Advanced Essay #2: Immigrants and Modern Times

Introduction: In this essay, I focused on the importance of understanding the connection between immigrants and the modern world. Throughout the process of writing this essay, I tried to make it engaging and informational to the reader so that they can leave knowing something new. This essay is a bit more heartly written because it personally relates to me and I thought that the bais aspect makes it more entertaining.

The idea that the story of immigrants is the story of modern times is often used in debates as a rebuttal when arguing against someone anti-immigration. The argument usually brings up the fact that the U.S was founded by immigrants who were seeking a better tomorrow. Despite this knowledge being present in our everyday society, our culture refuses to fully accept that the story of the immigrant is very similar to the story of the modern world. To understand how both stories relate to each other at all, we must first acknowledge that modern society has come a long way from what it was, even if we are not living in the best version of society, it is considerably better than what it used to be 50 or 100 years ago.

The immigrant person, just like society, is on a similar path. Immigrants seek a better future for themselves, however, this hopefulness for a better future is cut short by a misunderstanding on what a citizen believes the immigrant is truly seeking. In the U.S, many people believe that the agenda of immigrant people is to take jobs or live off the taxes of U.S citizens, this belief along with the assistance of others led to the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Immigrants, much like the rest of the world, look forward to progress and prospering even if that means enduring temporary hardships and accepting a society that is in need of many improvements. While conducting some research on the refugee crisis I came across a picture. The picture was of a beach at dawn, the beach was clear and on the sand of the beach laid the body of a little boy, unconscious and slightly blue. Over the dead body of the boy stood an officer with a red vest looking longly at the washed-up body of the little boy. Situations like these are not uncommon in history.

Throughout history, we can see how people of different cultures are treated when they first arrive at a new home. When the Italians, Irish, Jews, and Polish first came to the U.S they faced prejudice and discrimination, however, a century and a half later these groups have somewhat become the backbone of this country. The 116th class of congress, according to the Pew Research Center, is 13 percent composed of immigrants or children of immigrants parents. Given the basic understanding of immigration and how it relates to history and current systems, it must be concluded that the immigration story and the story of modern times are the same. Both stories are fixated on progress; the hope of a better tomorrow. The refugee crisis due to conflict in the middle east is the latest great form of history repeating itself. When the holocaust was happening the U.S among other nations refused to take in refugees, the same celebration of isolationism is occurring only this time it’s meant for the Muslim refugees. In our time in class we read a magical realism novel, Exit West, that focuses on the refugee crisis and the effect it has on those enduring it, I gathered a couple of quotes that somewhat further help us understand the possible emotional and mental headspace of an immigrant or refugee person. The first quote is a short excerpt from Exit West:

“ It was an easy promise to make because she had at that time no thoughts of leaving Saeed, but it was also a difficult one because in making it she felt she was abandoning the old man, and even if he did have his siblings and his cousins, and might now go live with them or have them come live with him, they could not protect him as Saeed and Nadia could, and so by making the promise he demanded she make, she was in a sense killing him, but that is the way of things, for when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind.”

This quote gives us an understanding as to what is happening in the mind of a migrant who is seeking a better future for themself. Filled with the deep-aching feeling of neglecting something dear to you, a close companion of guilt. When Nadia and Saeed flee from their home, they leave behind everything they knew, loved and owned. The author does a great job of illustrating this by making Nadia and Saeed frightened hopefuls as they arrive in a new home filled with trials of great magnitude. This is an example of the mental state of a migrant individual, messy and hopeful. As a world filled with democratic institutions, we must start to be more empathetic towards people of different backgrounds. With empathy comes understanding and with understanding comes results. We are trained in this modern society to look for issues and criticize, and rarely ever create change. To stop history from repeating itself and to fulfill our duty as humans we must first learn to be empathetic for those who are not like us. To accept and create change and the first step would be to accept that progress is the greatest connection between the story of the immigrant and the modern world. The will to never stop improving.

Work Cited:

Hamid, Mohsin. Exit West. Penguin Random House, 2017.

Smith, Helena. “Shocking Images of Drowned Syrian Boy Show Tragic Plight of Refugees.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 2 Sept. 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/02/shocking-image-of-drowned-syrian-boy-shows-tragic-plight-of-refugees.