Migrant Struggles
The topic of immigrants has been a controvercial topic in our country recently. The debate of whether or not to deport illigal immigrants has been ongoing because of the different situations. Some think that kids brought here by illigal parents should leave because they shouldn’t have been here in the first place. Others think that we shouldn’t deport them because America is the only life they’ve ever known and they didn’t do anything wrong. Putting these debates aside and looking at the situation with a more humane view, one thing is evident. Immigrants tend to have harder lives than someone whose family has been in our country for many years. The harsh lives of immigrants are created when the racist views or employers cause them to deny work to migrants. Other things that can also make life hard for immigrants is their fear of getting deported and the rough start from their families.
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Immigrants have much harder times finding jobs that have a good enough pay to support their families. In the Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, the Joad Family is a family from Oklahoma that moved to California along with many other migrant families in hopes to get work and away from the struggles of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. The Californians did not want them coming because they would take all the jobs. This caused the discrimination of the migrants throughout the book. In the book, the “Okies” were turned away so much and became super desperate to get money and food for their families. Pretty soon they were competing for jobs. One man would offer to work for 20 cents, and then the next for 15, competing for the job. When someone finally got a job, they would barely be making enough to support their family. Today, if employers are racist or against migrants in any way, it will cause migrants to have a harder time getting a job. Although the law says that you aren’t allowed to discriminate against race, people -especially people with money and in power- always find ways to get what they want. When the country started, there were men who got rich and powerful and stayed in political power by controlling who worked and how much they got payed. Another example is after the abolishment of slavery and the reformation of our country. Even though the de jure law said that all men were equal and all slaves had freedom, citizenship, and the right to vote, many people hated them and created laws that kept blacks separated. People in power can control the lives of those who are suffering by not giving them well paying jobs.
Many laws in past presidencies and the current one have caused immigrants to fear getting deported. For example Elizabeth Martinez claims that in 1997 after the Welfare Reform Act was passed, it created “a host of horrors, including Wilson’s announcement a few days before the November 1996 election that he would end prenatal care for “illegal” immigrants a month from that date” (Martinez). Migrants also fear getting deported today because of some of the actions that our current president has taken. In his presidency, Donald Trump has cancelled the DACA which has relieved 690,000 children from deportation who had been brought to the United States as babies (Pierce, Selee). Trump has also “ended the designation of Temporary Protected Status for nationals of Haiti, Nicaragua and Sudan, and signaled that Hondurans and possibly Salvadorans may also lose their work authorization and protection from removal in 2018.”(Pierce, Selee). In an effort to stop terrorism, our government has victimized many migrants who are struggling for work and food and have denied them the opportunity to make money for their families. All the fear of deportation causes immigrants to become preoccupied with figuring out what they might have to do if they do get deported. This is also another reason why they don’t get hired to higher paying jobs. No one wants to hire someone who might have to leave the country later.
Another reason why migrant workers have such harsh lives is because they grew up with families who didn’t have anything. If a family doesn’t have money to teach their child then the child starts school behind everyone else. Usually in this situation the student stays behind and gets a worse job; a job that they cannot support a family with. And then the struggle begins again for the children of that family. This cycle repeats and there are very few times when children break the cycle. This is all because their parents couldn’t give them the tools necessary to teach them at an early age and now they aren’t able to get their kid a good education to start. Two more reasons of why immigration is hard is because of the social change and the education barrier of language (Dumon W.). When children travel to a new part of the country/world, it can be very hard to get used to their systems of education and work. These are more reasons why migrant kids fall behind in school.
There is no doubt that immigrants have rougher lives than most local people and that is due to the racist views of employers and competitors, the fear of getting deported, and the hamster wheel of poverty that migrant families keep running around in. So how do we help them? I think the easiest way for us to help is to keep in mind that these immigrants are people too. Even though they weren’t fortunate enough to be born with the opportunity that we were born with, we should give them a chance by ridding ourselves of our racist, selfish views.
