immigrants | JAPANsociology

Anonymous student post

The attitude towards immigrants from nationals that I’ve most often seen is one of “you’re welcome.” As if the immigrant owes something to the national. The national presumably allows the immigrant to stay in their country. The immigrant is treated as a guest, and has higher standards in some regards held to him/her. An immigrant has legal barriers to overcome in almost every country. “You want to work here and help our society like a good citizen? Well we’re not going to make it easy for you, jobs are for citizens—never mind the merits of the job candidates!”

Immigrants have to be outcasts for their entire new life. Only their children, grandchildren or even beyond will get a more equal treatment in the eyes of their new society. Immigrants deal with discrimination on paper from the laws limiting immigrants rights, and tangibly in their day-to-day lives. Barnard mentions the attack on Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorean immigrant, who was stabbed to death in a hate crime. Barnard mentions, “Many [immigrants] fear the police because they are in the country illegally; some give false names…”. Dealing with prejudice effects the entire immigrant family negatively. The typical immigrant has many more issues to deal with than someone who is nationalized. They need to learn a new set of laws, adapt to new culture, and possibly learn a new language.

Immigrants should be commended for their bravery in leaving their home country to find a life in a new one. They deserve at the very least to be allowed to work in the new country. Why would we disallow someone from being a service to society? The idea that jobs are “taken” by immigrants is a negative aspect of immigration is comically ludicrous. Jobs are not a finite resource, and for each job that is taken there is less work to be done. Society will always naturally find a place for improvement, and new jobs wont ever stop being created. It is harmful to society as a whole to stipulate who can get a job on a basis outside of merit.

In the studies of bilingualism, Portes shows: “…fluent bilinguals [outperform] limited bilinguals and English-only students in standardized tests and grade point averages, even after statistically controlling for parental status and other variables.” Immigrants who are fluently bilingual have cognitive advantages that could further merit their place in the workforce. According to Rumbaut, 97% of the world’s population are “stayers” only about 3% are immigrants. The immigrant minority has a clear disadvantage and we should not have them thank us and beg us to stay. Rather, the immigrants should be commended for their ambition taking heed in a new country. When immigrants come to a country, they are suffering for the benefit of society. The nationals should be thanking the immigrants.

by Ryota Takatsuka

In class, we discussed about people who have no legal passport in the U.S. Before this class, I was not familiar with this problem. The reason why the guy who appeared the video we saw (Jose Antonio Vargas) does not have a legal passport is that his parents brought him when he was a baby and made fake passport. According to the video, generally those who have fake passport realize that truth when they go to driving school at 16 years old. They were revealed by reception that this is fake passport and you should not come here anymore. No identification prevents those people to try many things. In his case, he could not travel overseas, and he hid his secret and he lived in fear of being arrested. My opinion against this problem is that country should support them to fit the country. There are two supporting reasons why I think that way.

The first reason is that through supporting immigrants America can be a model country in terms of diversity. In this world there still severe ethnic or cultural conflicts. They argue that what ethnic group is suitable as ruler or what culture should be promoted. However, under the globalization, it is nonsense to think that way. Accepting cause diversity into America automatically, and if America set some good policy to immigrants and achieve leading this movement toward growth of the country, whole world may accept diversity and globalization will move to more high level than scientist expect now.

The second reason is that rejecting the undocumented ruins their opportunity or talents. In fact, the guy is now famous journalist in America, however, before his ability admired, he had to give up chances to step up such as going to coverage to another country which has potential to make his career better because of illegal passport. There are many people who have same disadvantage for their future. In other words there must have been talented person who ruined their gift and forced to fade out from society. Preparing enough environments for immigrant will give chance for them to contribute to American society.

To sum up, according to the documentary, many immigrants face obstacle to fit into American society such as language barrier and parting from their family. As generally regarded, there is severe competition in American society and people can achieve the American dream. However, under the policy of the U.S, the starting point of the competition is not even. In order to make circulation of contribution system that was mentioned above, the U.S has to consider immigrants as precious investment for the future.