Teach Me About Immigration

This first article that I read about immigration shows the same pattern occurring over and over again. Foreigners move in, Americans get mad, Foreigners are kicked around and treated awfully, Americans accept them, and new foreigners come in and the cycle starts all over again. This country prides itself on being a nation born of immigrants but it never said how the immigrants were treated. It never mentioned what they went through to become true Americans, which according to this article doesn't happen until you become second, third, or fourth generation American. Americans were so scared of the huge intake of immigrants that they were convinced the country would never be the same. "In fact, the Pledge of Allegiance was first introduced as a means of reinforcing traditional American values in the face of overwhelming immigration." Now the Pledge doesn't mean much too that many people. It's just another thing that is forced upon us in the mornings as a way to keep our children American. If you were to ask just about any student today why we say it most of them will not be able to tell you it was because of paranoia of new people coming in to help our country grow culturally and economically.

Immigration was so feared in this country that our government put quotas on the number of people allowed in from each country. Some people weren't even allowed in at all. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was a law passed that, for ten years, banned the immigration of the Chinese people. The American people believed that if they were able to reduce the number of immigrants that came into this country they would not have to fight for jobs and space to live. Today people are very upset about the amounts of immigrants in this country, mostly the ones that are here illegally. The main argument against them is that they are taking away jobs for well deserving American citizens. If this were the case then I guess we should start seeing more and more people working at fast food restaurants and day labor jobs. Everyone is so afraid that they will lose their jobs to these immigrants but the only way that would happen is if they work the jobs that nobody else wants since those are the only jobs we give these immigrants. "Illegal immigrants provide significant economic benefits to society. It is estimated, for example, that between 30% and 50% of the seasonal farm workers in California are illegal aliens. Without them, many crops in California and similar states would go unharvested or be forced up so dramatically in price."

People can complain all they want about the immigrants in our country, illegal or not. What they don't realize is that these people come to this country to work hard and make a life for themselves. Many Americans feel like since they are born in this country and are already given citizenship and all the rights reserved for them in the Constitution that they don't need to work as hard to survive. If this attitude keeps up then we might as well get rid of all immigration quotas since the immigrants would be the only people in this country willing to work and keep our economy moving.


"immigration." American History. ABC-CLIO, 2010. Web. 29 Jan. 2010. .