Story of an Immigrant
The focus of this paper is Shimma. His tribal home is in Sudan. He is believed to be 21 and has resided as a refugee in the USA since August 2001. He is known as a “Lost Boy of Sudan.”
I met Shimma while shopping at Wal-Mart in central Phoenix. I had been fascinated by the reports of the Lost Boys that I had heard on TV and read in the newspapers. I knew that some of the Lost Boys were being relocated to Phoenix and hoped to meet some of them along the way on my travels through out Phoenix. I had seen them at bus stops and around the city walking. They have a very distinctive appearance, not your typical African-Americans. They are tall and thin with high cheekbones and dark black skin tone.
While shopping at Wal-Mart I rounded a corner and there he stood tall, dark and smiling. I got excited about finally meeting one of the Lost Boys and began to ramble. I introduced myself and inquired into his status as one of the Lost Boys. He introduced himself and confirmed that he was indeed one of the Lost Boys I had been reading and hearing about. I asked him for an interview and he offered his name and telephone number. I repeatedly tried to contact him and weeks later he agreed to meet me at a local restaurant. The day of our interview after many phone calls he arrived over an hour late, which I accounted for as cultural time difference. Shimma is a very busy man. He works at Wal-Mart and attends ESL classes two days a week at Phoenix Community College.
Much of our study in this anthropology class has centered on voluntary immigration due to economic circumstances. Shimma did not migrate for economic reasons, he is a refugee seeking safety and sanctuary from his war ravaged country. The book that we read in class about refugees was a case study that considered the plight of the Hmong in Wisconsin. The Hmong are refugees from Laos who fled after US forces pulled out of the Vietnam War. I also read a book about the Hmong that dealt with a case study in California and a little girl of Hmong descent that encountered great difficulties with the medical institutions after she was diagnosed with Epilepsy.
John Bul Dau is just one of the many lost boys of Sudan. His story takes us away from our everyday lives and shows us the hardships that the people of Southern Sudan faced as they fought for survival. Growing up into the man he is today, John narrates the story of his past life in an inspirational book titled “God Grew Tired of Us”. From age thirteen and into adulthood, he faced many challenges. Some of his challenges include: encountering conflict with Northern Sudan soldiers, handling the disturbances of nature, and questioning his own religious views.To this day, he remembers these hardships and has done what he can to help his people.
The ‘Lost boys of Sudan' is a common name given to more than 20000 boys of Dinka and Nuer tribal groups. The research narrates the struggle of refugees, the need for conflict resolution and various political concepts. The ‘lost boys' refer to three young boys who fled from their country, Sudan, during the civil war and sought refuge in other countries. Their story depicts violent events that occurred during the second civil war in Sudan. The war mainly affected the Dinka and Nuer ethnic groups of Southern Sudan (Ajak, 2006).
Throughout the semester we touched on several topics, but one topic that stood out for was immigration. We watched and discussed movies like “Sin Nombre” and “El Norte” which depicted the process of migrating and the risk factors associated with it. On a personally I more interested in it because been an immigrant myself I can relate to Sayra in “Sin Nombre” and Pedro and his sister in “El Norte” to some extent.
The author shows what an immigrant was liked. The author uses key terms such as internal dialogue and third person point of view details to reveal different things about the character, and the Triangle factory fire. In the opening of Yetta's section, her internal dialogue reveals, Being an immigrant is hard because years would pass, and you have to show yourself nothing, but you can read little more English. Sometimes you can feel left out because in frantic times others are trying to stay alive speaking to others and when you aren't fluent in that language you can't understand others. While being an immigrant you feel left out sometimes you feel nobody will listen to you. The author shows that when you are from different country other may
Hate, shame, and guilt are the emotions I internalized for fourteen years of my life as a result of crossing the border illegally. An event that brought me face-to-face with death and was detrimental to my life since the age of eight. A traumatic experience that has placed me in the hands of therapy sessions and antidepressants to strengthen my emotional stability.
Today, in most cases, people don’t spend very much time thinking about why the society we live in presently, is the way it is. Most people would actually be surprised about all that has happened throughout America’s history. Many factors have influenced America and it’s society today, but one of the most profound ways was the way the “Old Immigrants” and “New Immigrants” came to America in the early to mid 1800s. The “Old Immigrants were categorized as the ones who came before 1860 and the “New Immigrants” being the ones who came between 1865 and 1920. The immigrants came to the United States, not only seeking freedom, but also education. Many immigrants also wanted to practice their religion without hindrance. What happened after the immigrants
My life in early 19th century was very dreadful and scary. I was from a poor family where father goes to work in factories for 12-18 hours a day. I was from Germany. Jews was the most segregated religion in Germany. We did not have full right to do a certain things such as go to certain college to get education, shoe our religion freely to other and enjoy our festival. My father used to get a low wages in work and we have to live with the things we have we have no right to argue back for wages or anything. At that time pneumonia,tuberculosis and influenza were very common dieses. If anybody get sick in family we did not have much money to cure or buy medicine. There was a struggle going on with farmer because industrialist have started making the crops and grains in cheap mony and sell which make the life of farmer hard to live. We also have a little land where we use to farm and live since there is not profit in selling grains than my father start working in factories. My mother used to stay home and prepare food for us. Christian people were persecuting many of my relative and jews...
At a young age, my teachers and parents taught me to believe that I could do and accomplish anything that I set my mind to. I grew up thinking that I was unstoppable and that the only limit to my achievements was the sky. However, during my second year in high school, I began to realize that I was not as unstoppable as I had thought. I began to experience the consequences of my parent’s decision of bringing me to the United States illegally. Among those consequences were, not being able to apply for a job, obtain a driver’s license or take advantage of the dual enrollment program at my high school, simply because I did not possess a social security number. I remember thinking that all of my hard work was in vain and that I was not going to
Lee, JHX & Nadeau, KM 2011, Encyclopedia of Asian American folklore and folk life, ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, CA.
Over the past century, one of the largest ethnic groups that have immigrated to America have been Mexicans. One of the most popular cities with Mexican immigrants is, of course, Chicago. There are many diverse Mexican communities throughout the city and surrounding suburbs, more so than any other minority group. Due to the large Mexican population, it is no wonder why they chose, and still continue to choose, Chicago despite its distant location from Mexico.
United States usually known as the “melting pot” and it is a typical immigrant country. In the past 400 years, United States has become a mixture of more than 100 ethnic groups. Immigrants bring they own dream and come to this land, some of them looking for better life for themselves and some want to make some money to send back home or they want their children to grow up in better condition. Throughout the history there’s few times of large wave of immigration and it is no exaggeration to say that immigrants created United States. For this paper I interview my neighbor and his immigration story is pretty interesting.
History of Immigration to the United States of America starting in the 1600’s, is very complex, with different waves of African Slaves, Indentured Servants, Asian, Latino Immigrants and other immigrants. The attitudes of immigrants have changed overtime with different peaks and dips of ethnic backgrounds, with New Immigration (1930-2000), which gave rise to illegal immigration. New Immigration is when Americans worried about immigration with the rise of Southern Europeans and Russians entering the U.S. and the issue of America being a melting pot or dumping ground to the American economy, politics and culture. Before World War I, piecemeal of immigration had not changed till the National Origins Formula of 1921, which restricted immigrants entering the U.S and gave fondness to immigrants within Europe. In 1934, Tydings-McDuffie Act organized self-government of the Philippines on July 4, 1946, which eliminated non-immigration of the Philippines, therefore, ushering in second to last part of U.S. Immigration. After 1945, the country passed the War Brides Act, Displaced Persons Act of 1948, McCarran Walter Immigration Act, and Refugee Relief Act, which limited the amount you could do in U.S as well as getting other immigrants to safety. The Hart-Cellar Act (1965) eliminated racially based quota system and brought in Asians, Africans and Middle Eastern people over to the U.S., replacing quotas with groups established on family relationships, job skills, in order to see reasoning behind coming to the U.S., but occupations were looked at by the U.S. Department of Labor. In 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) created penalties for people employing illegal immigrants, giving amnesty to only 1,000,000 illegal workers. Legal...
In the story of The Secret Sharer, by Joseph Conrad, A man (the Narrator ) becomes the captain of a ship. All the shipmates have known each other for quite a while, so when the Narrator comes aboard he feels and is treated like a stranger. One night he comes encounter with a mysterious man, known as Leggatt, who hanging from the ladder of his ship. He feels an instant connection with him even after he learns that this man is a murder. He chooses to take care of this man and not tell anyone because he looks almost exactly like him and he has a similar mental struggle which leads him to believe in an ultimate connection that he does not want to separate.
The short story “Where Worlds Collide” by Pico Iyer is about immigrants seeing America for the first time. Incidentally they look at America in the eyes of their culture and as result they felt out of place. They see a strange order such as “Koreans piling into the Taeguk Airport Shuttle and the Seoul Shuttle, which will take them to Koreatown without ever feeling they left home”. Their observation points out how people from Korea choose the closest thing to home, this is their culture, their comfort zone. To people who are not from America the rules are abnormal because they are different from their own.
When Pam met her ex-husband Steve she finally found the person she thought that she would spend the rest of her life with and they quickly moved in together and had a child. Her career as a realtor agent was thriving she was selling houses right and left so to speak while Brian was working a construction worker. She believed that they should share everything to include the money.