Nouveau Poor Documentary Analysis

This situation sounds familiar in American labor history, where immigrants have been a mainstay in the national workforce. It wasn't until the labor movement gained strength that workers in the U.S. were able to turn “exploitive jobs into occupations that enabled them to support their families and improve their living conditions” (Dougherty, 2004). Higher wages have also increased their purchasing power, stimulated economic growth, and higher standards of living.

The United States of America is a nation of many immigrant people. People come from all over the world, leaving their homeland and sometimes leaving their loved ones to escape deep poverty and violence. When immigrants come to America, in their dreamland they face many problems such as language, education, employment, legal problems, housing, food, and health issues. Immigrants do all kinds of low-paying jobs. They clean houses for a living. Some immigrants come with very small businesses. Many immigrants contribute their skills, knowledge, and education to improve the U.S. economy.

The book “The Other America”, written by Michael Harrington, describes poverty in America in the 1950s and 1960s, when America became one of the most affluent and advanced nations in the world. The book was written in 1962, and Harrington states that there were about 50,000,000 (about 25% of the total population) poor in America at that time. The author did extensive research with respect to the family income levels to derive the poverty numbers, and used his own observations and experiences to write this book. This book addresses the reasons for poverty, the nature of poverty, the culture of poverty, the blindness of Middle Class America with respect to poverty, and the responsibility of all Americans in addressing the issue of poverty in America.

Jenny a Mexican immigrant who moved to America when she was five says “We are the hard-working people and they think we are here to do nothing. They think we are nothing.”. This saddens me horribly, I could not even imagine being seen as nothing. However, I have seen it. Often when I was a waiter customers would say to me “where's the little Spanish girl I’d like my leftovers wrapped?” and they would say this without even batting an eye. A lot of the coworkers I have had who were immigrants have been much harder workers and much more grateful for what they have then my native coworkers. Which makes me angry because often these are the people who are working longer hours and getting less pay. The article states “nearly 2 million immigrants earn less than the minimum wage, and

Joe Messerli published an article that addressed the positive and negative effects immigrants have on the U.S. Obviously, having a larger population causes there to be greater competition to obtain work, however, the majority of the positions obtained by illegal immigrants are those that are undesired by Americans; low-skilled, low-paying, labor-intensive jobs (Messerli 2). Illegal immigrants pursue careers like dishwashers, landscapers, field workers, housekeepers, and food-processing plant workers. Very few Americans have the desire to obtain these jobs, whereas, illegal immigrants fill those positions gladly and do so at decreased wages. They also stay employed in those positions for many years, normally without the possibility of promotion. Americans however, only remain in such low-skilled, low-paying jobs for a short time, seeking to advance to higher paying positions.

Immigrants came to the United States for a better life, civil rights and better economic opportunities. “... the one great reason for coming to is that they believe that on the wage they can receive in America they can establish a higher standard that the one they were accustomed to” (document C). For this very reason, many immigrants came to America and took native citizens jobs. This seemed to be a problem because it left many American citizens without jobs. (O.I) Since immigrants would work for a lower wage, employers didn’t mind hiring them, since they’re saving money. However, this made the national income worse since a substantial number of legal citizens did not have jobs. America’s job market and national income was very low and didn't improve, causing an individuals personal income to lower as well (document

Third World immigration into the U.S. has not produced a highly skilled labor force, as the above statistics show. Instead, the U.S. labor pool has become flooded with low level, menial laborers, whose desperation for work of any sort has undercut the wages paid at the lower end of the labor market, which in turn made it more difficult for native born American citizens to escape poverty. An estimated 1,880,000 American workers are displaced from their jobs every year by immigration. The cost for providing welfare and assistance to these Americans is over $15 billion a year. (Associated Press, 1997)

This means that in the working class most affected by immigration, the least educated and least skilled native-born Americans, the changes in wages are hardly noticeable due to immigrants. In actuality, the “overall low-skilled native wages are 2.4 percent lower as a result of immigration” (Orrenius 21). Additionally, in many cases the job or profession is one that would not appeal to a native-born American, such as lawn services, construction, or janitorial work. This supply of cheap labor actually benefits American

Illegal immigration has caused a lot of controversy within the United States. The media has influenced our society to make us believe that illegal immigrants are horrible people. One thing that I have learned throughout life is, “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains (Rousseau 4).” This sums up how society dictates our lives and limits us to what the media wants to us to believe. Whether it is legal or illegal, everybody should be treated equally. Illegal immigrants might always end up with the short end of the stick, but they heavily support the US economy. They contribute by paying taxes every year. In addition, they adopt difficult low wage jobs that are not of interest to the average American.

Undocumented immigrants make up a large portion of the workforce doing jobs that are undesirable to many people. They leave their stable live in search of better opportunities for their family. The people who come to the united states do not come because of their own benefit. They come in search of benefitting their next generation. Immigrant workers know that the position that they are in is not the best and is more difficult to change their own path in life, so they put their focus on raising children in an environment where their children can see the benefit if certain commodities like an education. Although they have difficult jobs with small compensations and no benefits, they continue to work to serve as an example that hard work is the

Immigrants come to America chasing hopes and dreams of someday having a life of wealth. The United States has this imagine that everything will be better and all your problems will be solved. However, in the last century we’ve had a raise of Illegal Immigrants in the country.

Taking an example such the United States where today it has a population of over 40.2 million foreigners staying in the country which constitutes about 13% of the whole population of the U.S. from these figure the concentration of undocumented immigrants is 11.2 million and the legal immigrants are about 29 million. This means that the percentage of undocumented immigrants in regards to the total population falls at 3.7% and has been continually increasing over the years with 1990 having a population of 3.5 million undocumented immigrants (Bustamante and Philip, 318). It is estimated that in the United States alone the percentage of undocumented immigrants living below the federal poverty level’s (FPL) household income of 138% is about 53.5%. This means that for every five undocumented immigrants, one lives in poverty thus means even where necessary cannot afford to provide medical care for themselves or even the family. Studies done have proved that it is more unlikely for undocumented immigrants to pay their rent, they are faced with periods in which they have no money for their day to day activities and have a greater likelihood of being homeless at some time in their lives (Chavez,

We see immigrants in the restaurant industry, not as chefs but as dishwashers and busboys. We see them in the agriculture sector as migrant workers doing literally backbreaking work of weeding and picking our fruits and vegetables so we can purchase them at low prices. We use immigrants as gardeners and groundskeepers and expect them to work outside, in Phoenix, in 100 plus degrees. I don’t think any of "us" could tolerate the conditions that they work under. They clean our schools, our offices and our stores. They get security jobs on the shifts that American workers don’t want, night watchmen. They take the construction jobs from companies that avoid paying union wages. These opportunities are presented by American companies that are only interested in their bottom line. The desire to hire immigrant workers, documented or undocumented, is out of the greed of profit-driven corporate America. The fact that Immigrant laborers are desperate for work is exploited by the very companies that promote lower prices for consumers, American consumers. An irony of sorts. We pay lower wages so we can have lower prices at the expense of the employment of others who were making more money doing the same job. Since these American workers are now being paid the lower wage or none at all, it helps that the prices for these items and services are lower. Otherwise how else could they afford them?

For decades immigrants to America were sure of two things. They came for the opportunity to build a better life for their families and they would not seek nor would they accept a handout. The drive and attitude of immigrants who came to America during the nineteen twenties through the nineteen sixties built strong work ethics that created our now famous American melting pot. But for the past thirty years a runaway welfare state has poisoned our good intentions. Well meaning but misguided entitlement programs gave billions of dollars in free handouts to a deluge of new immigrants as the floodgates opened and annual immigration levels more than tripled. The effects of this mass migration

When one thinks of immigrants, lets’ face it what one envisions is the man or woman working in California restaurant kitchens, the maids in middle class neighborhoods, baby sitters, gardeners mowing lawns. L.A mayor Antonio Villaraigoza famously put it during a speech: “Today we say to America: We’ve come here to work: We clean toilets. We clean your hotels. We build your houses. We take care of your children. We want you to help us take care of our children as well” (Malkin,M.,