My (Very Limited) Immigration Story (Assignment 13)

When trying to find out facts about my family's history, I found that nobody really knows the details. A few random facts are known, but I had a hard time getting the answers I was looking for.

My mother informed me that her mother's father came from Sweden when he was eighteen and started farming here. When I asked her why he left Sweden she said that she'd been told he was "looking for a better life." My mother didn't know the details about the other side of her family.

When I talked to my father about his side of the family, he said that both his parents' families came from England. His side of the family seems to have come a generation earlier than my mother's side of the family, as it was my father's great grandparents who first came to the U.S. My father didn't know many details except that his great grandfather on his dad's side had been a professional boxer. As far as a reason for leaving England, my dad said that they were "looking for opportunities."

This is not my family, but I imagine they looked something like this...?

If my family were to come to the United States today, entry would be much more difficult.  When immigrants arrived on Ellis Island, the process of becoming a citizen took only 3-5 hours. If people were healthy and had no criminal record, they were usually allowed entry. Today, my family members would probably need the sponsorship of a family member or potential employer already living in the United States. They would have to prove that they have skills that would be valuable to the country. Still, the process could take decades, which would likely be too long if they were facing extreme hardship in their countries.

I think immigration is such a volatile topic today because it's easy to forget that almost all of us are descendants of immigrants.  Newman explains it very well, saying, "Immigration creates a variety of cultural fears:  fear that a nation can't control its own boarders, fear that an ethnically homogeneous population will be altered through intermarriage, fear of the influx of a 'strange' way of life, and fear that newcomers will encroach on property, clog the educational system, and suck up social benefits owned and largely paid for by 'natives.'"

According to Newman, however, immigration offsets "the problems of negative population growth and an aging workforce in developed destination countries." Immigrants also fill many of the jobs that people already in the United States simply won't do:  picking crops or driving a taxi, for example. The United States has never had a completely homogeneous population; the "face" of the U.S. is always changing.

Image: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/nyregion/05bookshelf.html
Newman, David. Sociology. Ed 8. 2010.