Immigration In The Film 'The Least Of These'

Chitra Divakaruni is the author of “Live Free and Starve.” She emigrated from India to the United States. She has written many books addressing the immigrant experience in America. Her experience as an immigrant, now living in America, gives her the knowledge to write on this topic. Divakaruni has personal insight to how child laborers are treated in third world countries and how they live verses the United States. A preconception Divakaruni has is the United States tries to interfere and govern other countries without considering the consequences. In paragraph eight, Divakaruni asks if Americans are ready, if the bill is passed, to take responsibility for rendering these children homeless and jobless.

“What I Learned as a Kid in Jail” is a speech given at a TEDTalk convention to a group of young men and women delivered by Ismael Nazario, a prison reform advocate where he does work for The Fortune Society, a non profit organization. Nazario was arrested when he was just under eighteen for robbery and sent directly to Rikers Island where he spent 300 days in solitary confinement, before ever being convicted of the crime. Nazario’s goal in delivering his speech to a group of younger men and women is to make them aware of the way correctional officers treat younger inmates and how inmates should be spending their time doing productive activities and understanding they do not have to go back to the life they were living. Nazario accomplished this goal by sharing personal stories from his past experiences.

For my research topic, I will be exploring the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and post-9/11 border militarization on the issues of criminalization of immigration and the inequality and structural violence immigrants face in detention centers specifically at the U.S.-Mexico Border. National awareness on issues such as oversight of detention centers, conditions within detention centers, as well as the inhumane practices detained immigrants are subjected to have risen within the last decade. Immigration detention has become the fastest growing form of incarceration in the United States, and immigrants are the fastest growing population in federal prisons (Lopez & Light, 2009). Nearly 30,000 immigrants are detained

In the fiscal year of 2014, U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) stated that they conducted approximately 315,943 removals of individuals (ICE, 2014). This number includes undocumented immigrants, permanent residents, children, asylum seekers, and victims of human trafficking. The United States holds on average 380,000 to 442,000 persons in immigrant detention facilities per year (CIVIC, 2015). Immigrant Detention Centers hold individuals with migrant status who are in waiting of their removal proceeding decision made by the Department of Justice. Detention facilities ideally should model a civil system yet the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE have transformed

Once a child is label a criminal there is no way in taking that back, because they start to believe that they are criminals that the world has given up on them and what’s the point of proving that theory wrong. So, when they are released out of juvenile detention or prison they just fall back to the same pattern. Especially because when they are sent away, they are left alone in horrible conditions and treated like

9. Immigrants choose to migrate to the United States for many reasons such as poverty or blight. Some of these immigrants were forced out of their homes while others simply felt attracted to America for its ideas and freedoms. However, not all immigrants were welcomed like the Irish who held no crafting skills or any skill at all.

Youth incarceration is a growing dilemma in the United States that populates facilities as well as ruins lives at an alarming rate. As a society we cannot expect our kids to be the future of this nation when we are placing them in facilities where they become victims of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse that is far worse for them than adults. Michelle Alexander is a professor at Ohio State University and a graduate of Standford Law school. She states in her award-winning book, The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness "Children are five times more likely to be sexually assaulted once being placed into a facility" (Alexander,123).  Adolescents being detained causes many problems that are much more detrimental to them than adults. Some of them will now have exposure to drugs and gangs. Others will become victims of sexual abuse from other older inmates or staff members and risk transmitting sexual diseases. Most young juveniles have a mental illness that has not been treated or they become suicidal when staying in a facility.  These young people are still adapting to their environment and should not be treated as adults.  They are unable to grow and develop when we are punishing them like adults and trapping them in the US justice system.  The families of these children will now suffer knowing what their child faces in these facilities. As a nation we cannot consider ourselves civilized when we are placing these young people in facilities that punish them like adults.

Criminality in our country is often assigned to you at birth determined by trivial categories such as race, class, gender, immigration status, religion, and the list can continue forever. Life outcomes can be predetermined when taking all of these identities into account, making someone more susceptible to the reach of the mass incarceration system. However, I will be focusing on undocumented immigrants and how being seen as “illegal” is part of their daily lived experiences and how there are very strong parallels between the immigration detention centers and prisons in the United States. Undocumented people experience similar forms of social and political disenfranchisement that people affected by the criminal justice system also have to

Not every child that encounters a police is taken in custody. Police officers are more lenient on juveniles because they do not want a stigma to be placed on them as they grow up. Some youth’s are not that lucky, in which they are taken into custody and are given one of

The Movie “The Immigrant,” directed by James Gray in 2013, is a historical piece, mostly because it was not made in 1921 when the events it portrays actually happened. I would also have to attribute the movie to be a drama as well as a romance, as the movie is about an evil man hooking the main character, Ewa who is played by Marion Cotillard, into becoming a prostitute. The movie has certain aspects of romance as well as fear. There are many times where you feel love will be sparked and Ewa will live happily ever after. However, these moments are fleeting and go away very quickly, only to pop up again a few minutes later. In the two hour duration of the movie, I felt hopeful, as well as sad. While not learning any historical information, I was entranced in the lives of the characters. I feel as though they did a fantastic job of portraying the time period, through the cloths, speech, and even the way the buildings were built.

1. The New York House of refugee was developed to keep younger generations out of the systems. This program places them in group homes and other facilities in which helps them stay out of trouble, and helps them learn new subjects. While having this program everyone believes that it improves these delinquent’s behavior, however; if we were to imprison them then they are more likely to committee more crimes in the future.

A better way of life? More opportunity for work? Better environmental conditions? What is it that brings people from other countries to risk it all to come to our country? Maybe it is the open invitation we have had displayed on our very own Statue of Liberty:

These images from the documentary of deprived and neglected children shocked America’s conscience and helped prompt the United States government to provide better educational opportunities for migrant children. The newspaper, El Malcriado, does a lot to

flee from their birth homes, wishing for a better life. Many parents seek to find a life for their

Although Immigration is a complex topic with many different factors, the most common reason for immigration is poverty and the hopes of building a new future elsewhere. In the past migration was largely caused by the fore-mentioned issue of poverty, social strife, war, or other political conflicts. As of today these things are still issues and in some cases political asylum does play part in immigration decisions. Globalization is defined as the tendency for business, technologies, or philosophies to spread throughout the world. Globalization is also a major factor in the decisions made before immigration, often times families and friends will eventually re-unite in one region in order to remain together. Living in a more technical world with an advanced society has brought us to the point we are at today, a nearly global community with more in common than in any century before. With the beginning of modern technology in the 1900’s came a more closely knit world, with more communication than what was seen in the past.