Latino Immigrants

Immigration of Latinos has long caused cultural conflict, especially when it comes to the illegal immigration of Latinos. Unfortunately, the issue has long been debated and there seems to be no clear cut answer on how to resolve the problem. Many Americans often overlook the struggles that Latinos endure and place stereotypes upon this group of people that are untrue. Furthermore, most Americans are misinformed or uninformed about the other side of this hot issue. The purpose of this essay is to give the reader a better understanding of Latino immigration from a cultural perspective and what these immigrants, both legal and illegal experience when relocating to a new country as well as a brief discussion on the issue of immigration reform.

Growing up in a Hispanic household has shaped and built my values in life. At Appleton North High School, I am one out of the few Hispanic students. Knowing that my parents have migrated to America to give me a better future has motivated me to make it happen. Although, as a Mexican-American, I have felt out of place as a minority. However, with time I learned to accept my cultural differences. In fact, to this day, I thank my widowed father for the sacrifices and greater opportunities he has given me. My goal is to keep representing the few Hispanic students in college by working hard to achieve my career goals; not all Hispanics are fortunate enough to attend college. I also work to inspire young Hispanics to find their potential and follow

We all come from different places and ethnicities, and because of having a dream, people fled away from their home to seek for something to make their life better. Going to a country like United States, is not only a dream but also, an opportunity because many people think that America is the best place to settle in, where work, and education are an easy access. Though this statement is partly true, it is not that easy. Everyone envied because America is a great nation because it's a country of opportunity, but a part of it also is a mixture of feelings that are hard to explain especially if you are immigrant. Every day in your life, you are fighting for something in order to fit in and survive. However, in the process of fitting in or blending to a certain place, people, and culture, it requires a lot of personal choices and a lot of effort as an immigrant. It does not only affect you as a human, but also it draws a lot of attention, conflicts and tension between the government and community. Most immigrants have a harder time to adjust or assimilate even though they speak fluent English and eat American foods. Whenever you see a person of white complexion, people assumed that blue eyes and blonde hair are the characteristics of an American, though these are how we perceived American long time ago, this are still the standards of a few now and doesn’t make a big change at all. The judgement of how a person look physically and how they

If we talk about undocumented immigrants in United States, we usually focus on the benefits and jobs they take from our country, but have we ever stood in their shoes and imagine what life is like for an illegal immigrant? To live as an undocumented immigrant is a bad situation, but I believe to be a child of an undocumented immigrant is even worse, because their choices are limited and they are unaware of their rights to attend colleges. In this research, I will focus on undocumented immigrant students, who are unable to afford for higher education, and the fear of their unknown future which is mainly cause by their undocumented status. The largest invisible group in America, to explore “what are the struggles and unsolved problems of

Tales of Survival 101 for Undocumented Latina/o Immigrant University Students: Commentary and Recommendations From Qualitative Interviews

Immigrating to a new country is difficult. One of the largest groups of immigrants that migrate to the United States are the Hispanics. There are approximately 11.7 million immigrants in the United States as of January 2010, and the amount continues to increase at a rapid rate (Warren, 2013). On average there are approximately 300,000 Hispanic immigrants entering the United States each year (Warren, 2013). Hispanics come from all Latin America including Mexico, the islands of the Caribbean, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, Central and South America (Warren, 2013). The United States has represented liberty and freedom to these individuals, and they often make critical decisions and take chances in the hope of a better future. Individuals often, leave their home country in hopes of a new beginning. The aim of this paper is to provide an extensive research on the current literature on immigration and acculturation among the Hispanic population.

Despite their better standing, the research has surprisingly found that they are “only slightly more likely than those whose parents were first-generation immigrants to have had some education beyond high school or to report household or personal incomes above $25,000” (28). These differences in educational and occupational attainment may be attributed to the overcrowded, underfunded inner-city schools second and third generation Latinos attend or to the fact that young Latinos feel economic pressure to drop out of school to get a job and financially assist their families; thus, keeping them in lower occupational ranks since the well-paid professional positions require a higher educational standard. These results are a bit disheartening, but nonetheless, the educational attainment of Latinos is still in a positive trend since we are seeing a slow, yet gradual increase of educational attainment.

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.

Currently within the United States one of the fastest growing minority population (Schwartz & Scott, 2012) is the Latinos. In 2010 Census Bureau Brief ( Ennis, Rois-Vargas, & Albert, 2011) it stated how an estimated 15 million Latino individuals were living within the United States, which is approximately about 16% of the entire U.S. population. There is one big problem with addressing the Latino population, and that is the family patterns are either misrepresented or not properly understood, due to the label of Hispanic and Latinos being placed together. These two groups may share the same spoken language of Spanish and have similar cultural ancestry but the diversity among Hispanic and Latinos (Schwartz & Scott, 2012) make generalizations about their lifestyles difficult. The term Hispanic came to be used in the 1970’s by government officials (cdc.gov, 2011) in trying to provide a diverse label on this population that had connections to speaking Spanish and the Spanish culture. Latino became more of a termed to be used when distinguishing between Mexican (Hispanics) and Latinos who descendants from Latin America such as Cuba and Puerto Rico.

The Southwest United States is an area of great diversity. It is located on the border between the US and Mexico. In this region there are four main ethnicities represented: Hispanics, African Americans, Anglo Americans, and Native Americans. These groups interact daily working in the same offices and going to school together. Youth of each ethnicity face risks as they grow up. By focusing on the Hispanic adolescent girl the extent of the possible risks to one ethnicity can be explored. These risks will include motivation at school, the risk of dropping out of school, the at-risk classification, which includes gang involvement, and teen pregnancy. The results of studies focused

The number of Hispanics has quickly surpassed that of African-Americans as the new, largest minority in the United States. The African-American population of the United States was approximately 34.7 million, or 12.3 percent of the total population. The Hispanic population has shown an increase of 57.9 percent from the Census of 1990. Due to the overwhelming increase in the Hispanic population and the diversity that has accompanied this increase, Census 2000 introduced for the first time an option for a Hispanic person to identify themselves as Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, or other Hispanic that could be written in an additional space. In the past, the option of writing in a description for "other Hispanic" was not available. This stands as an example of how diverse and rich the Hispanic culture is in itself. Out of the 35.3 million Hispanics identified, 58.5 percent were Mexican, followed by 28.4 percent other Hispanic (Spaniard, South American, Central American, Dominican, and all other), 9.6 percent Puerto Rican, and 3.5 percent Cuban. Of the statistics presented in Census 2000, the most astonishing and meaningful to education are those of population age. Census 2000 found that 35 percent of Hispanics were less than the age of 18 with an average age of about 26; 12 million of this number being school age Hispanics. Only 25.7 percent of the entire U.S.

The main ethnic/racial groups affected by the health issue are non-Hispanic African American females, Hispanic females, and Native Americans/Native Alaskans. There were key study findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that found that U.S. birth rates for adolescents vary considerably by race and Hispanic origin (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2011). Thus, this provides even more clear evidence on the difference of ethnic/racial groups. Additionally, in 2008, the birth rate for Hispanic adolescents was approximately five times the rate for Asian/Pacific Islander adolescents, three times the rate for non-Hispanic white adolescents, and somewhat higher than the rates for non-Hispanic African American and Native American/Native Alaskan adolescents (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2011).

The article “My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant” was written by Jose Antonio Vargas. In it, Vargas tells of the time when his mother brought him to the Phillippines’ Ninoy Aquino International Airport when he was twelve. His mother told him that she wanted to give him a better life so he boarded onto a plane with a man he had never met before and was told that he was his uncle. He arrived in Mountain View, California and moved in with his grandparents Lolo and Lola. Vargas says that he grew to love his new home and when he entered sixth grade that’s when he found his passion for language. He tells of his struggle of making a distinction between “formal English and

For this oral history course I will explore the topic of immigrant’s laborers and their story as me and two other students of the class, have been selected to be internes for The Immigrant Workers Center and contribute to the creation of a collection of stories from immigrant laborers to add clips to the organisation’s website. I am particularly interested by this project, as I already have some knowledge about immigrants and their struggles due to my parents, yet I seek to learn more and hear new stories, new perspectives and new experiences about immigration. The knowledge about the immigrants’ difficulties and concerns that I have comes from my parents and their friends, who are partly Ukrainian and Congolese. Now I want to hear from

“Visa regimes both reflect and reproduce globalized hierarchies between nation-states… At the same time, these national hierarchies become a means by which employers justify the unequal treatment of specific nationalities of workers” (Rodriguez, 2010, 30). This quote elucidates how migrant workers from poor, non-Western countries citizens are disadvantaged in both the process of receiving a visa and working abroad due to the unequal structure of the international system. In fact, as citizens of a “peripheral” country, Philippine citizens must jump through multiple hoops to become a migrant worker, including private training/certification course and government fees (Rodriguez, 2010, 30). Nonetheless, workers are “less likely to be granted visas