Last Blog Post

Since it is the last Blog Post I thought it was a good idea to write about this response article to the event that Dean attended and a brave young man spoke his thoughts on the current immigration policies. The article is exactly what you would expect; it details all the good the President is doing for the issue of immigration, and how hard he is working. The article says nothing about the event and the criticism  the President heard. The article is very one sided, but it is interesting how the same issue and the same exact words can be used in a different context. I believe this is one of the factors that keeps immigration issues from being resolved. I find it ironic that politics the very institution that is supposed to be solving these issues is actually halting that change.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/25/us/politics/obama-urges-house-republicans-to-act-on-immigration.html?_r=0

Follow up to the Other side Immigration Response

Since watching the film I became really interested in mexican immigration, fortunately I have to research this topic for another class and was able to come across an article titled "Life on the Line" the article can be found on the school's database. The article is a culmination of many different stories having to do with border crossing. An example is the story of Eduardo who almost died walking from Mexico to Arizona, but was saved by a family who lives in the area. A second story was that of an undercover drug agent who was attempting to stem the flow of drugs that usually accompany the coyotes who lead illegal immigrants across the border. The article is insightful and heartbreaking and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the movie.

Response to Interview Project

For the latest project I decided to interview my dad, who immigrated from Australia; it's an aspect of my family history that I don't really know that much about, and it was amazing to hear the reasons that drove him out of his home country as well as what it was like when he first arrived. Doing this project answered a lot of questions not just about my family and how it came together, but why my dad is the way he is. During this project there were some moments where my Dad would answer with only one word and not go into the details(which is why I did not know that much before this project.) But after more questions I was finally able to gain all the details and gain a better sense of my family and the experience of an immigrant who has just arrived in a country that is not his one, where the customs and even the streets are alien to him. It is a terrifying process and one that takes bravery that I admire.

Response to German Immigrant Article

I found this article really fascinating, personally I have never really considered what immigration is like in other countries, I always just assume that European immigration is better then it is here. Considering the lives of people who are simply the children of immigrants is not something I gave much thought to. In the article the girl is all but pushed to feel like an outsider in the country she was born and raised in, it poses the question if in other countries the children of immigrants feel the same way, I think it would be really interesting to compare articles just like this one from other countries together in order to better understand the whole issue of immigration. All in all I very much enjoyed this article.

Chapter 17 Thoughts

In Chapter 17 it focuses on the next wave of anti immigration reform of the 1990's, an era where U.S Border Patrol and politicians were supposed to be cracking down on the number of people entering the country illegally, and that reminded me of earlier chapters in the text where Nativist ideas were not as much as an influence on the amount and type of people who were allowed to immigrate. In earlier chapters like ones that dealt with the progressive era the amount of Native born Americans who were against immigration was smaller and the number of immigrants significant. To those immigrants coming in the earlier 20th century America was a land of economic opportunity and a place where one could rebuild and start anew. Chapter 17 completely dispels that almost naive notion of immigration, but I was able to find an article about a recent influx of young Europeans immigrating to Australia in search of economic opportunities and a better life for themselves. This article is similar  to the earlier chapters of the text. Chapter 17 also explains the enhanced budget and authority of the INS and more specifically the Border Patrol, my question after reading this chapter is with it's ineffectual and dismal track record how are those Federal organizations able to maintain their prominence and keep functioning.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24854519

Chapter 16

This was a very fascinating chapter because it brings back elements from previous chapters even though it is in a more modern age and in a time where one would suspect the racist undertones of immigration to lessen, and they do not. For example the general public feelings toward immigration during this time were for tighter regulations and to lessen the amount of people who were allowed into the country. The book explains that most of these feelings stemmed  from the Iranian hostage situation and a general feeling of unrest and unease. Upon reading the chapter I still have questions regarding the  select commission. Besides once having a strong affinity for nativist policies I do not understand the role they play today? However I do know that they are less nativist than they once were.

Ancestry.com Project

For this project I chose to do a family that was not my own and I found it very time consuming, but also very fun. When doing this project it was interesting to put the pieces together and connect different sources of information together in order to create a more complete story. A second aspect of this project I enjoyed was that it helped to humanize the events we have been reading in the text book. When reading it is easy for the events to seem far removed and to not fully understand the emotional and human impact of them. An example of this can be found in the life of one of the family members I chose to follow. He was interned in Topaz Arizona simply because he was Japanese. While this sounds horrible, but the documents (or the lack of documents) helped me to see that he was untrustworthy of government authority because of his experience. By doing this project I was able to see history not in a general view, but in a way that is much more personal and honest.

Chapter 15

Chapter 15 is to my mind the most relevant chapter of the book, because it is the immigration story and struggles of Central Americans. Their immigration to America is later than that of other groups we have read about during the course. It is also the most interesting because there are a large amount of people that I know who have either experienced this story themselves or have family members who have experienced it themselves. This has made it one of my favorite chapters because it has a feeling of honesty and bluntness that separates it from the other chapters we have read. The other thing that I enjoyed about this chapter is that while they are from Central America the stories and the experiences are so diverse and eclectic.

Chapter 14

Chapter 14 focuses on the later immigration of Asians, at this time the Asian countries from which people immigrate become more diverse, with countries such as Vietnam, instead of just simply China and Japan. This chapter helped me a great deal when I was writing my Ancestry Paper, many of the earlier family members immigrated from China during the 1960s. The aspect of the chapter that interested me the most was the concentration of the immigration of people from the Philippines because it is a form of immigration that prior to this class I knew nothing about. It is hard for me to believe that immigration from the Philippines was not taught in my previous history classes. The part I found to be the most interesting was the eclectic reasons that people had for wanting to immigrate, there were push as well as pull factors. A second that I found interesting was the high number of well educated people who came over, or came over on student visas. This is so different from the previous groups of migration that we have seen so far.

Chapter 13

In class awhile ago we talked about the boat accident in the Mediterranean and that bothered me. This chapter also talks about the issues experienced by Cuban Immigrants who had to break immigration law to bring their families over. This struck me because before touching on this topic the author notes a general improvement in American Immigration brought on by the Cold War. While looking for research in another class I found a video about a more recent immigration struggle felt by young boys who are trying to immigrate from Afghanistan to America. The story is sad and heartwarming, and it is a struggle that we have seen not only in this chapter, but throughout the entire book.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50147163n

Chapter 12

Out of all the Chapters we have read this far in class, I found chapter 12 to be one of the most interesting precisely because immigration from mexico and the racist treatment they receive once they arrive is till a hot button issue in our politics today. And it is also something that I have seen effect the lives of people that I consider to be family. Also it is a racism I saw for myself when I went on a road trip two summers ago and had to drive through Arizona. Arizona has border patrols where there are no borders and has the most stringent of immigration laws of all the states in the country. When looking through the New York Times for another class I found this article written in August of this year about the effect the horrible laws in Arizona are effecting people and what certain individuals have decided to do about it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/05/us/demonstration-at-arizona-border-divides-supporters-of-immigration-overhaul.html?_r=0

Chapter 11

In this chapter Daniel's explains a shift in the history due to the events of the Great Depression and World War One. In the opening paragraph he explains that there was more people leaving the U.S then entering it. My question is where did those individuals leaving the United States go and how did they get the money to do so? this chapter also focused in the LPC regulations to limit who came into the country, and even though we went over it in class I still find it a difficult topic to understand. What was the motive simply the xenophobic attitude brought on by the war? and if that is in fact the reason for the rigidity in immigration laws it is probably safe to assume that the practice continued into World War II, but I would like to know when the rigidity stopped and why.

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten deals primarily with discrimination not felt by a specific group of people as in previous chapters but, negative feelings felt toward immigration as a whole.The aspect of this chapter that I found disturbing was the sheer amount of racism behind all the anti immigration legislation, I was also shocked by the type of people who voted, or created racist movements, they were the nations most highly educated and powerful individuals. In this chapter I was also interested in when the anti-immigration would occur, the book states that it would occur when economic downturns would occur and working men would fear for their financial stability.While reading the chapter I was shocked to discover that working men who would foster anti immigrant sentiment were in fact the children of immigrants or even immigrants themselves. This made me so sad that people did not have the empathy one would think.

Chapter 9

When reading Chapter nine I became very interested in the topic of paper sons and did some additional research and found out that before the 1920's you could only have American citizenship if your father was an American citizen not your mother. It was assumed that a woman would give up her citizenship in favor of the one her husband took on. To combat all the falsifying of documents the immigration officers of the time began an interview process that essentially questioned the child on their Father or home village and family history. However either the Paper sons and daughter themselves or their parents bought coaching books with background information on their paper family. These interrogations were not simply created because of the high number of paper children coming into the country, but because there were no written records to consult. The would be paper sons and daughters were detained on Angel Island where there examination would take place. I thought it was interesting that so many Paper Children are part of the history of a city I grew up in and know so well.

Chapter 8

For Chapter 8 I was very interested in the stories about  the immigration of Eastern European Jews, because they have such a interesting mis-mash of Old World traditions and American values. This was interesting to me because upon reading the chapter I inferred that the cultural differences arose between the traditional values of the parents who had immigrated and their American born children. This age driven cultural difference is not remarked about in other cultures, I think this is because writing is very much a part of the Jewish culture and have more written  records of this trend. An example is a book titled Bread Givers it is written by a Jewish American immigrant who describes this beautifully and it is one of my favorite books. I wonder if Parents of other cultures have this cultural disconnect with their American born children and why there is not as many stories or written evidence.

Chapter 7

In this chapter I was shocked to learn that by making immigration into a cooperation like business it actually improved the conditions of the people who traveled to other countries. By turning it into a big business I would assume that the shipping industries would be more concerned with profit and not the welfare of the passengers. I was also shocked to learn that people immigrated not only went to America, but some went to Argentina and Brazil, I would like to know what the push and pull factors were to bring people to those places. It could be assumed that it was economic,but why then would only a few groups of immigrants go to those places? why was it not more diverse? in this chapter I was also shocked to  learn about what Arab immigrants went through wen they settled here, it was not a story I had heard or been taught before this class.

Chapter 6

During our class discussion of enclave neighborhoods, I posed the question as to why there weren't so many Australian neighborhoods for my dad when he came here, and I was fully satisfied with the answer but, then I got to thinking about the rate of Australian immigration in the 19th century and I found some information, and it wasn't as dramatic as I had hoped. In the 19th century Australia was just  being colonized it's self, when the American Colonies had won they're independence. This meant that they had lost they're dumping ground for criminals and needed a new one. It became Australia. when the colony was first being established there was 1023 of which a little less then half were convicts. So the reason that there was not a high level of immigration from Australia to the United States is because there were not a lot of people there to begin with.

Chapter Five

My favorite part of this chapter was not only the different stories of the various groups of people who immigrated or were the descendants of immigrants and how they interacted with each other. The fact that it was not always kind does not surprise me in the least because the fear of people who immigrate can be found today with immigrants form Mexico and the treatment of people of Asian descent with the Sedition Acts and other limits on immigration. However what I am surprised about was the sense of English superiority that developed even though they were in most cases a minority and did not feel as connected to their mother country. After reading the chapter I am still confused as to how second generation born Americans developed this notion, as I would assume that they would either be more genetically diverse or feel less attachment to England.

Chapter Three

While reading chapter three, I was very interested in the way African Slaves not only influenced colonial culture and by extension American culture,but how they were able to save aspects of their own culture, when the country they were brought to tried everything to destroy it,and in most cases would not let them speak their own language. Most of early slave history has been lost because it was a primarily oral history and by many scholars was not considered to be worth studying until much later. Personally I find it hard to believe that a group of people who were so foundational in helping to build America, and had the largest population were not historicaly represented or even recgonized as people horrible.

Early Immigration

A few things in this chapter stood out to me the first of which was the sheer number of people who came to North America as Indentured Servants, not because they wanted to but because they were kidnapped or financially had no choice. Considering how they were treated I think it makes sense to say that Indentured servitude helped to set a foundation for how African slaves would later be treated. An example is how both were treated and thought of as someone else's property,and the lengths the owner would resort to in order to find them. I think it would be interesting to compare how many indentured servants went to each colony, I think it would be safe to assume that Virginia would have the highest amount because of their cash crop driven economy (this is the same reason that the South had a higher amount of slaves). It was also interesting to me how that would owner would go about finding their missing servants,putting missing ads in the paper that focus on the clothes and not much else today this would be the most impractical way to find a missing person.