Immigration in America Case

Abdunosir Khaydarov

Professor: Suzanna Riordan

ENG 2100

Due date: May 13, 2015

Immigration in America

                Every year, thousands of legal and illegal immigrants enter US soil. These immigrants have many different motivations for coming, some come to look for better living, some escape from their country due to the civil war and other issues. Many of these people believe that America is the best place for them. There is freedom, protection, education, welfare, health care, and other benefits, which are important for immigrants. The aim of this paper is to look through the course of history and find out how the time period between 1990 to present has affected immigration, and how some opportunities are given to only certain immigrants with a particular race, gender, and ethnicity. Many Americans believe that immigration has negative effects on the country; but is this really true?

                For centuries America has welcomed immigrants from all over the world that came in hope of living their “American dream”. America is the only country with diverse nationality, which also can be referred to “melting pot”(Immigrant effects, 2011). Through out years a lot of immigrants became American citizens; however they kept their old identity and referred to themselves as Asian Americans, German American, Russian Americans and et cetera. This brought up conflicts between true citizens and new citizens, because true citizens thought if they keep their identity it would cause problems in the future. Another big issue for immigrants was education, because education is the key for a brighter future. They realize that getting an education in America would increase a person’s chances of success no matter where in the world he or she lives. This ideology caused even greater immigration waves to enter US soil in last two decades.

                Over time, American government became more concerned about this rapid increase in population. So the government decided to restrict immigration, and ended up forming new laws and acts against certain nationalities. This prohibited certain immigrants from living a life that most Americans lived. Laws like that prevented immigrants to become true Americans, because it caused racial discriminations, and inequality, which led to formation of groups with same nationalities which is called hyphenated Americans. Hyphenated Americans basically kept their old identity because they didn’t want to become purely Americanized. President Theodor Roosevelt brought up this issue. In October of 10, 1915 he gives a speech; it is called “address to the knights of Columbus”. In the speech he says “there is no room in this country for hyphenated Americans”, basically he disagrees with this idea of living in America but having totally different culture, identity and etc. He also said citizens who is hyphenated would also cause political problems. For example during elections, for a citizen to vote as Asian American, German American, or Russian American would cause political threats, because he believed foreign votes would be involved in this process.

                Researches show that biggest immigration to America occurred after 1990’s approximately 45% of the total immigrants who are living in this country entered during that time. This includes immigrants with many different racial backgrounds such as Asian, Russian, Indian, and Latinos from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Columbia and etc. Huge amount of immigrants like this affected American economy as well. Some of these immigrants moved to America entirely, so they had to sell all the assets they owned back in their country. If that was the case it affected American economy positively because most of them entered US soil with decent amount of money. Another positive thing about that type of immigrants was, some of them had job skills like running a business that could also bring the economy up. Those who came with money and skills were given more opportunities. They could open up their own small business, for example Russians who entered US soil during 1990’s were mostly from the Jewish community. Back in Russia they owned small businesses like grocery stores, barber shops, and small pharmacies, so when coming to America, most of them knew what they were going to do. Basically their capital allowed them to have more chances, but on the other hand a big portion of these immigrants were entering US hoping to make a decent amount of money to send back to their family. They entered the US with almost no money on them. Most of these immigrants would stay in US soil past their visa expiration, because they know that they wouldn’t get a second chance to come again, so they choose to stay and work until they get tired, and eventually they would leave by getting deported from the country.