Tag: immigration

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Catch-All/Student Discussion Questions

Huntington Ch10 ERA

In Chapter 10 of his book “Who Are We,” Huntington discusses American identity in regards to the international environment. He begins by reporting on the change in the international environment with the end of the cold war, the extensive international involvement US elites abroad lowering the salience of national identity amongst those elites, and the increase of culture as a source of identity (as opposed to ideology). 

Huntington discusses the loss of the Soviet Union as our great enemy not being particularly helpful to national identity and argues that enemies are an effective ‘identity builder’ for a group. He also highlights the broad disconnect between the beliefs of the cosmopolitan elites and the nationalistic public. This increasing divide leads to evermore disjointed policy preferences because the elites fill the foreign policy administrative arm and sit atop the most powerful interest groups. 

What I found most interesting was his discussion of the political influence of foreign groups who are connected to their home countries. Connection to homelands like chain migration, remittances, and maintaining communication with friends and relatives are all regular elements of immigration in an increasingly connected international environment. Attempting to politically influence policy in a foreign country to benefit your home country is an entirely different caliber of behavior. In the beginning of this book, Huntington cites that many of the founding fathers were in favor of restricting immigration because of the ideologies they would bring and the impact it would have on democracy, and I think that they would consider immigrants attempting to change our government’s policy to help their home country as direct evidence of immigration’s harm. The government is supposed to work for its citizens, and the prospect of foreign nationals swaying our policy potentially against our interests and towards their own seems to be anti-American. 

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Catch-All/Student Discussion Questions

De Nadie Reflection

Over the summer I was an intern at the Camden Center for Law and Social Justice, a non-profit law firm that does domestic violence and immigration work. I spent a lot of my time doing country condition research on the factors that drive immigration and translating client interviews. The film hit very close to home with me because these were situations I was familiar with. I have met dozens of people who made that same crossing and suffered through the same struggles.

My time at the Camden Center left me highly familiar with the violence and poverty that causes people to flee their homes. Much of my research focused on the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18, the gangs responsible for terrorizing migrants on the way up to the border. Since most of our clients were interested in claiming asylum, I encountered a lot of stories about the havoc these gangs would wreak in the central American countries where their presence was strongest. 

The story Maria told of a girl getting raped, shot, and having her breasts cut off was not uncommon at all. I had clients who were familiar with a gang in their home town murdering two parents who could not pay their extortion fees and leaving their infant child lying in his parent’s blood. 

I had a client whose sister was tortured and murdered by a gang who threatened to do the same to her whole family. These gangs are responsible for massive amounts of child rape, extortion, murder, torture, femicide and any other violent crime one could possibly think of. One thing the film taught me was just how much this abuse continues as people travel up to the border. 

I have my doubts that immigration is a net positive for the countries receiving and for the countries people are leaving. I don’t know if helping people to get out of Honduras makes Honduras better, or even if helping people leave Denmark makes Denmark better. But my experiences have taught me something that the film really reinforced for me. The major point that economic or nationalistic arguments about immigration frequently miss is that immigrating to the U.S is by far the best option for the immigrants themselves in almost all cases. Whether that creates a moral burden for our country to accept them or not is debatable, but what is undeniable is that every one of my clients and all of the people from the movie would have marginally better lives if they lived in the United States. 

Every political party and ideology has a way to respond to this notion, but I would encourage especially those on the right to keep this in mind. I’m not saying that they should change their policy preferences after recognizing this fact. (I may agree with most if not all of their positions) I simply believe that any analysis of immigration as an issue, especially an analysis of immigration from countries where organized crime, judicial ineffectiveness, corruption, lack of security, poverty, and so on make living there hell for the average citizen should include a consideration of the realities on the ground for those who desire to immigrate. 

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Reading and Film Presentations and Discussion

ERA Ch.8

In Chapter 8 of We Wanted Workers the author goes into detail in regards to the economic benefits of immigration and more specifically about who in particular gains and loses from said immigration. He starts off by noting that factually there are some misleading statistics that may appear to some people as objectively beneficial. When looking simply at the numbers the author says that people will say immigration benefits companies financially. This data is true but the author says that there is another aspect of immigration, which is that there is typically a loss in value associated with the native population in a country. When immigrants arrive in a new country the data suggests that local populations that were already in place will experience an economic loss whilst large corporations that employ these new immigrants will experience the benefits noted in the data. The second major thing the author speaks about in the chapter is in relation to the types of immigrants that come to the country in terms of their skill level. The author says that immigration is most beneficial to the native populations when the immigrants that are coming into the country are of high-skill and even then there needs to be a certain set of criteria met in order to ensure that the immigrants have, as the author would say, a productive spillover on the native population. Not every immigrant will beneficially impact the native population and the author notes that it takes a certain criteria to ensure that productive spillover will occur. Do immigrants need to benefit the local society in order to justify being in the country or should the fact that they are often leaving a bad situation for a chance at a better life be enough to justify immigration regardless of the economic impacts?

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Catch-All/Student Discussion Questions

Assimilation

In this most recent reading of We Wanted Workers the author heavily focuses on the idea of assimilation and the implications that assimilation has on both immigrants and the rest of the American public. The author notes that all throughout American history assimilation by groups of immigrants has been relatively quick and common. The author states that nearly every group throughout previous American history has assimilated and has done so at a rapid pace. This is important to note due to the fact that immigrants from Mexico, according to the author, have not been assimilating at the same pace as other groups from other countries. The author believes that one of the main reasons for this lack of American assimilation is due to the fact that there is a significant amount of immigrants from Mexico who are moving to places that already have a large Mexican population. This leads to a lack of assimilation because, as the author points out, if people immigrate to America but do not live with the population they will not be exposed to the American values and culture which will lead to them not assimilating as fast. This is particularly important in regards to the Mexican population because there are a significant number of immigrants coming to the country which means there are more areas, or as the author puts it enclaves, in which Mexican immigrants live. This leads to a less immersive experience in American culture and can explain the slower assimilation that the author has pointed out. I believe there is value in assimilating to American culture in that it is beneficial for immigrants to become accustomed to American culture to simply have more opportunities available to them. Assimilation is not necessary nor should it ever be forced upon any immigrant population but it is clear that assimilation simply helps immigrants gain more opportunities in America as they have more information about our society after assimilating. I personally think that assimilation is helpful but not necessary and the idea that that all of the problems surrounding the issue with immigration and the struggles that immigrants face when they arrive in America would be solved by assimilation is not accurate. Is assimilation the root of the current issues immigrants face when arriving in America? How would assimilation be encouraged or mandated without infringing on the freedoms of those in America?

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Catch-All/Student Discussion Questions

Insight into Lenon’s Utopia

Over the summer I interned at a law firm that handing immigration law. The firm was pro-bono, so we did not see any of the business executives or highly educated immigrant’s visas. A considerable amount of our cases were with uneducated people who had been poor in their home country and are now poor in our country. Many times they were completely undocumented and had scheduled consultations to see if there was any provision in the law that could get them ‘papers.’

I am semi-fluent in Spanish so I spent a lot of time translating first-time client consultations. It was through this experience that I truly saw the way the bureaucracy we were discussing in class today affects immigrants coming from developing “southern” countries. There were many times we had clients who did not understand the concept of what a court was. We had clients who had thrown away the paperwork given to them by ICE officers with their trial date because they did not think they were that important. Many of them had come from poor rural areas of central or South America and had a level of inexperience with bureaucracy that I think as modern-day Americans we struggle to comprehend. There was even a consultation I translated for in which a client thought our office was the immigration court. 

Even in Lenon’s utopia, there would need to be at least some sort of government bureaucracy to keep track of what was going on, and even that would be an impediment to migrants with extreme inexperience with bureaucracy. My summer experience gives credence to the idea that the “trillion-dollar bills” on the sidewalk can not just be picked up for free. The costs to not only get low educated migrants from the south through our bureaucracy and then integrate them to work within our domestic bureaucracy would be astronomical, regardless of whether the government or private citizens spearheaded the effort.