Poverty And Immigration In Maggie : A Girl On The Street

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

Furthermore, once in the US, most immigrants (due to lack of work authorization ) cannot provide for their needs. They make less than minimum wage so can only live in shady neighborhoods where insecurity rates are high. In order to survive, many immigrants do criminal acts like prostitution, theft, drug dealing, etc. And that generally increases the rate of insecurity in the nation.

Mass immigration also causes lots of poverty in America. America is considered to be a land of opportunity, but when immigrants arrive they often struggle more in America than they did in their previous country. Whether the problem is learning a new language or just fitting in with society, immigrants always struggle with fitting in with our foreign society ("The Immigrant American Dream" 578-579). When that

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

The novel, Maggie: A Girl Of The Streets, by Stephen Crane, takes place in the slums of New York City during the 1890’s. It is about a girl, Maggie Johnson, who is forced to grow up in a tenement house. She had a brother, Jimmie, an abusive mother, Mary, and a father who died when Maggie was young. When Maggie grew up, she met her boyfriend, Pete. In Maggie’s eyes, Pete was a sophisticated young man who impressed Maggie because he treated her better than she had been treated to all of her life. Once Maggie’s mother and brother found out that Maggie was sleeping with this man, Mary threw Maggie out into the streets, condemning her to a life of evil. Eventually, Pete decided he no longer wished to see Maggie.

Immigration is people coming from their home in like china coming to the U.S for a better life, and to start over. In the book Esperanza rising it was Esperanza’s birthday, and her Papa dies because of le louwes and so she moves to the U.S. in her life. Although Esperanza faced many challenges as a immigrant, her hardest ones were Papa dieing, and Mama getting sick.

To say that immigrants in America have experienced discrimination would be an understatement. Ever since the country formed, they have been seen as inferior, such as African-Americans that were unwillingly brought to the 13 colonies in the 17th century with the intention to be used as slaves. However, post-1965, immigrants, mainly from Central and South America, came here by choice. Many came with their families, fleeing from their native land’s poverty; these immigrants were in search of new opportunities, and more importantly, a new life. They faced abuse and Cesar Chavez fought to help bring equality to minorities.

One’s cultural experience of poverty can make one take full advantage of the opportunities one gets. Just like Reyna in the novel The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande, Reyna and her family luckily got their green card by an act of government amnesty which gave all the illegal immigrants that were currently in the country a green card. For one instance, after she went back to Mexico to visit her grandmother with her mom and after seeing her cousin, Reyna said “Now I realized that we owed it to them, our cousins, our friends, to do something with our lives, If not for us, then for them, because they would never be able to. I understood so clearly now why papi said there were so many people would die to have the opportunities we had, who

The United States is made up of two different types of immigrants: those who are born on U.S. soil and those who travel to settle here. However, despite whether one is born in the United States or not for most their lineage runs back to other countries. It is evident that a majority of the U.S. first immigration wave was around the late 1800’s to the 1920’s. This was a time in which many immigrants where leaving their countries due to different reasons and finding prosperity in the U.S. In the book 97 Orchards: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement (97 Orchard) by Jane Ziegelman she explores and paints the history of five different immigrant families. The book goes into great detail sharing stories of daily

Aside from social issues such as religious freedom, immigrants have come to the U.S. to escape poverty and make a better life for themselves and their children. Until immigration laws limited the amount of immigrants from certain foreign countries, the rate of immigration from other nations had been highly correlated to the difference in real wages between the U.S. and the home country as well as the economic and political conditions.[4] When the real value of money in the U.S. increased vis a vis that of a foreign nation, immigration from that

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.

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

Many immigrants came to America seeking freedom, jobs, and land while others were running from famine and war. While immigrants ran from the problems of their native land, they were running into new problems in America. Americans feared the immigrants would take their jobs or have the right to vote. This fear caused discrimination against the immigrants due to their diverse backgrounds from Germany, Ireland, and China. Immigrants that came to America faced the hardship of discrimination because they did not only stand out with their culture but also because Americans didn’t necessarily want them in America.

In the opening stages of the novella, Maggie tries to escape her troubling life through her relationship with Pete. As Maggie grows up, she becomes a beautiful girl who hates her life in Rum Alley. She sees Pete as a savior who could lead her away from her poverty stricken life and bring her into the world of leisure because he introduces her to popular music, dances, and dramas, all of which seem extravagant to her. Maggie “begins to note the well-dressed women she meets. She [envies the women’s] elegance (11).” Most of the melodramas that Maggie watches with Pete show the American dream of a person going from rags to riches, which is a goal that she thinks Pete will help her in achieve.

In the past, most immigrants came as workers with similar skill levels and from similar societies. Now, most immigrants come as relatives and from underdeveloped countries. As a result, most immigrants are poor, unskilled, and unable to mix into our society.