Carmela On Immigration Interview

The first question that I asked my interviewee was why her family made the choice to come to the United States. This seems to be a simple and surface level question, but when it is looked into it can be seen that there is much depth. Mary’s family is from the country of Italy. Her great grandmother arrived at Coney Island in the early 1900’s. They spoke only Italian and came to the United states to make a better life for themselves. Life was hard back in Italy and although they were not poor times were tough. Mary’s family sold everything that they had to come to this country and arrived with only one suitcase. This fact really stood out to me and I asked Mary why they would risk so much for something so vague. She told me that America at that time was the dream for many people and that they would have done absolutely anything to get here. Her great grandmother came with her husband and their daughter, who at the time was only a baby.

According to Jie Zong, Jeanne Batalova, and Jeffrey Hallock, the U.S. has been “the top destination for international migrants since the least 1960, with one fifth of the world’s migrants living there as of 2017.” It is well known to numerous people that hundreds of immigrants travel from all over the world to the United States, but what exactly does it take for many of them to get here? One such author, Sonia Nazario, manages to capture the gruesome journey of one immigrant boy, who like many others, is attempting to make it to the United States. The author reveals the brutal realities and the main reason countless of young children make their way to America. In her novel, Enrique’s Journey, Sonia Nazario utilizes pathos, reputable sources,

Imagining journeying across the globe to better your life, this concept sounds familiar to many immigrant Americans. They all come across the globe to improve the lives of their families and themselves. Many people who move across the world are foreign to the language and culture. In many instances, their children are representing them. The children elaborate what the parents cannot. In Mother Tongue by Amy Tang, she writes the struggles her mother had been through while living in America. While she knew the language, her accent made speaking difficult to understand. Many people wrote her off without even attempting to understand her needs. When you’re an immigrant it is heartbreaking, seeing your parents struggle with the language while you

Parents have their beliefs and practices when rearing their children, they share their customs and beliefs with their families to guide and support their families. Parents hope to share their practices from generation to generation, however when immigrants relocate other to countries they adapt to new ways of living (Two Parents, 2009). Immigrants relocate to provide their families with financial stability and better education. Some immigrants face obstacles when they relocate to North America, such as language barriers, discipline issues, and little involvement in their child’s education. Many of the immigrants first language is not English, their language barrier may hinder them from communicating with employers and classroom educators

For more than 300 years, immigrants from every corner of the globe have settled in America, creating the most diverse and heterogeneous nation on Earth. Though immigrants have given much to the country, their process of changing from their homeland to the new land has never been easy. To immigrate does not only mean to come and live in a country after leaving your own country, but it also means to deal with many new and unfamiliar situations, social backgrounds, cultures, and mainly with the acquisition and master of a new language. This often causes mixed emotions, frustration, awkward feelings, and other conflicts. In Richard Rodriguez’s essay “Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, the author

Before introducing any major events, or analysis, it’s important to note that this autobiographical work was only made possible with the aid of written documentation, and tales passed on from the family and the community. This is imperative because a great portion of the piece focuses on events that Edwidge didn’t experience first-hand, so she heavily stresses on the details being re-surfaced through friends and family to complete a holistic emigration story. Family history and the involvement of cherishing family moments is often an overlooked form of communication, but without this, this and many other important minority stories would have never been complied in a way where we can now discuss them in a culturally-reflective academic setting, like this course.

Through interviewing my roommate Linda Wang, I have gotten the opportunity of hearing a first-hand account of what it is like being a young immigrant living in the United States. At the age of eight, Linda, along with her father, mother, and aunt, emigrated to America. Linda’s family currently resides in Bayside, Queens and she is a student-athlete on the St. John’s women’s golf team. Linda was kind enough to share her immigration story with me so that I may use it as a manifestation of what life as an immigrant, and the immigration process itself, entails.

The first source that I would be using is “Remaking Identities” a part of the book Children of Immigration by Carola Suarez-Orozco and Marcelo M. Suarez-Orozco. I choose this source because it contains a study in which children of immigrants develop a sense of identification and their relationship to this new country. In many cases these children have a difficulty identifying themselves, affecting their

To begin, Esmerelda Santiago and her family immigrated into the United States from Puerto Rico. Immigration means, the movement of persons into a non-native country. At this point in time the family only consisted of Esmerelda, her seven younger siblings, Mami, Tata, Tío Chico, and Don Julio. After moving around from apartment to apartment, they finally settled down in Brooklyn, New York. Esmerelda explains that they came to Brooklyn, “in search of medical care for my youngest brother, Raymond, whose toes were nearly severed by a bike chain” (Santiago 1998: 3). Mami hoped for better medical attention for her child than she would have received in Macún, Puerto Rico. Esmerelda also describes the apartment they currently lived in on McKibbin Street, in New York as, “more substantial that any of our houses in Puerto Rico” (Santiago 1998: 6). This shows her level of living back in Puerto Rico was a worse living

It is expected that ultimately there will be a loss of ethnic distinctiveness for immigrants in the U.S., meaning the lack of attachment to the country of origin. (Golash-Boza, 2006) It is argued that all ethnic distinctiveness will no longer exist by the seventh or eighth generations. Before exploring the influence of foreign born vs. U.S. born parents on their children’s cultural assimilation; the different theories of assimilation will be explored. The idea of Assimilation came about in the early 20th century. (Golash-Boza, 2006) Assimilation is surrounded by two theories, the first that all immigrants will assimilate sooner or later and that the generational status of the individual is one of the main factors in determining the

Growing up with parents who are immigrants can present many obstacles for the children of those immigrants. There are many problems people face that we do not even realize. Things happen behind closed doors that we might not even be aware of. Writers Sandra Cisneros and Amy Tan help us become aware of these problems. Both of these authors express those hardships in their stories about growing up with foreign parents. Although their most apparent hardships are about different struggles, both of their stories have a similar underlying theme.

Barnett, Miller-Perrin, and Perrin present a multitude of barriers facing immigrant women such as the ones discussed above. However, their main focus deviates

Second generation immigrants are becoming more and more common in different countries, as first generation immigrants start having kids. These children are becoming much more integrated into the countries that they are born in and due to that, many of them are becoming assimilated into that country’s culture. This causes several problems with the parents of these children, as the parents feel that their children are losing their cultural and their identity, while the children believe that the best way to integrate into that country is to become like everyone else there. Several things are thought to correlate with second generation immigrants and their integration into society. Some examples include, education, family relationships, and cultural

In the book Child Migration and Human Rights in a Global Age, Jacqueline Bhabha writes about the implications deporting immigrants has on the idea of nuclear families. She references conclusions made by Jean Piaget, a famous developmental psychologist, about the negative impact children feel caused by separation from their parent or parents. Piaget states that the presence of parents is “essential for a child’s development of morality” (Bhabha 20). Research about the impact of separation with regards to immigrant children who are eventually reunited with their parents, reports the complex emotional turmoil experienced by the child or children. Therefore, thrusting a child into the migration process only proves to be more harmful than helpful. Clinical reports reveal considerable negative impacts on children and on family relationships both during and after the “separation phase”. Parents forced to part with their “children may feel guilt, but expect gratitude for the sacrifices that they made for their child, but in reality, the child ends up feeling more anger, and resentment towards the parent for leaving them” (Bhabha

Many child migrants, like Fito, want to be able give themselves better lives because they do not have any guardians caring for them. Fito