion. The 1980s saw a rise in conservative ideology with the election of Ronald Regan and a rebirth of the nativist spirit that had stifled immigration in the 1920s. I think it is funny that anti-immigration sentiment and conservative thought seem to go hand in hand. This reverberates to the present time where a rise in conservative thinking has again lead to the tightening of immigration. I wonder what is the connection between conservative ideals and refusing immigrants the right to emigrate into the United States? Why is there such a vested interest for conservatives to keep immigrants from becoming Americans? It is strange that in today’s political clime conservatives claim to honor the traditions of America. Why then do they reject our greatest tradition, accepting immigrants and allowing them to partake in the American Dream? It was also interesting to note that the same arguments that exist today were being brought up in the 1980s, one of the biggest being that immigrants represent a massive threat to American jobs. This has always been a baffling belief since evidence shows that immigrants actually help stimulate economic growth which creates new jobs. I think the issue comes down to fear of the other. Many people who are against immigration hold some form of prejudiced belief that precludes them from looking at the situation rationally. Immigrants have always been a vital part of the fabric of American life and as such need to be given the same opportunity that countless other generations have been afforded. Preventing this people from entering the United States is a major disservice to the spirit of America. Overall I found the chapter to be enlightening and scary that we are still having the same discussions 20 years after the fact. The other salient point I thought the chapter made was that during the 1980s the fact that nativist rhetoric went unchecked for so long that it helped foster a belief in society that was hard quell once it began. By letting these tendencies go unchecked they were able to take root and spread like a cancer, infecting an increasing number of citizens. I think that it is important that people take a stand and speak on behalf of immigrants or the discussion could devolve into nothing but racist platitudes.

Chapters 13-14

            Chapter 13 deals with the change in immigration patterns and policy that occurring in the period following WWII. The first issue it covers is the people who were displaced after their homes had been destroyed in the war. It is disgusting that even after learning of the Holocaust so many American citizens were adamant that Jews not be allowed to immigrate. It is a shame that even after 7 million deaths Anti-Semitism was so prevalent in America. Despite this the American government felt the need to atone for its immigration policy during pre-war times and did let this sentiment guide their immigration policy. It is also interesting to note that the Red Scare was beginning to take shape in the fears about immigrants from certain areas. The rise of communist parties in almost every country was bothering Americans even in the late 1940s. The end of WWII lead to the creation of numerous Western European refugees who needed to find homes. The Communist scare had some other strange effects on immigration policy. Those who were doing the screening for who was allowed into the country increasingly neglected fascists. Many former Nazis and war criminals were allowed into the country because the screening process was more concerned with weeding out communists. Shouldn’t the country have been just as worried about potential Nazis making their way into the nation? It makes me wonder how much people knew about the Holocaust at the time and how the Nazis were viewed at the end of the war. I think that one of the reasons Germans were not targeted as much was that with the fall of the Third Reich Nazis did not pose the same kind of threat that communists did. However, I would think that fascism would still be viewed as a bigger threat to American society than communism. In fact I have never understood why communism is so universally reviled by American society. It just does not seem that communism poses as big of a threat to American life as some would have us believe. I also found the definition of what a refugee is interesting. According to an excerpt in the book refugees are defined by the United States government as, any person who is outside any country of his nationality or in the case of any person having no nationality, is outside of any country in which he last habitually resided, and who is unable or unwilling to return to, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country because of persecution, or a well-founded fear of persecution, on account of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.” This definition is important because it grants asylum to refugee, something America had not done up to that point. Creating an asylum policy helped lead to Mariel Crisis in the 1980s. I have always been interested in the Mariel Crisis since it was a factor in leading to the cocaine epidemic that hit Miami in the 1980s. Numerous Latin American drug dealers were able to enter into Miami, this along with the rising popularity of cocaine lead to a crime wave that caused Miami to become the murder capital of the United States for a brief period in the 1980s. This is not to say that a majority of the people who came from Cuba during this time were criminals in fact most were not. However, there were certainly some criminals who were allowed to leave Cuba for the United States. In fact Fidel Castro, the dictator of Cuba, famously emptied many of Cuba’s prisons and sent the inmates to America. It is this fact that was used to help construct the basis for the 1980s crime movie “Scarface”.

            Concerning chapter 14 and Asian immigration I did not find too much interesting about this chapter. Most of the information seemed to be dry demographics about the various Asian groups that made their way to American Shores. The only thing that really struck me was the idea of the model minority. Asian’s are one of the view minorities in this country that posses a positive stereotype. Will stereotyping any group is never smart, I feel that their stereotype is what has helped lead to the massive growth in Asian immigration. 

Review for 11 and 12

            “The passage of restrictive immigration legislation and the phasing in of the national origins system in the 1920s brought an entire era of American immigration history to an end. The century of immigration was over”. Chapter 11 covers what took place immediately following the end of the century of immigration and for the most part I found the information to be fairly obvious. During the early years of the 1920s immigration remained was consistent with the same number of people who had immigrated in the past. The passage of restrictive laws that prevented how many people could immigrate into the country help bring curtail the number of migrants into the United States. The onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s saw an even further decline in the number of men women and children who made their way into the United States. Finally, continuing the downward trend of immigration World War II say the biggest decline in immigration to the United States. There was nothing about this chapter I did not think could have been deduced without study as it is easy to understand how these events would limit immigration. Obviously, passing any kind of law that makes it harder to enter the country will prohibit people from entering the country. The Great Depression caused a global reduction in the amount of money that was present in the world. As such few people had the ability to immigrate into the United States. On top of their being a limit on the amount of wealth that was present in the world, there was virtually no money or work to be had in the United States. As such the main reason that immigrants had for traveling to America no longer existed further decreasing the number of people willing to emigrate to the United States.

            The Sleepy Lagoon case was really interesting. I am often shocked at how it is possible for our judicial system to become so corrupted that blatantly innocent people can be sentenced for crimes it is obvious they could not have committed. The way the men in the Sleepy Lagoon were railroaded due to prejudice reminds me a lot of what happened to Sacco and Vanzetti two Italian immigrants who were also falsely convicted of crimes due to their ethnicity. Falsely convicting immigrants for things they certainly did not do undermines our judicial system and weakens the faith people have in it, especially in the long term. It also means that the murderer of Jose Diaz was never brought to justice, because the legal system was too busy convicting innocent Chicano men for the crime. This kind of activity creates massive divisions in society that take a lot of time to heal, assuming they do and lead to much resentment. It is shocking to learn that the treatment of Hispanics in California is eerily similar to what African-Americans faced in the South prior to desegregation. It is common knowledge how bad conditions in the South were for minorities, but I did not think that the situation on the West Coast was as bad as it was.  

Chapter 10 reflections

Chapter 10’s coverage of Nativism was illuminating and has a lot of contemporary parallels that I think are beneficial to understand. The biggest lesson that I think can be learned are the tendencies of societies that help Nativism prevail. When Americans are in a good place and in an optimistic frame of mind they are more likely to be welcoming to immigrants. When they are more pessimistic about their future Americans become less willing to tolerate immigrants. The book states it this way, “successful nativist movements have almost always been linked to more general fears or uneasiness in American society. When most Americans are generally united and feel confident about their future, they seem to be more willing to share that future with foreigners; conversely, when they are divided and lack confidence in the future, nativism is more likely to triumph”. In our current climate of extreme hostility towards immigrants it is obvious where we stand as a country. I never thought about how the mood of the country might affect our attitudes towards those who wish to immigrate here. The notion that if you are happy you wish to share that happiness makes sense, but that the notion could apply to the nation as a whole and immigration in particular is not a connection I would have made. It also makes me wonder that given the age of the text are we not now currently living in a new phase of Nativism. This trend towards causing Nativism helps explain why citizens of Middle Eastern decent and Hispanics are the cause of such ire. The attacks on September 11^th were extremely traumatic to the psyche of the country. As such it lead to many citizens fearing for their future and cultivated a fear of people from the Middle East. Also, the economic recession started in 2008 has forced many American’s to question the viability of their economic future. The open-ended nature of the answer helps explain why so many people are adamantly opposed to Hispanic immigration. I think it is interesting to note that both of these responses are inherently internal to the individual. In other words, the need to exclude immigrants has more to do with American Citizens and little to do with the immigrants themselves. This is a contingency I never thought of and makes me wonder what steps could be taken to help combat the rising tide of resentment directed at immigrants. If the problem were predicated on ignorance it could be solved by simply educating people. However, the reading suggests the problem might be more deeply rooted in circumstances that are much harder to control. Ultimately, I believe that the process of Nativism is a truly destructive force and can be majorly detrimental to the functioning of society if left unchecked. The simple fact is that immigrants will always be a part of this country and as such we have to work on solutions that help them integrate into our society instead of excluding them. 

Review of chapters 7-9

            The overall thing that struck me reading chapters 7-9 were the details of the immigrant experience in the United States. As someone who has been a resident of the states since my birth it is easy to fall into the trap of believing that society in America is static and that everyone’s experience is roughly universal. Reading through the experiences of the various immigrant groups I realize how varied the lives of differing ethnicities can be. I was also struck by how the various groups of people grouped together and created their own microcosms of their country of origin. I always assumed that people who immigrated to this country were forced to assimilate and become part of American society. While I still believe this to be the case it seems that the process takes much longer than I originally thought. I assume that the children of immigrants who grow up largely ignorant of their parent’s culture are more likely to see themselves as “native” Americans and adopt American culture. The parents of these first generation Americans are more likely to solidly identify with the culture of their home countries and as such look to recreate as much as their home country as possible. It is fascinating that the climate in America was such that immigrants had to band together in order to pool resources and compete with the other groups that were already here. This just further dispels the notion that America was a Nation predicated on diversity.

            The relationship and manner in which immigrants interacted was also interesting. Reading how Catholic Polish immigrants were in constant conflict with the Irish run American Catholic church went a long way in explaining the tensions that existed between the different ethnicities. Not even common religious beliefs were enough to cause members of different groups to work with each other. I wonder how different would things be if the various groups would have worked together instead of at cross purposes. Pooling their resources might have allowed immigrants to attain better paying wages faster than they were able to get on their own.

            I also found the idea that American History is that of westward expansion and fulfilling our country’s “manifest destiny” by expanding all the way into the Pacific Ocean. I had never truly contemplated the implications of this line of thinking. By making this assumption we all but forget the role that industrialized cities played in the development of the United States and the socialization of its people. The immigrants who moved into these cities played a major role in the development of the United States and ignoring their contributions are a mistake. I think it is important to recognize what people from all ethnicities bring to the history of America. By not doing so we marginalize the various people that help make America such a unique place to live.

            I do not understand the prejudice that Jewish people have faced throughout history. It seems like virtually every country at one point or another has decided to wage war on Jewish citizens for the simple fact that they belong to a certain ethnic group. The section on Eastern European Jewish migration to the United States is one of escaping from ethnic persecution. The journey they faced getting to the country was also interesting. For Russian Jews they were forced to flee through Germany, a country that was hostile towards Jews and did not want them to settle in their borders. However, Jewish immigrants made so much money for German sailors that the government relaxed their restrictions on letting Jewish people through the German borders. I actually thought this was somewhat humorous because the Germans greed outstripped their need to be racist. It makes me wonder how they deemed the Jews to be inferior or disharmonious to society even though they helped the German economy. This is one of the things I don’t understand about racism and the need to discriminate against a group of people. It seems as though racism never truly holds up to reality. Eventually, racism never lives up to the scrutiny of reason or light of reality.

            I was really interested in the means that Chinese Americans used in the nineteenth century to make it to America. Using a system of credit in order to obtain the money for passage is an interesting system I wish more was known about. I am extremely curious to know how the Chinese people who used this system managed to pay back their loans or what happened if they defaulted. What kind of collateral was used to ensure that the Chinese money-lenders would not lose out on their investments? Given the length of time the system was in existence it is obvious that a large percentage of people paid back their loans which makes me wonder how they earned such a large amount of money. The book states that Chinese immigrants would take a loan of 50 dollars and agree to pay back as much as 200 dollars to lenders. That is a staggering interest rate on the loan for people who could not afford to earn 50 dollars in their own country. Where the opportunities in America really that much more plentiful when compared to those in other countries? I also thought the skewed male to female ratio in Chinese immigrants was strange as well. How lonely were the Chinese males without the company or at least sight of women from their native land?

Chap 6. Thoughts

            In all honest I found chap 6 to be somewhat boring in its description of why certain groups choose to immigrate to the United States during the “nineteenth century”, otherwise known as the period between the War of 1812 and the passage of National Origins Act of 1924. The chapter gives fairly dry accounts of the immigration patterns for the Irish, German and Scandinavian immigrants of this time. The most interesting part of the chapter for me was the detailing of the reasons for Irish immigration and their overall immigration experience. The reason that many Irish immigrated during this time was due to the Great Potato Famine which forced many Irish people to flee the country. This is clearly a push factor leading to the mass exodus of numerous Irish citizens looking to improve their lot in life by seeking opportunities in America. What I found most interesting was the sheer impact Irish immigrants had on American emigration, accounting for a large portion of the total immigrants during this time period. It makes me wonder if having so many Irishmen in the country helped speed along their assimilation in to American society. While at the time I am sure that there was considerable prejudice against the Iris at the time it would not be long until John F. Kennedy was elected as the first Irish-Catholic President. It is ridiculous to think now that at any time in American history being Irish was considered a negative and they were not well received as an ethnic group. Does this mean that America always has to have an ethnic group it needs to exclude or marginalize? Why were the Irish so disliked then and why are Hispanics and in particular Mexicans so disliked now? Is there a connection that can be made between the two different groups that would explain the phenomenon. Personally, I think that the similarity lies with the mentality of the many who feel the need to persecute the few. I also believe that people have an ingrained fear of what is new which leads to a sense of anger and hatred. I wonder if there is a cultural blueprint Hispanic’s can follow in order to mimic the success the Irish have had in becoming accepted into American culture. In the end all I most likely takes is time for a new group to develop roots in the United States. If this is indeed the case then Hispanic’s are well on their way to developing a major voice in the sphere of American influence and will have increasingly more opportunites to effect change in society. I think the ultimately lesson to learn is that just like the Irish, Hispanic’s have something unique to offer the United States and it would be to our benefit to take advantage to make use of what the entire citizenry has to offer.