Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Are We Proud of Our Melting-Pot?

A recent article posted on The Texas Tribune.org commented on the march towards International Immigration Reforms that took place in Dallas on May 3, 2010. The article states that the march was overall peaceful, as the marches wanted to demonstrate a "1960s peaceful" style march, referring to the march in 1963 lead by Martin Luther King Jr. The march was held not only in Texas, but in other parts of the country to protest the Arizona Law that will inevitably lead to racial profiling, therefore making minorities second class residents.

While the article was informational, I do not favor the elaboration on how controversial the topic of immigration is by placing in multiple examples of marchers' comments in contrast to people who support the Arizona law. We all know that people have a lot of ignorant comments about immigration, and using their comments as evidence weakens the quality of the article. I do however, feel that it is important to shine light on the issue and show how people are reacting to the current situation.

Immigration is becoming more controversial as the number of immigrants increases. Some argue that immigrants are taking jobs away from U.S. citizens. Economically, it is easy to assume that if someone will do a job for cheaper, the will be more likely to be hired. Because immigrants have less resources coming into our country, it seems that immigration and poverty go hand in hand. I learned of a theory recently that poverty is "functional" in society; basically arguing that people in poverty do the jobs that no one else wants to do, for cheaper, and it works out for everybody. There is more to it than that, but that is the part I feel applies to immigration at the moment. I feel that we need to adapt. I'm not saying that it is Ok, but it seems to be true (in addition to the fact that people always want to have someone lower than them). People come here for the opportunity of a better life. It seems that people have this mind set that if someone comes in from another country and makes a living here, they are taking away an opportunity I could have had. It's a competitive world. It is bad enough that immigrants suffer a great deal of criticism daily for being who the are. People seem to take it for granted if they are a U.S. citizen, not allowing room for empathy. Are we not fortunate that we were born here? It just so happens that others were not and people feel that they are instantly better than immigrants because of this. All of us would not be here in the U.S., had one of our ancestors not immigrated to this country.

There are issues that arise because there are undocumented residents in our country like lack of money and resources for the booming population, but we should be able to figure it out with a solution that includes immigrants. This new law in Arizona is not a solution. I don't want to sound cliche and say "Can't we all just get along?", because I know when it comes to money and power, that is out of the window. In this case however, it is about the pursuit of a better life.

Growing up in the public education system, I always learned that America is the "melting pot". Teachers taught this as if it were something Americans were proud of. I later learned that many Americans view the many "ingredients" in the melting pot as imposing, invasive, and unwelcome. Diversity is something we pride ourselves in, but it is all a facade.

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