INTRO: My goal when writing this essay was to help readers realize the weight that the word “foreign” holds as well as go in-depth trying to explain the psychology on why I believe immigrants struggle so much in America. I also try and dismiss previous stereotypes of immigrants and rather than replace those stereotypes with the opinions I have on immigrants, I encourage the reader to try and understand things and people that are foreign instead of blindly following other people’s thoughts on them. I feel as though I did a good job with achieving my goal and hope that my essay engages the reader’s mind to not only agree with my opinions, but also help the reader create opinions of their own.

ADVANCED ESSAY:

Foreign… “ from, in, or of a characteristic of a country or language other than one’s own”… or better yet, something “strange and unfamiliar”. A quick Google search would reveal those definitions. But is it really that simple? Is anything that is strange and unfamiliar automatically foreign? Or does the word hold a greater weight than it is credited? The word “foreign” is like a fingerprint, it’s unique to every person. When faced with something foreign, or “strange or unfamiliar”, people often reject it or simply brush it off as if it never existed. This is because something “foreign” can interfere with what is already known, experienced, and seen. When we are born, the entire world is foreign, and the years and decades that make up your lifetime was spent learning what surrounds you. Eventually we become comfortable with what surrounds us because we understand it and have observed it for years until eventually it doesn’t become foreign. But if something foreign comes into the picture, like perhaps you travel to another country or maybe a person with a foreign background comes into your life, it scares you. And I believe that is the reason for the struggle of immigrants, its because everybody is scared of them… their culture, their effect on their everyday life and their homeland. Allow me to dig deeper.

In the book, We Need New Names, Darling moves to a foreign country, America, and finds out about something unusual about the culture here… pornography. In the book you can see Darling’s reactions through these quotes: “These days, we get off school we hurry home to watch flicks. We always do it at my house because nobody there in the afternoons… Before, we used to watch XTube, but now we have discovered RedTube, which is way classier and doesn’t have many viruses.”pg. 202 and “I reach forward and click on Mute because when the real action starts we always like to be the soundtrack of the flicks. We have learned to do the noises, so when the boy starts working the woman we moan and we moand and we groan, our noise growing fiercer with each hard thrust like we have become the woman in the flick… ”pg. 203. Now obviously she isn’t necessarily scared by this, but it does show that this is foreign to her. You can see that what she is doing is weird and not normal. The way she interacts and reacts to this is very odd and experimental. This shows that when people are faced with something new or foreign they react in very odd ways if they don’t reject it already. Understand that their reactions or interactions will not always be the same because like I said before, what’s foreign to a person is unique to that person, but more often than not people will act in a negative manner towards what is foreign to them.

An example of a world leader demonstrating a negative mannerism towards foreign people is our president here in the United States of America, President Donald J Trump. I think we all know his stance on immigration, refugees, etc. but let me pull a statement he made on November 1, 2018 at 4:19 PM in the Roosevelt Room: “It’s like an invasion. They have violently overrun the Mexican border. You saw that two days ago. These are tough people, in many cases. A lot of young men, strong men. And a lot of men that maybe we don’t want in our country. But again, we’ll find that out through the legal process. But they’ve overrun the Mexican police, and they’ve overrun and hurt badly Mexican soldiers. So this isn’t an innocent group of people. It’s a large number of people that are tough. They’ve injured, they’ve attacked, and the Mexican police and military has actually suffered.” As you can see, this is the definition of ignorance. First, he titles illegal immigrants coming into the US as an “invasion” which makes it sound like illegal immigrants are coming into our country to overrun it which, for the most part, is not the case. Second, he titles these people as “A lot of young men, strong men. And a lot of men that maybe we don’t want in our country.” He does this to strike fear into the public so that the citizens of America fear these people and view them as monsters so that his harsh actions are justified. Lastly, he states that “They’ve overrun the Mexican police, and they’ve overrun and hurt badly Mexican soldiers.” Now this may be true, however, he pulled a fact about a small amount of illegal immigrants and made this a generalization about a group 100x bigger. Now, I am not supporting illegal immigration, but I also do not support how Trump describes these illegal immigrants. Instead of bashing them to the public, maybe he can encourage people to actually research and understand these foreign people so that the citizen’s can actually know why these people are illegally migrating(which for the most part is to have a better life).

There are different ways that someone can react to something foreign… people tend to be on the “safe” side by not interacting with foreign things/people or trying to understand them and more often than not, people tend to act negatively towards things that are foreign because they fear them. I feel as though this is not a proper way to live life and I encourage people to try and interact with all that is foreign to get a better understanding of them instead of listening to the media’s opinion on them. “Foreign”, like the objects and people it describes, is not just a one layered thing… it holds history, it holds meaning, and it holds emotion.

Citations:

• Bulawayo, N. V. (2014). We need new names. London: Vintage Books.
• Remarks by President Trump on the Illegal Immigration Crisis and Border Security. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-illegal-immigration-crisis-border-security/.

In a picture of a narrow road surrounded by grass and trees is a family walking. Three young children are walking alongside their parents with jackets on and sad faces. The mother of the children is carrying luggage on her back and around her neck while holding the hand of her crying child. A bag is in the father’s hand while he is carrying a baby strapped onto his chest. The family is walking on highways and fields sunshine to sunset. While attempting to cross the border, this family along with many others were found by the authorities and sent back to their refugee camps. An immigrant is told to be someone who moved to live in another country permanently. Today, there are over forty million immigrants living in America. All of these humans contain backgrounds from a diverse selection of countries. These migrants came to America for reasons that are clear to them but not clear to Americans. When immigrants come into America, Americans tend to misunderstand their purposes and reasons. Immigrants are unique and deserve a fair opportunity to live in America to create a new life for themselves without complications. Not only do immigrants deserve a fair chance but they bring something different into America that can not be achieved without accepting them. The backgrounds of immigrants are heavily misunderstood. This misunderstanding creates fear which leads to judgment.

In the movie Beasts of the Southern Wild, a film created in 2012 capturing a daughter and father having to prepare for the end of the word, there are many instances of the hardships families have to go through back at home. Hushpuppy is the name of a little girl who is six-years-old. She and her dad were living off of the last of what they had. The place they lived in consisted of people who were about to witness what they thought would be the end of the world. This end of the world phrase was really an enormous flood. While many people decided to flee the area, others stayed along with them.

This idea of fleeing versus staying is what many immigrants have to decide. In the movie, the family decided to stay because they loved home so much but this caused sickness which led to death. “Everybody loses the thing that made them, even in nature”. This quote was from Hushpuppy after losing her father through the natural disaster. A risk that migrants have to take is if they want to stay home or leave to lose everything and start over. This is jeopardizing their lives which could put their families in mental trauma. Moving away is not always the easiest choice but is sometimes the choice that has to be made.

Another example of the turnout of immigrants is in the book Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario. A mother left her son and daughter in Honduras to start a new life in America. The family was dirt poor and the mother could barely afford food. Jobs were limited and making money to feed three people was extremely difficult. Without a father, Enrique and his older sister who made slow money were abandoned by their mother and were supposedly receiving money sent by their mother in America. Enrique got a taste of what is what like for immigrants to cross the border and sneak by the officers. On page 13, Enrique said, “Although I often felt exhausted and miserable, I knew I was experiencing only an iota of what migrant children go through…The journey gave me a glimmer of how hard this is for them.”

This story is nonfiction and is similar to many other experiences. By moving to America, jobs and opportunities that occur are the only hopes for families and without that hope, families will be passing away years to short. This choice of leaving then becomes a must. A popular argument in which Americans are against immigration is because they believe immigrants will take American jobs, hurt the poor, vote against republicans, and many more. These are all decent reasons to be frustrated with immigration but people are not seeing the big picture.

These human beings are coming from places with no opportunity to live a healthy life and raise their kids. Not only are these families desperate to start a new life but they are also desperate to simply go to America untouched. In Enriques Journey, Enrique said, ¨He’d told me about the gangsters who rule the train tops, the bandits along the tracks, the Mexican police who patrol the train stations and rape and rob, about the dangers of losing a leg getting onto and off of moving trains¨ (page. 9). People were so desperate to leave their homes because their lives were being threatened. Not only are their home lives scary but then attempting to leave is scarier. After being sent back and trying over and over, if these people actually make it to America, their hardships continue.

“The 14 Most Common Arguments against Immigration and Why They’re Wrong.” Cato Institute, 10 Sept. 2019, https://www.cato.org/blog/14-most-common-arguments-against-immigration-why-theyre-wrong.

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Society changed over time. We either help people or we don’t. Obligations. What should we do? How do people interact with others? People have their own ways of showing their obligations towards others, but people shouldn’t be treated with disrespect. Every human being in the world is the same. We went through obstacles to get where we are today.

E S S A Y

“What kills us isn’t one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can’t turn down for fear of disappointing others,” Alain de Botton, a swiss-born British philosopher and author stated. In today’s society, what even is obligations? Do we even have any? No one doesn’t have any obligations, they don’t know how to leave someone alone. As reported by OpenBoarders, “part of the case for open borders is that at very minimum, our obligations to strangers is to leave them alone. Immigrations restrictions, by denying strangers the freedom to move to another country, violates this basic obligation.” This indicates that “strangers” don’t have the respect, or should I say obligations towards others. Everybody is human, no one is different. We all went through petrified phases of our lives and manage to deal with all the negativity, but yet manage to not let those things affect us.

Enrique’s Journey, a story about a boy, Enrique, who travels to the U.S., taking El Tren de la Muerte to reunite with his mother, but there are situations that occur throughout his journey with “truckers,” known as guards. As illustrated in Enrique’s Journey, “one after another, they turn him down. Many, having made the lonely haul from Mexico City, would welcome company for the remaining 380 miles to the border. Still, at least nine in ten truckers here, one trucker at the stop says, refuse migrants. If they said yes, police might accuse them of smuggling. Drivers say it is enough to worry about officers planting drugs on their trucks and demanding bribes. Moreover, some of the truckers fear that migrants might assault them.”(133) This indicates that a lot of guards play a role in the story, in which they are not the definition of obligation because they treat immigrants with disrespect, like garbage, and use them in any way that they can help themselves. For example, they rob immigrants (strangers), they rape them, and they abusive them. As stated in the book, a guard said, “if you can’t pay with cash,” one said, “you know how women pay.”(145) This proves that this is an ongoing situation that is not being brought to their attention that this isn’t how “strangers” should be treated. Another quote states, “her mother was terrified that Gabi would make the trip alone and be raped. She asked Gabi’s aunt Lourdes, twenty-six, to go with her. A smuggler promised to deliver them for $2,000 up front, but he robbed and abandoned them in Tapachula, just inside the southern border of Mexico. They were deported to Guatemala.”(145) This indicates that guards will do anything for themselves and that they have no obligations towards “strangers.” They have no respect for anything nor anyone, but if the roles were switched as them being strangers and strangers being guards then they would know how it feels to be put in an uncomfortable and dangerous situation.

“When I die, the scientist of the future would all know, there was a hushpuppy who lived with her daddy in the bathtub.” Beast of the Southern Wild, a film about a six-year-old Hushpuppy, who lives with her father, Wink, in a remote Delta community, known as “The Bathtub.” Wink is an independent man who is preparing his daughter for “the end of the world.” The Bathtub, in Louisiana, is located in an unsafe environment. Homes, food sources, transportation are all on the ground, which water almost sometimes rises to touch each thing. Every dark storm is a warning for them to know that they are probably not going to survive. Shelter services saw that there were people located at the Bathtub and came back for them to put them in shelters. Wink, the father of Hushpuppy, refuses to leave to be put in a safer environment for him and his daughter, so then they were dragged from there rotten, dirty, and destroyed homes and were sent to the shelter. Doctors ran tests on the people who lived in the Bathtub, without their consent and drugged them, giving them medicine that they are not telling what it is for, and basically doing surgery when they don’t want anything to be done, even though they are going to die.

Obligation; “the social force that binds you to your obligations and the courses of action demanded by that force.” In today’s society, we have our ways of obligations. Do we have respect? Yes. Do we treat people the way we want to be treated? Yes. Do we live from the past? Who knows. Laws, policies, rules, changes over time. We have new things every day, every second, every hour. Obligations from the past are different from today because we don’t live with a harsh, threatening, and abusive past. We’ve outgrown from situations. For example, the LGBTQ community. People would disrespect them in any way, either if the same sex is holding hands, kissing, or just minding their own business. They still manage to face those obstacles. I remember when I was a little younger, I saw two girls kissing each other and two guys kissing each other, who had more disrespect? The guys. But people don’t realize that everyone is the same, we have feelings just like everyone else. We faced obstacles to get where we are today, even if they are obligations or not. People will still manage to bring you down.

In conclusion, obligations aren’t just something that everyone has. We all have our version of obligations, even if it’s in a good or bad situation. My version of obligations would be “treat people the way you want to be treated because we are all human.” People don’t realize how difficult things that people go through. People get treated with disrespect for the things they do, where they live, what they wear, or what they look like. Why cant everyone be treated the same? In 2020 and in the future, we need to learn the respectful way to use obligations. How can you change your obligations?

C I T A T I O N S

“Obligations to Strangers.” Open Borders: The Case, 10 Mar. 2012, https://openborders.info/obligations-to-strangers/.

“Obligation.” Dictionary.com, Dictionary.com, https://www.dictionary.com/browse/obligation.

“Beasts of the Southern Wild.”

I N T R O D U C T I O N

In this essay you will be noticing how I explore the misunderstanding of immigrants. What Americans tend to think but is not always the case when it comes to immigrants. Once you read my essay you will have a better understanding about what assumptions and ideas people believe about immigrants.

E S S A Y

Imagine waking up one day not knowing where your next meal will come from, not knowing when the next time you will see your family, not knowing where you’re going but knowing you have to go somewhere. Immigrants deal with this and so much more. To come to a place you know nothing about, and have to deal with people who think they know what you’ve been through is very frustrating. Some people think immigrants have a choice but it is actually a necessity for most of them. Immigrants are in no way shape or from in control of their life.People make false judgments about Immigrants just because they are not american. People have unexplained biases towards immigrants towards fear of the unknown.

Immigrants take a long, miserable, dangerous journey to a place that they know nothing about just to hope and pray that they get a chance at a better life. They put their life in jeopardy just to come to America and be misunderstood. Their experiences and what they have been through get belittled because of people’s judgements. They never really get to fully tell their story and so misunderstandings will happen. Misunderstandings such as, coming here and hurting the country financially because they are taking all american jobs. People all over the country believe that immigrants take american jobs, which is not true. Immigrants need jobs just as much as any american citizen and in fact recent study found that undocumented immigrants alone pay approximately $11.64 billion in taxes each year. Moreover, undocumented immigrants nationwide pay an estimated 8 percent of their income in state and local taxes but since so many angry Americans don’t like immigrants they begin to believe that they are hurting the country financially.

Another thing that is often misunderstood about immigrants or people living in difficult condition is that they need help and/or are helpless, which sometimes isn’t the case. In the movie Beast Of The Southern Wild we see the main character, Hushpuupy, and her father break out of the healthcare place once they were taken there to get help but they didn’t really want it or ask for it. There is a misunderstanding that people in rough places or in places where there are harsh circumstances want help but that is not always the case as we see. Also, in the movie we see how people from these dangerous places don’t want to leave. I mean, would you want to live in your home? Somewhere you loved and lived all your life? It’s hard to get up one day and go.

Another thing that is misunderstood about immigrants is that Americans believe that immigrants don’t belong in America and therefore they shouldn’t feel like they belong. If you are American born or moved to this country eventually you become a citizen. Yes it will take an immigrant longer because of all the certain things they have to do and be eligible for but it doesn’t matter because they are here for the same reason that the American’ people are, to live a somewhat free life.They have a right to be in this country just as much as a person born in America. It is so unfair to treat an immigrant anything less than an American citizen.

Immigrants are often called unsafe or terrorist because of the way they look and the different countries they came from. Sometimes they cannot help the way they look or what country they came from. Imagine how they feel, knowing that once you get to a place where you want to build a better life you get judged and called names.

“Yet, back in Nigeria, I had the irreplaceable experience of feeling connected to an untapped part of myself.” This is what a Nigerian immigrant said as she realized she didn’t really want to be in America because it wasn’t the right thing for her. Which brings me to make the point that some think immigrants come here for a better life and because it’s the best thing for them, but sometimes it’s not. Immigrants think that the United States is the land of opportunity just to get here and get let down and so then they realize that their real true calling is to be in the country where they were born. In the book Exit West Saeed and his father are having a conversation “ your mother is here”
“Mother is gone.” Saeed said. “ Not for me,” his father said. This shows that people have a misunderstanding that people want to leave where they are from.

In the book We Need New Names Darling, the main character has to move from her country, Zimbabwe to America. She doesn’t necessarily want to but she has to because it is safer for her. When she gets here she instantly tries to fit in and do things that are apart of american culture.

As Americans we create these bias against immigrants that shouldn’t even exist. Immigrants are human beings and should be treated the same.

Hamid, Mohsin. Exit West. Penguin Random House, 2017. Bulawayo, NoViolet. We Need New Names. Vintage Books, 2014. “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”

Intro:

In this essay, I am proud of the amount of research I have done and the effort I put into this. The goal for writing this essay was to have people understand that many immigrants’ everyday struggles to find a new life and provide for there family. Immigrants think about getting a second chance at achieving their goals but can’t because of Ameican society. The people in power don’t think and consider about what immigrants go through. That is what my essay is about.

Essay:

In the picture above you see refugees coming off one raff. All of them coming off with life jackets on and in the front you see a man holding a girl that could be his daughter or just a little girl he knows. From looking at the picture we may not tell what they went through but we can see they had a reason for getting on the raff and travel over treacherous waters. Each individual has a story and some of the stories may be the same or all of their stories are the same either way all of them had one goal, to strive for a better life.

When immigrants come to America they come to seek opportunities and change. Wherever they came from it might have been hard for them to get a good education and good-paying jobs. There are many other reasons why immigrants come to America but they have faith that their life will be filled with many opportunities. Sometimes, it can be hard for immigrants to live in America. Immigrants have to go through processes in order to be a citizen and some don’t make it through the process. That’s when immigrants realize that America is different than they imagined. Immigrants may fantasize about how good America is and the many things they will achieve there but in reality, it is hard being accepted by some of American society.

In the past, America has been very heavy on people from different countries heading into the country. There have been many strict laws made and they have developed decades later after America became its own country. For many years it has been hard for some immigrants to settle in America. An example of a representation of situations like these can be found in a book called, “Behold the Dreamers” by Imblo Mbue. The book is about a family from Cameroon moving into America because they lived in a poor part of the country. Jende and his wife, Neni, are trying to adjust to America’s life as Jende works for a rich family as their chauffeur and Neni wants to enter the medical field while taking care of their kids. During the book, the court didn’t believe the story of why Jende came to America and so there were possibilities that he wouldn’t be able to stay in the country. Jende’s boss had to let him go because he didn’t need him anymore and it was harder for him to adjust and he had to work two jobs. Here is a quote from Jende after realizing how hard it is to adjust to America, “Guess what, he would say to her in mock instruction, America is not all that; this country is full of lies and people who like to hear lies. This country no longer has room for people like us.” (pg 332) Jende towards the end of the book had faced the hard truth about what it is like living in America. It’s hard living in America when you have to do so much just to live in a country full of opportunities. Not only America makes it hard for immigrants to live in but sometimes people can be judgemental.

A thing people don’t realize is that most people are ignorant when it comes to understanding the life stories of refugees. When immigrants come to America they have a reason why they come here. Most refugees leave their country because the government they were under was harsh or they weren’t granted a good amount of pay. Whenever an immigrant is in America most people judge them immediately because they don’t understand the immigrant’s story. In the article, “A Return In Nigeria,” the Narrator tells us that people were judging her identity and asking why she was living in America. In the article, it states, “I started to imagine what it would be like to live in a place where you did not have to explain some aspect of your identity…no matter how subtle, for why you were among them.” The narrator is constantly being asked about her identity and why did she come to America. People don’t think or know about the struggle that immigrants have to go through to survive in the country they came from and the struggle getting out of the country. Our president right has been striving to put up stricter laws for immigration as it makes it harder for immigrants to even be able to get in the country.

Our former president, Donald Trump, wants to achieve many goals and one of his objectives is immigration. He wants to make sure that America is safe from immigrants bringing in illegal drugs or guns by creating stricter laws. Not only is he creating stricter laws but he is persuading people that immigrants shouldn’t be entering the country. In a speech on May 16th, 2019, Donald Trump made some remarks on modernizing immigration. In his speech, he states, “We are proposing an immigration plan that puts the jobs, wages, and safety of American workers first…Our plan achieves two critical goals. First, it stops illegal immigration and fully secures the border. And, second, it establishes a new legal immigration system that protects American wages, promotes American values, and attracts the best and brightest from all around the world.” Donald Trump is more worried about protecting the country and putting it first then letting immigrants start a new life. Some people would agree with what he is saying but what he and his supporters don’t realize is that not all immigrants aren’t bad. Donald Trump is creating a blockade for immigrants to start a new life. This would then show immigrants that some of American society doesn’t want foreign people in the country.

At some point, we might risk or sacrifice something in order to get what we want. Immigrants have to risk their lives in order to achieve their goals. Some are successful and had their dreams come true and others don’t have it so easy. That is something people should think about when immigrants come to America or anywhere else. Everyone has a story and it could have a good ending or a bad ending.

Sources:

“Behold the Dreamers” by Imblo Mbue

“Return to Nigeria” by Enuma Okoro

Remarks on immigration: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-modernizing-immigration-system-stronger-america/

Intro

My name is Kayla Kelly and the reason why I wrote this paper about immigration laws because I was really passionate about why most of them are wrong. and to show not to judge other people based on their appearance. this essay mainly focuses on how the refugee and immigrant can have access to basic needs because they aren’t allowed in or thrown out by immigration laws.

Immigration Laws and why Most of Them are Atrocious

The illegal immigration reform and immigrant responsibility act of 1996 effects the depressing story of refugees and immigrants in America because it is the story that is misheard, misunderstood or disregarded by the American believers of fabricated stories and disbelievers of the real. The illegal immigration reform and immigrant responsibility act of 1996, where there are about 30 crimes such as shoplifting can get and illegal immigrant deported but also and white american man can do any of those crimes and not get sent anywhere even though it shows that he will kill or harm people, so what difference separates the white man and a Latino, Mexican, or even Muslim man, nothing other than race, a white man can be just a dangerous as a refugee but we don’t send them anywhere. but also there are people being deported because they are illegal immigrants which most of them came for a better life than death and hunger, and we are denying them easy access to basic needs because they don’t have proper documentation because they were saving them or their family. In Enrique’s journey, he was put in jail for speeding and found out he didn’t have proper documentation so they were going to deport him because of a law made in 2008, ” In 2008 the federal government began rolling out a program every police department in the country had to implement by 2013: if someone in the country is arrested for any reason, their fingerprints must be sent to the federal immigration authorities who will deport people who are in the United States”(pg 259) and he had to stay there until he did get deported and his son and daughter were still in America at the time so he had to see his children through a glass window,”(pg 269) Enriques looks through the screen, emotions dancing in his eyes.” until he got his proper documentation but if he was deported his children wouldn’t have their father which is very sad, because none of us wants that to happen to our children, so why should we do it to theirs. And before Enrique even crossed the border his girlfriend was pregnant and so maria Isabell was alone and scrutinized how she was raising her child who was always dirty and sick and couldn’t go to a hospital had to embark on the very treacherous journey to America and their daughter Jasmine was alone without her parents and so Jasmine also made the very treacherous journey I mean they could have been killed on the many attempts, to have someone you love die because they wanted to see you shouldn’t happen.

Immigration laws are still important for the reason for overpopulation and then there is no food and homes in America. But when any refugee or Immigrant makes a journey they 100% know that they have a 95% chance of dying, getting diseases, majorly hurt, major mental illness, will suffer extreme hunger and dehydration, be jailed, be told/reprimanded to go back, raped, and many more like this incident, “She begins to cry. He puts the edge of the blade to her throat. She takes off her pants, and he checks them for money. “If you scream,” he says “we cut you to bits.” Then rapes her”(pg 97) which shouldn’t happen and makes America much safer. But they do this for a better life in America such as clean water, modern medicine, food, no gunshot of any kind heard in the night, and the worst part of this is that you can’t cross the border and all the risk and pain was for nothing, and you don’t get even a tiny bit of the dream life with food and a safe home. This is a horrible thing to do to these people who are only trying to escape from a life that had no hope of getting better and had the possibility of death, especially when we have everything they absolutely need to not die and so having these border laws is like saying no to saving them from the pain of dying. And we are saying no to these people because of all the lies and stereotypes told by everyone in America which is wrong because we also don’t want to be stereotyped. And it is because of people in America people pass these lies on like a story handed down for generations, and tell them like all the refugees are the monster of the story. A reason for why Americans are so abstract minded is because they are fed these fabricated stories of refugees doing crimes and such and want to believe that they all are bad, but in reality, all of them are pretend stories of real people and some of them are where the people where they’re at the wrong time. And since they are taught this by the news to which they think they can trust it because almost all new stories are fake because it’s the news and people always say trust the news, and so it creates an ethos without any proof, in reality, it becomes a pathos. So they follow their feelings instead of solid proof and so they pursue their feelings and intuitions when feelings and intuitions can be very wrong most times and can create huge problems. And this affects everyone, since these people that heard the news or follows the people with strong and wrong feelings, then they can and will create laws based on something non-realistic for example, I want a robot that does my benchmarks for me but I can’t have that, it’s possible but non-realistic, the laws we create are what we want but it is non-realistic and they create so many problems for people whos homeland guarantees them death, war, and hunger. So I just want people to reconsider things when they want it their way instead of listing to another person’s perspective when they want to be mean to someone else especially refugees and migrants because they are going through things much worse than yours.

The reason there is abstract minded Americans is that those are the people who don’t really listen to the true story of refugees which makes them more racist narrow-minded people of today which causes many of the major problems in America. The majority of Americans don’t understand what life is like at any point in a refugee life, they come from somewhere where there is so much hunger, poverty, death, and war and american take for granted their full bellies and safe homes, and refugees go to America for a better safer homes, but we are banishing them from things we take for granted and what they need the most. It really should matter whether there are criminals in our country, and why we label them all criminal is the biased thoughts that plague the American’s minds.

All quotes are in Enrique’s Journey, By Sonia Nazario.

Introduction: In this paper, I wanted to explore the “real” side of America and how I believe that immigration and immigrants illuminate this side. This is an idea that I feel strongly about, so it was exciting for me to be able to write about it. Some of my goals were to get my big idea across very clearly and describe it in a way that everyone could understand. I also wanted to have a strong introduction and conclusion and describe ideas with great detail. I am very proud of my introduction for this essay, as I think it really ties in the reader and does a generally good job of introducing the rest of my essay. I worked hard on this essay and I think it is worth reading.

How Immigration Reveals America’s Truths

The United States of America has boasted the title of “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave” since its inception. This phrase is embedded into the identity of the country, appearing in the National Anthem and other merchandise that represents the country. This idea is not only present within the nation; America is known throughout the world as a land of equal opportunity for all. This has caused a large number of immigrants since the colonial era and has stayed at around the same number since then. The influx of immigrants is partially due to the idea of the “American Dream,” which is the idea that America will provide immigrants with opportunities that they would not get in their home country, and it does not matter where they came from. But, most immigrants are faced with a very different truth when they come to this country; America is not blind to one’s origin or ethnicity. In reality, the “Land of the Free” is favored toward its natural-born citizens, often leaving immigrants behind to fend for themselves.

There are many reasons why an immigrant would leave their home country; dangerous circumstances, no job opportunities, or wanting a better life for a family. The USA can seem like a haven to people coming from countries that are not always safe. According to the Department of Homeland Security, there were 1,096,611 people who obtained legal permanent resident status in 2018 and there were 22,405 refugee arrivals. These numbers do not include people who arrived illegally or were denied legal citizenship. Most immigrants who obtained legal status came from Mexico in 2018, followed by Cuba and the People’s Republic of China. What the Department of Homeland Security did not include in their 2018 yearbook was data showing how many immigrants voluntarily left America. Although America is most likely a safer place to live than most immigrants’ home countries, some may find that the U.S. is much different from what they expected. An example of this mindset is found in the book Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue. This book tells the story of Jende Jonga and his family who immigrated from Cameroon to New York City in order to have a more secure life for themselves. Although at first they love the American lifestyle and don’t seem to miss their life in their home country, they begin to struggle to stay afloat due to many factors. In a conversation with his wife, Jende says “In America today, having documents is not enough. Look at how many people with papers are struggling. Look at how even some Americans are suffering… and yet they are sleeping on the street, going to bed hungry, losing their jobs and houses every day…” (Mbue 307). In this quote, Jende is pointing out the hypocrisy of America, showing how immigrants are abandoned by the system, despite being promised something different. He is also showing how natural-born citizens are also often mistreated by their home country, displaying how selfish the United States really is, even when they promise fair treatment to everyone in the country. Jende is showing his frustration with America, as he thought it would be much different from what he got. Soon after he says this, Jende makes the decision to move back to Cameroon with his family, because they simply couldn’t afford to stay in America with the number of problems they had been having. It is a sad truth that many immigrants face, but it is not spoken about often because the United States wants to preserve their identity as a place where all are welcome.

This scenario is not only present in fiction. A Return to Nigeria is an article for the NewYork Times written by Enuma Okoro. She recounts her childhood in Nigeria and her decision to move back as an adult. Although her main reason for moving back was to reconnect with her roots, it is clear in her essay that there is some animosity towards America. In comparing the two countries, she reveals the harsh truth about the USA. “I started to imagine what it would be like to live in a place where you did not have to explain some aspect of your identity on a daily basis, where you did not have to offer people a reason, no matter how subtle, for why you were among them,” (Okoro). While Okoro is imagining life in Nigeria, she is pointing out how difficult life can be as an immigrant, or even just as a person of color living in America. As a Nigerian person, she finds that she has to constantly defend the idea that she belongs. Even when America has been defined as a melting pot for centuries, there is still a clear disconnect between natural-born citizens, most often white ones, and the minorities and immigrants that live here. Many immigrants do not feel welcome in a country that they sacrificed their lives to come to for. Proud patriots will try and convince the public that these circumstances are very rare and are not reflective of our country as a whole, but that is simply not true. Recent events like Trump’s election and his strict ideas on immigrants and border control, shootings that have taken the lives of minorities, and corrupt border patrol agents who are extremely rough and unprofessional when dealing with immigration can make immigrants feel unsafe in this country. The fact that these events happen so often and that they are common knowledge prove that these are not meaningless outliers; they are indicative of how America truly operates.

The photo shown above is from photographer Kim Kyung Hoon who captured this image at the Tijuana Border. It depicts a mother with a feared look in her eyes grabbing her two young children by the arm, appearing to be dragging them. One girl is in diapers, looking too young to be able to walk unassisted, never mind run. The other girl looks only slighter older, her hair is in her face and she wears an oversized t-shirt. The mother, whose expression is one of pure terror, has a Disney Frozen shirt on, with Queen Elsa and Princess Anna staring at the camera in the face with a smug grin. What’s different about this photo is that the small family is running from a cloud of tear gas, a chemical weapon that can cause blindness, severe skin irritation and respiratory pain. The gas looks close enough to them to have grazed their skin, causing the young girls dreadful pain. Behind the family there are a couple of other dozen people, clearly, other immigrants, running down a hill, presumably also from the gas. They carry children, bags of food and necessities. The tear gas was emitted by border patrol, trying to deter the hoard of immigrants attempting to come into America. Little girls were scarred for life, both physically and emotionally because there are people in the world who are so afraid of people unlike them. This only happens in America. These are America’s truths. They are hidden in the scars of the abused.

The United States of America is a complicated place. One cannot help but look at the country and see the evil and inhumane things that they have done to people who do nothing other than existing. But it is easy to get lost in what seems like a never-ending tornado of immoral and corrupt actions made by the people that are supposed to be our leaders. Sometimes, you need to zoom out and look at the good in this country. Look at the activists fighting to make America a safer place for everybody, making this country a real melting pot. Look at the young people being able to spot these mistakes we have made at such an early age. Looking at the good helps us fight the bad so that we can make a real change in the world.

Works Cited

Kyung-Hoon, Kim. “Tear Gas Deployed at Border” nytimes, Alan Yuhas 1 Jan. 2019 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/01/world/americas/migrants-border-tear-gas.html Mbue, Imbolo. Behold the Dreamers. Random House Inc, 2017. Okoro, Enuma. “A Return to Nigeria.” Opinionator, //opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/a-return-to-nigeria/. Accessed 13 Jan. 2020. “Yearbook 2018.” Department of Homeland Security, www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2018. Accessed 10 Jan. 2020.

Author’s Note/Intro: I want you to think about where you came from. Where did your life begin? What is the earliest memory of your origin or home? What was it like? How did it look, how did it smell, how did it taste? How did you feel there? Could you ever replace that? Your origin is not replaceable.

The definition of origin is the point or place where something begins, arises, or is derived. Some may say they don’t truly know where their life began, where they came from or what it even means to have an origin. Your origin can be something you know little of, something you’re proud of, something you want to know more about or something you don’t know at all. An origin could be your birthplace, a certain group or culture, or something you remember from growing up. When thinking about the origin, many people ask, can people ever replace their home? There can be many different opinions on that, but it could also lead to other questions. It could lead to asking, could you adopt other origins? It’s a good question to ask if you can have more than one origin, but people also have different opinions on it. Since your origin is unique to you, whatever you think about these questions is true to you!

Can you ever replace your home? What do you think? Well, my opinion is no, you can not. Your home is your origin. Wherever you come from, that sticks with you. The culture, the language, the music, the clothing. Nobody can ever take that away from you. There will always be a sense of comfort because that is all you know. It’s been with you since you were born or since you can remember. You grew up in the culture, the people, the food, the clothing, and the homey feeling. You cannot just get up and move somewhere else and expect it to have the same feeling or ultimately replace your birthplace/home. Nobody should feel like they can tell someone to get used to their new home and let it replace your actual home. Even when you think you want to leave everything behind, you still get homesick or want to fill that void. This was evident in a book I read called Behold the Dreamers. The main character, Jende left his home in Africa to have a better life in America. He thought everything was going good for him until he started running into problems and started to get homesick. “ Neni, …. I’m ready to go back home… I want to go back to Limbe”(Behold the dreamers- Imbolo Mbue p 305) These are words I would have never thought I would hear from Jende at the beginning of the book until now. Jende and Neni just loved America so much when they first came and to think of everything that they’ve been through so far, I just would have never imagined hearing those words. Another example of loving your origin is found in a movie called Beast of the Southern Wild. A young girl named Hushpuppy who lives in a poorer part of New Orleans feels like her home and origin is special, even compared to the richer side of New Orleans. She thought that since it was her home, it was very special and that it offered more than what the people on the rich side of New Orleans could get. She said, “They ain’t got what we got.” Even though they didn’t have much, they made things work and made the things they do into the rich culture while having fun. That was much better to Hushpuppy than living large and having money. She loved where she came from and she truly valued her origin. Staying true to where you came from is a great feeling of comfort and pride. Someone’s home is something very personal, special, unique, and dear to that individual’s heart. I don’t think you can ever replace that special place called home. Your family, origin, and the way you were raised can combine different cultures and I feel like many people in our societies now are the way they are because of being exposed to different people, cultures, societies, religion, clothing, literature, food, values, arts, activities and more. Everything that we have in our lives now is because we adopted and combined things from other cultures into ours. For example, my family is black and makes soul and Caribbean food, but since Chinese food is something that has been put into the mixing pot of America, we’re not afraid to try it and add it to the foods we already like. A lot of things here were integrated to make one big culture or society of many different puzzle pieces of smaller societies, cultures, and practices. I don’t think we would have made it this far in the world without the combining and adopting of different cultures, origins, and societies to make it fit in all one.

My origin is Philadelphia and being raised in a black household. My origin was very special to me. Just like many people feel, where they come from, they’ll never forget. Your origin can be influenced by other cultures you grew up around. Those cultures may have rounded you well and have made you the person you are today. So my feeling is that your origin can be influenced but you can truly only have one origin. Your origin is your beginning. It’s where you started—where your seed blossomed and where you started to become YOU. Now, YOU choose to discover, take your origin, treasure it, hold it dear, or let it go to start a new life. There is always a beginning to every story though. It can always be tracked down and revisited. Your origin is what makes the world as diverse and special as it is. As a young girl once said, “The whole universe depends on everything fitting together just right.” Everyone’s origin is unique. Those are the different puzzle pieces that make the universe fit together just right.

“ Neni, …. I’m ready to go back home… I want to go back to Limbe”-Behold the dreamers “They ain’t got what we got.”- Beast of the Southern Wild “The whole universe depends on everything fitting together just right.”-Beast of the Southern Wild

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.