Ethnic identity among immigrant populations

Immigration

Ethnic Identity

America is often referred to as the melting pot of the world. Over 100 million American men, women, and children can trace their heritage to the arrival of immigrants at Ellis Island in New York harbor between 1892 and 1954. Located in the low waters of the harbor, the island had been used as a Dutch oyster fishing site in the seventeenth century and a place for the public hanging of pirates in the eighteenth century. At the end of the eighteenth century it was purchased by Samuel Ellis. Vacant in the late nineteenth century, it had come into the possession of the U.S. government and seemed a logical place for a new station to process the increasingly larger numbers of immigrants that were arriving into the country annually (Koman, n.d.).

Despite the U.S. being a melting pot and a land of opportunity, immigrants are not always treated well when they come here. Throughout history, the most recent immigrants to this country have almost always confronted some sort of discrimination -- often they have had to take the hardest, worst paid jobs, and have difficulty assimilating entirely into society. During the 1800s and the early 20th Century, both Jews and Italian immigrants were subject to extreme prejudice, racism, and violence. During this time, these groups were often seen as non-Anglo and non-white (Background on Discrimination against Immigrants, n.d).

Ethnic minorities often fall victim to anti-immigrant bias which includes a persistent preoccupation with policies that favor people born in the United States. There is also a resentment when immigrants succeed and disdain or anger when they act against the established norm, like when they don't know or refuse to learn the language. It has also been seen that negative stereotypes of certain ethnic groups or people of a certain nationality can fuel animosity (Background on Discrimination against Immigrants, n.d).

People from Latin America have increasingly become targets of bias-motivated crimes over the years. Attacks on Latinos have a particularly long history in California and throughout the Southwest where, during chronic periods of strong anti-immigrant sentiment, both new immigrants and long-time U.S. citizens of Mexican descent were blamed for social and economic problems and harassed and deported en masse (Background on Discrimination against Immigrants, n.d).

Recently, people of Arab descent are experiencing an upsurge in hate crime, largely as a result of the Middle East crises and the happenings of September 11th. Too often they are blamed for events to which they have no connection. "The hate crimes following September 11th, which included murder and beatings, were directed at Arabs solely because they shared or were perceived as sharing the national background of the hijackers responsible for attacking the World Trade Center and the Pentagon" (Background on Discrimination against Immigrants, n.d).

Even though immigrants built America, and most of today's U.S. workers are children of immigrants, too often immigrant workers are subjected to workplace problems ranging from discrimination against documented immigrants to gross exploitation of undocumented workers. "According to the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service, about 1.1 million people immigrate to the United States every year, and more than one-quarter of new entrants into today's workforce are foreign-born" (Discrimination: Immigration Status, 2009).