The Mistreatment of Mexicans
Americans take many things for granted. For the majority of the population, life is relatively mild. People are normally not rich, but not poor, not ecstatically happy, but not too depressed either. One might say that the population generally has it easy, as compared to a large percentage of the rest of the world. It is for this reason that a great many people from other countries immigrate here. They are seeking a better life. Often, however, they get mistreated. Like the Mexican immigrants, who arrive here, only to be treated unfairly because of few opportunities, American prejudice, and Americanization. They do not come here to do harm, or to take advantage of Americans, or to do anything but find something better than their current situation. However, their experience here is often not as good as it could be.
First of all, the opportunities the Mexican immigrants are presented with are very poor. This is due in part to the fact that they "are willing to work hard for much less than they deserve" (Perea 2). So naturally, companies are going to take advantage of this. The normal available employment to the Mexicans is often so bad, as Harris points out, that is characterized by "harsh working conditions, enormous amounts of physical labor, and minimal remuneration" (190). This work, although not constantly, is often seasonal, like field work, picking fruit, and other such things that bring to mind slave labor. One man, picks strawberries for a living, at only $4.00 an hour (Ungar 137). Not only are the jobs horrible, the pay is worse. Most of the time, if "minimum wage is attained, then the worker can consider themselves lucky" because it is rare (Alexander 78). The wages for...
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Daniel, Roger is a highly respected author and professor who has majored in the study of immigration in history and more specifically the progressive ear. He’s written remarkable works over the history of immigration in America, in his book Not like Us he opens a lenses about the hostile and violent conditions immigrants faced in the 1890’s through the 1924’s. Emphasizing that during the progressive area many immigrants felt as they were living in a regressing period of their life. While diversity of ethnicity and race gradually grew during this time it also sparked as a trigger for whites creating the flare up of nativism. Daniel’s underlines the different types of racial and ethnical discrimination that was given to individual immigrant
With the difficulties and the dangers of migrating are big, people are willing to risk their lives in order to reach the American Dream. People dream of making it to the US and having a big luxurious life when in reality all the jobs they can get is working in the fields and or factories. They discrimination they are going to face because how they look and speak, the idea that they may never make it to the top unless they go back to school and get a degree. The harsh realities with being an immigrant in the United States is big, always having to worry about ICE, or losing a job, this constant fear of being deported. In every society there is hegemonic society that prevails over everyone else and controls everything and everyone. In a country that strives to for every person to be equal is a myth, we live in a world were only the rich will prosper and the poor will get
The Untied States of America is commonly labeled or thought of as the melting pot of the world where diverse groups of people flock to in order to better their current lives. In our countries history this has proven to primarily be our way of living and how the people as a nation view immigration. However, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries this open door mentality was quite the opposite to what the majority of people felt towards the idea of welcoming these huddled masses. Immigrants were not seen as equals or people willing to work hard for a better life but rather a diseased parasite that would suck the prosperous and prestigious life that the old immigrants had become accustomed to. American nativist groups during this time period acted in a hypercritical manner with the impression that open immigration would, in the end cause our country to be overtaken and overrun by a far less superior race.
Illegal immigrants in the United States usually come from less developed countries or at least poorly developed regions of these countries. These illegal immigrants carry a totally different knowledge of culture, legal system and human rights when they came into this country. The most these people are victimized is when they are working, sometimes, these people can't even realized when they have become victims. Because of their status, illegal immigrants, it is very rare that they can find good positions in considerably big companies to start with. Usually, small businesses will take the risk to hire illegal immigrants, sometimes it may be because of these small businesses are trying to help those illegal immigrants who share same nationality with them, but, for most of the time, these undocumented migrant workers are much cheaper and easier to manipulate.
In the United States, the cliché of a nation of immigrants is often invoked. Indeed, very few Americans can trace their ancestry to what is now the United States, and the origins of its immigrants have changed many times in American history. Despite the identity of an immigrant nation, changes in the origins of immigrants have often been met with resistance. What began with white, western European settlers fleeing religious persecution morphed into a multicultural nation as immigrants from countries across the globe came to the U.S. in increasing numbers. Like the colonial immigrants before them, these new immigrants sailed to the Americas to gain freedom, flee poverty and famine, and make a better life for themselves. Forgetting their origins as persecuted and excluded people, the older and more established immigrants became possessive about their country and tried to exclude and persecute the immigrant groups from non-western European backgrounds arriving in the U.S. This hostile, defensive, and xenophobic reaction to influxes of “new” immigrants known as Nativism was not far out of the mainstream. Nativism became a part of the American cultural and political landscape and helped to shape, through exclusion, the face of the United States for years to come.
Perea, Juan. Immigrants Out! The New Nativism and the Anti-Immigrant Impulse in the United States. New York or London: New York University Press, 1997. Print.
“The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
Portes, Alejandro, and Ruben G. Rumbaut. Immigrant America: A Portrait. N.p.: University of California Press, 2006.
America is a nation consisting of many immigrants: it has its gates opened to the world. These immigrants transition smoothly and slowly from settlement, to assimilation then citizenship. These immigrants are first admitted lawfully as permanent residents before they naturalize to become full citizens. In her book “Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America”, the historian Mae Ngai draws our attention to the history of immigration and citizenship in America. Her book examines an understudied period of immigration regulation between 1924 and 1965.
Racism isn’t a subject that appears in every day conversations. Although most people try to ignore its existence, it’s quite obvious that it marked the lives of a lot of people and it has now become an essential part of our history. As a student who has lived in the valley all her life, I’ve been taught about the hardships African Americans had to endure while obtaining their freedom, becoming eligible to vote, being segregated, but never did I stop to think that the people who shared my culture and walked the streets of the Valley and San Antonio were going through a similar experience. Throughout the years it has become apparent that African Americans weren’t the only people who had been mistreated.
As people immigrated to the United States, legally and illegally, particularly Hispanic workers, they began to look for jobs to provide for their families. They took jobs that Americans did not want: they accepted the low-paying, physically-demanding, and temporal agriculture jobs. Since many did not speak English and were uneducated, some even illiterate, they were easy targets for farm owners to exploit. Immigrant workers were often not paid, had low wages, and because of such conditions, some even died. In addition, they also lived and worked in appalling conditions, some workplaces did not even have suitab...
... middle of paper ... ... With the startling growth of immigration, in what seemed like overnight, immigrants were met with hostility as they were the target of religious differences as well as labor unrest, the promoted sentiment was termed, nativism. As the continuation of industrialization and urbanization sparked an increasing demand for a larger and cheaper labor force; an influx in immigrants from all over Europe, migrated in pursuit of higher wages.
American employers who were short of workers often promoted jobs so that the immigrants could come and work for them, they even published a guide book called “Where to Emigrate and Why”, steamship companies advertised for passengers and told them about how much faster it would be and that it is healthier/safer. Once the immigrants were down here they would write to their families and friends and describe just how good it is in the United States, which brought even more immigrants into the United States. However when some immigrants arrived they realized that it isn’t what people described nor what they expected/hoped for; the immigrants were going to be the ones doing all of the dirty work. They didn’t have the best of housing either, the bathrooms were at the end of the hall and they shared their apartment. They were filled with families in one small room; 50% of families slept three or four people to a room and 25% had five or more people per room. Each different ethnic immigrant found a different type of
America is often known as the land of opportunity, a place where you can be free. Many Immigrants came to America so that they could have a greater possibility at succeeding in life. Immigrants took a leap of faith when coming to America, for some it worked out well but for others they had a difficult time here. Despite the struggles that the immigrants encountered such as; standing out from others, being separated from their families, and breaking their culture, the immigrants are still grateful to be in America because they were in better conditions than they were in their home land. When viewing interviews or looking at an immigrant’s perspective you get many responses to being in America, some major things that stood out were the amount of freedom the immigrant had, and the age of the immigrant. These two things had a huge impact on the opinion of America from an Immigrants point of view.
In their home country, illegal immigrants have a very poor quality of life and come to the United States to improve their livelihood. Thousands of Latin Americans try to enter the U.S. illegally for a shot at wealth and opportunity. Regardless of being in a low-paying job, they 'll be making much more