ethnic survey

Are you?

A)  Male

B)  Female

What is ethnicity?

A)  Your physical appearance (eye color, skin color, hair color)

B)  The given population of people in a certain culture

Is there just one human race?

A)  Yes

B)  No

Which group do you identify with?

•A)  Hispanic

•B)  Latino

•C)  Black or African American

•D)  Native American

•E)  Asian

•F)  Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander

•G)  South Sea Islander

•H)  Caucasian or White

•I)  Mixed or Other

•Does racism still exist today?

•A)  Yes

•B)  No

•C)  Only within certain groups

Female Attitudes towards ethnicity

Frequency	Frequency	Percent      Valid%	Cumulative Percent

Valid	1.00	2	6.3	7.1	7.1
	3.00	5	15.6	17.9	25.0
	4.00	7	21.9	25.0	50.0
	5.00	14	43.8	50.0	100.0
	Total	28	87.5	100.0

Male Attitudes towards ethnicity

	Frequency	Percent	Valid Percent	Cumulative Percent

      

Valid	1.00	3	9.4	9.4	9.4
	2.00	1	3.1	3.1	12.5
	3.00	3	9.4	9.4	21.9
	4.00	8	25.0	25.0	46.9
	5.00	17	53.1	53.1	100.0
	Total		32	100.0	100.0

"Browning of America"

We have a growing colored population in the United States. Good or bad? At the moment, the answer to this question isn't a definite one. A lot of people see different attitudes towards immigration and social justice moving the nation into a positive, bright future. This country is likely going to take a progressive stance on what or who an American is. I think it's a good, in a way, that we'll be moving in a direction where the country will get to reevaluate itself and the principles its meant to uphold. The idea of being an "American" seems more open-ended nowadays, provided that the ancestors of today's Native Americans were the first to arrive in this land and children of immigrant families (past and present) feel very absorbed in US society. With more colored people in the United States, many of them will take up a position in politics, business, technology, law, and education in order to create a stable, equal system that meets everyone's needs. The "browning of America" notion does, however, have some negative aspects to the racial future of this country.


In the next 10 - 20 years, the urban areas of the United States will experience a 50% increase or higher in the African, Asian, and Hispanic populations. While this diversification will ensure a better future for America, we still have to consider the issue of current immigrant families in poverty, their kids with little formal education, and a great lack of literacy amongst immigrants. There's no way this country will continue to prosper if the future majority of people are poorly educated or lack any job experience that can not only help the individual workers, but the economy as a whole. Republicans argue that these people and their supporting Democratic party will only diminish this country's future since they don't value American ideals the same way whites do. This is untrue and insulting since no one has to be white to love this nation and being a Democrat doesn't mean you're without American values. Another issue we'll have to take account for is the rise of white supremacist groups, who are more than likely to cause violence and inflict harm upon people of color. There will be difficult and challenging problems down the road similar to the ones the United States has dealt with before.Whatever the obstacles or changes may be, my hope is that we reach the bar that our American principles have set for us and we don't repeat the mistakes of our pasts.    

Chapt 17

In this reading, this chapter updates its reader with the latest data on immigration to the United States from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. Out of all the other eras of people emigrating to this country, my impression of this one is that it's a relatively, unknown period of immigration consistency and inconsistency within the United States government. Up until this point, the most popular era of people coming to the United States is during the late 19th Century and early 20th Century. A number of the issues discussed in this chapter are still faced today, especially the big one involving US-Mexican border. What was interesting to me was the distinct border systems between the United States's two neighbors, Canada and Mexico.

Bear in mind, this information is dated back from the very late 1980s to roughly 2001, so the data presented is representative of its own time, but still relevant to certain extant today. The US government's INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) has no track record of immigrants from either Canada and Mexico. Considering these two nations share our borders, it's amazing how it's not just the Mexican immigrants we losing count of, but we are doing as poor of a job keeping track of the many Canadian immigrants here as well. The one distinction between how we manage the entries of Canadians and Mexicans is clearly discriminatory. People from Canada can travel into the United States for business or pleasure without any restrictions for six months and no visa. Mexicans coming into this country must apply for border crossing cards and can continue to come here, as long as the immigrant is within twenty five miles of the border and doesn't stay longer than seventy two hours. The media in August 2001 provoked a message of anger and bitterness towards the discrimination targeted at Mexican trucks due to traffic regulations imposed by Congress, which differ greatly from the regulations placed on Canadian border crossers. To this day, we still don't know how many Canadian and Mexican immigrants are in this country.

This is just one of the INS's poor qualities of creating a just, legal immigration system that satisfies the United States government and the people entering this nation. In 1998, another issue provides testament to their ineffectiveness in the case of classifying certain people as immigrants and others nothing what so ever. At that time, opening the doors to certain immigrants was based only on their work preferences (later statistics indicate their families were not even admitted as immigrants and half of these workers were mostly trainees). These immigrants were divided up into two main groups: 1) Professionals who were greatly needed for jobs such as computer programming, medical work, and information sciences, and 2) Agricultural and service workers of various types, who have very little education and are less likely to assimilate into American society. Another sub group of immigrants that are overlooked quite a bit are the so-called millionaire immigrants, who obtain preference visas on the condition that they are allowed the choice to pick where they want their money invested. Usually, this money is spent in economically depressed areas where many immigrants reside. It's nice to know there are a few wealthy people in this world, who invest money into a worthy cause of helping your own people out of the slums. 

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has always been one of those fun holidays for my family and I. It's that time of the year when we connect with each other, talk about our lives, and discuss the events or issues on the rise these days. We're not a religious family, but since my sisters and I were little, we have always shared the things we are thankful for. The focus for our family on Thanksgiving is to maintain our relationships with each other and to know that there are always some things we should give thanks to. These things range from family to something in our personal lives that positively affected us in some way. I don't remember this as much, but when we were kids, my sisters and I would place paper-made feathers on the turkey with different messages of the things we're thankful for. Nowadays, one of my sisters will come home every other year or so to celebrate with us. As much as we would love to have them both home, my parents recognize my sisters have their own lives and are bound to make others plans.
As far as traditions go, there are only a couple customs my family practices on Thanksgiving. Some years we'll have turkey with gravy, potatoes, and vegetables, while on other Thanksgivings, my parents will cook up a different recipe for that night. My dad carves up the turkey and my mom will make a couple special desserts for afterwards - both which are longtime Thanksgiving traditions for men and women. Other than that, we're generally laid back about how we want to celebrate Thanksgiving. Once, my dad was on the board of the San Jose Family Shelter and the family had three Thanksgiving dinners there with the shelter's residents. It was a nice treat to dine with those less fortunate than us, as I'm sure it was for them to celebrate Thanksgiving with the people who provided a roof over their families' heads.   

Chapter 16

History, as they say, is bound to repeat itself at one time or another. In the 1980s, new immigration reforms started attracting more people to the United States, stirring a lot of upset citizens across the country. This was the first time since the mid-1920s that Americans went from creating a society, void of poverty and despair, to a reexamination of their nation's immigration policy. Around this time, the Iranian hostage crisis had taken hold on people who worked in the American embassy, pushing the United States to set further limits on immigration.

In March 1981, the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy was created to enhance an early United States tradition of barring immigrants from entering this nation using a literacy test and US history test. Five years later, the new Immigration Act was passed by Congress to make some modifications to the drafts of the 1911-20s legislation that was originally set out to reverse American immigration policies. In a way, the new commission of 1981 was dominantly liberal whereas the 1911 body was conservative. The main head in the1980s of this new group, Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, a world champion of an honorary degrees collection of over a hundred, made it the commission's goal to "walk the fine line between honoring America's tradition of being a land of opportunity for the world's downtrodden and dealing with today's harsh realities." Hesburgh's and most of his staff's attitudes were aimed at maintaining the United States' economic prosperity and welfare by strengthening or regaining complete control of its borders. While this popular notion is favored by politicians and citizens alike, even today, this country hasn't taken the issue of our borders seriously enough. It's one of the reasons why we can't find those who are here illegally since there's not a lot emphasis in Washington on creating more restrictions on crossing our borders. Hesburgh's church has a long tradition of defending immigrant rights; however, Hesburgh himself has taken the stand on promoting more restrictive immigration so as to not create a "disservice to our poor and unfortunate" who are desperate for work in this country. Others have argued the exact opposite of this argument.

Economist John Kenneth Galbraith and members of Reagan's Economic Advising Council argued that since American government power is small, the regulating of immigration has lessen enough for more people to come in without being caught. To add, illegal immigrants don't necessarily hurt the economy or American workers; rather they help to increase job opportunites and wages through hard work and their personal investments of starting a better life in the United States. Overall, the efforts these immigrants put into their jobs not only benefit them, but the nation as a whole. The one obstacle, however, is the sentiment from Americans, who argue that many of this country's historical immigrants (Germans, Irish, Chinese, Japanese, etc.) have not helped in improving the standard of living, but lowered it quite a bit. This debate may not end any time soon, but as a nation, we definitely must look into how we should manage our borders, as well as create some kind of program that determines which immigrants can become citizens and who are just here for work or an education.                

Boat People

This poem couldn't be any further from the reality of Haitians longing to start over in the United States. Each of the verses provides some meaningful, yet interesting context on the situtations many of these immigrants had to endure while entering or assimulating into American society. A few verses distinguish the Haitian outlook of the term "Boat people" from the way Americans use it. For example,


"We fight a long time with poverty
On our islands, the sea, everywhere
We never say we are not boat people"


signifies the attitude of most Haitians have on the basis of them being a "boat people" within their rights. In this case, they are fighting for their way of life at home and in America. The 'boat,' in a way, is the metaphor of heading out into the surrounding waters or land in order to achieve that goal. However, when their ancestors in Africa were captured and thrown into the slave ships, the Haitians of African descent didn't see themselves as "boat people" in the sense that they were forced against their wills onto these large boats. The poem continues on justifying that Haitian immigrants are not all drug smugglers or trouble makers, but people who are here with "courage and strength to work." They are in this country for reasons similar to any other American's - freedom and most importantly, to prove to Congress that Haitians are people with the same needs and desires that everyone else has.   

Chapter 15

While the United States has numerously tried to keep certain groups of foreigners out, there have been other immigrants (excluding those from Western Europe) that Congress has worked to allow into this country. Towards the end of this chapter, it's discussed how the process of opening America's gates to Soviet Jews was in full swing during the late 20th Century. The attitude of this 1970s movement was a stirring contrast to the attitudes most Americans had towards Jewish immigrants - before and after the Holocaust. A definite push factor in this massive immigration is that many of these Jews were getting out of the Soviet Union to escape persecution from the Russians. Yet, a number of these peoples' original plans were set towards Israel, where they could re-establish themselves and their way of life. The ones that ended up going to the United States had it a bit easier for a couple of reasons.

Provided that Jewish families were already settled in the States before the '70s, every one of these local communities pitched in to sponsor the newly arrived Soviet Jews. These local towns were scattered throughout the country, but the main concentration of Jewish immigrants was Brighton Beach at the very southern tip of Brooklyn, New York. While other communities rallied to get Jews out of Russia and into America, as the same time, most of these immigrants were young, educated men who had no desire to lead a religious life. A bit ironic since many Jewish immigrants originally came to the United States to freely practice their customs without being persecuted. Another ironic twist to Jewish emigration was the emergence of glasnot (Reagan and Bush presidencies) that allowed more immigrants than what the United States was able to keep track of in the late 1980s. The State Department decided that the best way to lower the numbers of Soviet Jews into the United States was by determining if each immigrant possessed enough fear towards the Soviet Union. One could stay the easier it was to leave Russia, the harder it was to come into the United States.

Cuba, being a historical asset and brief enemy of the United States, sparked a great mass of emigration into this nation. From this reading, I could see how Thomas Jefferson and Southern politicians saw this island as a potential site for American productivity and prosperity In the sequence of events from Cuba's independence in 1898 to Fidel Castro's revolution in 1959, waves of Cubans entered the States - many of them as early actually as the early 19th Century where Cuban cigars were popular products among Americans. Cuban immigration declined for a time after Cuba was freed at the end of the Spanish - American War, but it peaked once again in the 1950s which made Miama, Florida the center of Cuban America. At the same time, political tensions were rising, sending more people into the United States than ever before. Even with Castro in power, airline travel continued between the two countries until the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. For three years following this event, airline planes didn't to or from Cuba. Many of these Cuban immigrants managed to escape to Spain and Mexico, but as soon as the crisis with Castro's government began to ease a bit, another great mass of them entered the United States once again.    

Chapter 14

Of all the groups that have emigrated into the United States, none have successfully transitioned into American life than the Asian American population. While these people definitely faced discrimination and prejudice from White Americans, the demise of the Chinese Exclusion Act and coming of the 1965 Immigrantion Act allowed Asian minorities to find work and eventually move up in life so that the next generation has better opportunities. Another factor that contributed to the increase of Asian American people and influence was Hawaii's admission into the Union in 1959, which enabled many senators and  representatives of Asian descent to move up into the core of American politics in Washington. Given their cultural backgrounds, Asian Americans have been proven to be less likely to end up in jail and more so to head to college than the average American. Thus, they become known as the model minority - the group of immigrants that has set the bar for other descendants from a foreign country to reach if they are to succeed in the United States. However, there are some differences between the distinct Asian groups in terms of the median age within a particular group and the chances of these people's culture being around in the United States.

One such group, the Japanese Americans had faced a steady decline of their people coming to America during the the 1920s and '30s. The immigration patterns were much more rapid, though, a little less steep than other the other Asian ethnic groups. Interestingly enough, when the Immigration Act of 1965 was passed, there was still very few Japanese coming to the United States. While many immigrants from Japan did arrive during the 1950s and early 1960s, the one reason why they didn't emigrate after 1965 was due to the fact that if the act had been passed immediately after World War Two, a war torn Japan would have been enough of a push factor for people to reestablish themselves in the United States. Since Japanese immigration slowed from the '60s onwards, the Japanese American population started to slow down a bit, essentially due to the great number of births that overcame the number of deaths within this ethnic population. While they were becoming an aging group towards the end of the 20th Century, it should be noted that Japanese Americans have very well financially and for the most part, fall within the range of middle to lower class in American society. Although the average income for a Japanese American family wasn't higher than their educational expectations, it was higher than what most Americans had.

The experience for every Chinese American was greatly different from their Japanese counterparts. Since the 1940s, the number of Chinese immigrants has gone up quite a bit and many of these people weren't directly from China. Newcomers came from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and different parts of Southeast Asia. Even some ethnic Chinese arrived from Vietnam as refugees and have continued to identify themselves as such. Compared to the Japanese American families of the 20th Century, Chinese American families were mainly within incomes that were along the poverty line. Both groups do share similar educational status which enabled Chinese Americans, who went as far as college, to speak out against the "silent" issue of their people still living in poverty within San Francisco or being anything but the model minority.

Chapt 13

Great changes occurred in the old immigrant/quota system in the post World War Two era. Up into the 1965, the Immigration Act of 1924 set the basic guidelines to immigration law in the United States in regards to how newcomers can legally enter this country. The demise of the Chinese Exclusion Act in the '40s ended the long, racist system that was a huge product of the 1920s American attitudes towards immigrants. Filipinos received better opportunities to migrate into America mainly due to small quotas and the celebration of finally gaining independence in their home country. Even so, strict admissions were still laid for most Asian immigrants (Japanese, Korean, Southeast as United States politicans were still debating over whether the old or a new immigration system should be put into place.

A lot of controversy was sweeping across America as citizens and Congress members were divided over "lowering the barriers" of the country's borders and how strict our immigrant policies should be. Some political leaders, such as Senator Patrick A. McGarran, though once a believer in the national origins concept of protecting America's borders, found himself siding with the broad notion of naturalizing newcomers to the United States. The reason for Americans being uncertain about allowing more immigrants in was due not only to the masses of Europeans arriving from a war torn continent, but the direct fear of Communism spreading to this country since it was already on the rise in many nations. Others, though caught up in the fears of the twenties rather than the realities of the forties, felt this massive immigrant movement was some kind of plot to sneak Jews into the United States. I was always curious about the anti-Semitic mindset of Americans after World War Two, especially since these were the people our troops found in the concentration camps and provided them with food, water, and clothing. Obviously, many of the principles and aspects of American ideology that turned the original thirteen colonies into the United States evolved around Christian (mainly Protestant) ideals; people in America have historically looked down on others outside their way of life, particularly Jews since they have been considered historical enemies of Christian life. It can infered that since many Anglo-Americans after World War Two didn't learn about the horrors of the Holocaust that sympathy towards many Jewish immigrants was, for the most part, non-existent.

The Immigration Act of 1965 accomplished more than what it authors could have forseen. It helped to change the face of American attitudes towards immigrants and enabled quotas for people from countries that had more applicants than quota spaces in the system. The reform went through three provisions: 1) The quota system was phased out over a five year period, with numbers of immigrants that were released into a pool of distribution, 2) Natives of any country only received more than 10% of the newly authorized quota numbers, and 3) A seven-person  board is to be established to advise the president, along with two appointed members by the Speaker of the House and five other members from Congress. The president, after receieving the recommendations from this board, would have the authority to allow 50% of unallocated numbers be preserved for people at a disadvantage with the new quota system and 20% to all other refugees. In short, this immigration reform helped to distribute evenly the number of people coming into the United States, while helping those who aren't qualified for the quota system at the same time.

Chapt 11 New Immigration

While the great immigration that started in 19th Century ended around the end of WWII, people never stopped to come to the United States for a better life. From the Roaring Twenties to the defeat of the Axis Powers, nearly five million immigrants came in droves to the United States, despite these groups being historically ignored for some time. What's interesting about this period of emigration to America is that the records of people going in and out of the United States kept going up for a few years, until following the Great Depression (1932-1935) did more remigrated than immigrated into this country. Before World War One, around 90% of immigrants were primarily European and the focus of the Immigration Act of 1924 was to attract more of these people, mainly from the British, Irish, German, and Scandinavian nations. This act was big, considering that the people of America's former WWI enemy, Germany, made up one fifth of the European immigration in 1924, jumping up to a tenth of the total of immigrants that settled in the United States.

It never occurred to me that the American Immigration Act of 1924 was set to attract people from the northern most countries in Europe, but it makes sense for a couple of reasons. These immigrants were essentially white which provided the United States with the excuse to increase and purify White American society. Although the Irish were historically discriminated for their customs and religion, eventually America came to accept them for their motives in political life and mainly since they were white. It was definitely the same case with the British, Germans, and Scandinavians, but most likely due to the similarities they shared with Americans as far as religion, customs, and perspectives on government were concerned. This connects a bit with Ben Franklin's thoughts of increasing the number of white people in America, except he regarded the Germans as a swarthy group and never recognized the Irish (likely since they were Catholics and American colonists never thought too well of them, as did the English).

Around this time, the number of immigrants from Canada and Mexico increased by 50%. This was a complex situation for these people (particularly the Mexicans) since there were from within the "New World" and not subject to the quota system. Provisions were made in 1921 to allow wives and children of United States citizens be nonquota persons, but not if they were aliens ineligible for citizenship. Others allowed in or back into America included resident aliens returning from visits back home, religious ministers and their families, domestic servants, and people practicing in a professional field. In the case of European immigrants, the British and Irish quotas was around sixty-five thousand annually, but it was never filled up. As restrictions on immigration got tighter, more people began to step into the United States illegally whether by fraud, jumping ship, crossing the Mexican or Canadian border without a visa, or through other means of entering. This era of immigration testifies to the notion that people of all nationalities will go to any lengths to start anew in the United States, even if the consequences of their arrival are undesirable.