Immigrants and the United States

Immigration and the United States

How does immigration affect the way that we live our day to day lives? Two authors write about how immigration has affected the daily lives of everyone and what we as a nation are doing about it. In “The American Dream and the Politics of Inclusion” by Mario M Cuomo, he writes about how everyone from all over the world should be welcomed into this land of freedom and opportunity. “Immigration: The Sleeping Time Bomb” written by Robert J. Bresler speaks openly about how each wave of immigrants has effected the United States. Immigration has affected the United States in many ways, some good, some bad, but it is something that we as a nation must prepare and deal with.

Written in the Declaration of Independence is-the promise of equality, life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. For the past 210 years we have tried so hard to give this to every American. Those who have reached the American dream, should know that the dream is not yet fulfilled until everyone has been given an equal opportunity. Some may view Immigration as a bad thing, but I consider Immigration as a more diverse way of seeing things. It’s not fair if we do not open our doors to other shores to share the same dreams that we all have.

I am the first generation American born in my family. My mother came to this country with absolutely nothing in her pockets, no education or skills, not even a pair of slippers to wear. Bare footedly she has reached her dreams of owning a home, a business, a family that she can call her owns. I am proud to be given the opportunity to live in this country where if you have the dream and the drive to work hard, you may succeed. My mother is proud to see her son finish high school, attending college, and a Supervisor at his workplace; this is what I call the American Dream.

Bresler states that with each wave of immigration that comes into the United States each bring along with them social dislocation and even conquest. “… mid-20th century blended into Americans with a strong common culture reinforced by the nation’s music, films, radio programs, and later, television.”(36) says Bresler. But now America is not the same. It does not have the same common threads that held it together fifty years ago. The next few waves of immigrants of poor children will face inferior schools, and are likely to adopt the dangerous self-destructive behavior of the youth that is currently around them.

In a serious of articles in the New York Review of Books, Christopher Jencks has serious doubts about today’s Immigrants. “Mexico is our largest source of immigration-legal and illegal…”(36) states Bresler. He finds that the next culture of immigration is going to be more resistant to assimilation and thus less likely to be mobile. Employers, especially those in California and Texas, are eager to hire Mexicans, because they willing to work hard and accept very low wages, because they too want to achieve the American Dream. But at the same time, if the Bush Administration continues to allow Mexican immigrants to come and work, it will affect the relative wages of the American workers. Wages will fall, wages that we have worked so hard over years to earn.

As individuals and as people, we are still always reaching forward to get to that next step, may it be a better job or a better