Frank's Immigration Narrative

George expected money. If he hadn’t had enough, he would ask for more until he was satisfied. Everything turned and went downhill because of his money crave. George came along and bad things happened.

Globally, the United States has been known as "a nation of immigrants" almost from its inception. Beginning in the 1600s with English Puritans and continuing today, America is a melting pot of culture and ethnicity. In fact, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, immigration was the major source of U.S. population growth. Looking over our 200+ years we find that to clearly be true, with approximately 1 million immigrants coming to America during the 17th and 18th century. Almost 3 million arrived during the 1860s, and another 3 million in the 1870s. In the next four decades, the number of immigrants rose to over 25 million people, most from various European nations, most arriving in New York or one of the Eastern seaports (Damon, 1981). Despite the politicization, as of 2006, the United States actually was the number one country globally to accept legal immigrants into the country, with a current immigrant population of almost 40 million (Terrazas and Batalova, 2009). In fact, the peak of immigration was 1907, when over 1.2 million Europeans entered the country beginning a push towards legislation limiting immigration in the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1924 and the 1921 Congressional Quota Act. These immigrants came for two sociological reasons: the push factor (wars, famine, persecution and overpopulation) and the pull factors (jobs and the promise of freedom). Most came by ship, and a passage often cost the equivalent of an entire life's savings causing many

The United States has been a host to a wide diaspora of people. Immigrants have had to transition from their familiar land to a new-fashioned foreign land that they must consider home. They bring with them the essence of their initial homeland such as customs, traditions and beliefs that inadvertently change the dynamics of culture within the United States. As a result the United States is an extremely culturally diverse nation. The continual changes or accretions that Americans encounter have always been a controversial topic depending on the experiences of individuals and communities that have immigrant populations. This essay will critically explore

Simply put, America is the land of opportunity. In the past, immigrants have left most of their family, memories, and familiarities with their homeland in search of a better life in America, where jobs were easy to find and the economy was booming. These immigrants formed almost the entire American population, a demographic anomaly in which people from nationalities separated by land and sea; these people come from countries separated by expansive distances can live within the same neighborhood. Both Anna Quindlen with her essay “A Quilt of a Country” and John F. Kennedy with his essay “The Immigrant Contribution” have documented the story of these immigrants and

What happens when you put a staunch supporter of deporting illegal immigrants and keeping strict laws in place for immigration, with a family of immigrants? In this episode of 30 days with Morgan Spurlock, I watched as Frank George went on a journey of living like an illegal immigrant for 30 days, and the emotional journey he went through. This paper explains the changes he went through, and my reaction to the video.

The first day in the United States is one of the best day and most thrilling days in my life. My father and my older sister move to Malaysia to get a job and support our family due to financial difficulty and lack of job opportunity in Burma. After a few years, my father and my sister were able to enter as immigrant and they were sent to the United States as immigrants through United Nation. After being apart with my father and my sister for more than a decade, my parents decide to move completely to America where more opportunities are available for a brighter future. My family faces many obstacles during the process of migrating to America. Despite all the struggle that are on our way, my family finally arrives in the United States and face major changes in life.

In recent history, many Americans have had a growing concern for the immigration (both legal and illegal) growth in our country. While the United States of America was settled by European immigrants, the unprecedented growth the late 1800s saw, led to reform on the immigration policy, which once was nonexistent. Based on conditions floods of immigrants caused in the cities of the country, the immigration reform was needed. Not only were the lives of immigrants negatively impacted in the United States, but so were previously settled Americans.

Immigrating to America is a process in which many people all across the world entrust as their one way ticket to a better life. Whether they do so legally or illegally, coming to the United States ensures better opportunities, economically, politically, and so on, to people who would have otherwise been worse off in their countries of origin. Even so, the common understanding of being “better off” can be considered a misconstrued concept when it comes to living in the states. Many families that choose to immigrate to the U.S. fail to realize the cultural hardships that newcomers tend to face once on American soil. Anything from racial discrimination or bias at work, in neighborhoods, at school, etc., can all be challenges that people encounter when making a move to the U.S. Such challenges are described by Richard Rodriquez in his autobiography Hunger of Memory. In this passage, he explains how cultural differences between Mexican and American ways of life have shaped him into the person that he is today. He also chooses to highlights the problems that he faces growing up in a predominately white neighborhood, while attending a predominantly white institution. Much of his writing consists of the cultural differences and pressures he feels to assimilate to Western culture and how this process, in turn, changes him into the person that some may find to be unethical, but nonetheless, someone he is proud of.

In the late 1800s, America became more attractive to immigrants as they considered its growing economic opportunity. Many families and individuals packed up their belongings and undertook the life-changing journey to the western frontier of America to pursue the “American Dream.” This was the

In the United States, the cliché of a nation of immigrants is often invoked. Indeed, very few Americans can trace their ancestry to what is now the United States, and the origins of its immigrants have changed many times in American history. Despite the identity of an immigrant nation, changes in the origins of immigrants have often been met with resistance. What began with white, western European settlers fleeing religious persecution morphed into a multicultural nation as immigrants from countries across the globe came to the U.S. in increasing numbers. Like the colonial immigrants before them, these new immigrants sailed to the Americas to gain freedom, flee poverty and

“We are nation of immigrants. Some came here willingly, some unwillingly. Nonetheless, we are immigrants, or the descendants of immigrants, one, and all. Even the natives came from somewhere else, originally. All of the people who come to this country come for freedom, or for some product of that extraordinary, illusory condition. That is what we offer here—freedom and opportunity in a land of relative plenty.” (Middletown Journal 2005)

When most people think about immigration to the United States, they think of the U.S. as being the “land of opportunity,” where they will be able to make all of their dreams come true. For some people, immigration made their lives richer and more fulfilled. This however, was not always the case. A place that is supposed to be a “Golden Land” (Marcus 116) did not always welcome people with open arms. Even after people became legal citizens of the United States, often times the natural born Americans did not treat the immigrants as equals but rather as outsiders who were beneath them in some way. In some situations, people’s lives were made worse by coming to the “land of opportunity.” Often times people were living no better than they

Stars and stripes, the land of opportunity and the nation of immigrants. The United States of America, one of the largest and most influential countries today, is and always has been a grand attraction to people all over the world. America has become home to people from all corners on this planet; especially to Europeans seeking wealth and religious freedom, to several African slaves brought to America against their will from the 17th to 19th centuries; and today to the major immigrant groups in America: Asians and Latin Americans. My family and I emigrated from Hyderabad, Pakistan to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States of America in 2014. We fortunately managed to receive our Green cards and Social Security after much toil and expense. It is a big question to me to and several Americans as to why people do not immigrate to America simply legally as we did and reside in America without worry. More than 12 million people in US aren’t fortunate as we were in successfully finding legal permanent residence (Immigration policy center). America’s Immigration System has several problems because of which several immigrants and the country itself is suffering.

As a German immigrant during the late 1800s, I came to the United States for a better future, mainly seeking opportunity for financial and religious freedoms. President Theodore Roosevelt thought the immigration of new people was awesome and was making America a “melting pot” (Vecoli, 1996). I fled my home country of Germany because of financial burden and disappointment with the government. Throughout this journal, I will explain some mental, physical, and social issues I experienced as I made America my new home.

It is difficult for many Americans today to imagine taking everything they own and moving to a new country because of religious and political freedoms. With these freedoms taken so much for granted, we rarely think of the steps taken by our ancestors to gain that liberty. When looking at attempts in history to gain freedom, it is usual to look to the founding fathers of America and their sacrifices. However, other groups of people have strived for the same thing, one such group being the people of the divided German states shortly after the Seven Year’s War. Through several generations of Germans, these people moved across country, across continent, and eventually even across the ocean to America in order to gain that much-desired freedom.