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Immigrants In America

Decent Essays
Open Document

Burke Findley
Synthesis Essay
Prompt: Is the United States a desirable place to immigrate to?

Although some may argue that the United States is the “land of opportunity,” or the home of the “American dream,” the reality when it comes to the matter of whether or not the U.S. is a desirable immigration destination falls flat in that it is nothing better than an advertisement jingle on television, just a catchy phrase and tune. The truth of the matter is that the United States, as it was in the 20th century as presented in the provided sources was not the ideal immigration destination as the United States United States presented immigrants with perils of limited opportunities presented to the immigrants and unsafe labor and living conditions. …show more content…

Yung Wing in his memoir “My Life in China and America” showed how limited the new immigrants opportunities where when he describes how colleges such as Brown and Hammond offered him college, if he would sign a pledge that would make him a missionary to China upon graduation. Yung Wing declined this offer because he detected that these American colleges where attempting to handicap what work he could do upon graduation. This example of the pledge shows that higher learning came with a catch, and that it takes diligence to avoid falling for the catch. Although some writers such as Mary Antin in her autobiography wrote the chapter titled “The Promise of Free Education,” in which she wrote that, “Education was free. That subject my father had written about repeatedly as comprising his chief hope for us children, the essence of American opportunity, the treasure that no thief could touch, not even misfortune or poverty.” Although this “promise” of free education may have seemed like a great idea conceptually, in reality this idea falls flat. At the end of this chapter, Mary Antin describes how a language and culture barrier extended between her and her family and the educators when she wrote, “At last the four of us stood around the teacher’s desk; and my father, in his impossible English, gave us over in her charge, …show more content…

In the work place, the new immigrants where used as strike breakers, brought in to work in factories for lower wages than non-immigrants. Although some critics of this argument have argued that there where plentiful jobs available which was beneficial to the immigrants, the jobs that they where given where menial and dangerous, as well as exploitive, with many of the wages inhumane. As a result, many children of the immigrant family’s were forced to go directly into the workforce, taking away from their ability to a “free” education. Carl Sandburg describes the conditions the immigrants had to endure in his poem “Chicago.” In this poem he writes, “On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.” In this line of his poem Sandburg shows that the women and children who were forced to work so that the family could make ends meet showed signs of cruel hunger and health. This line works to prove the cruel conditions that immigrants were forced to endure in America. Jacob Riis, famous for his book of photographs titled, “How the Other Half Lives,” represents the poor living conditions of immigrants in his photograph titled “New York: Tenement Yard.” In this photograph, Riis shows the claustrophobia

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