Immigration and its effects on economy and society

Immigration and the Effect on the Color Line in America Today

The color line in America is one that is drawn in the southern most regions of the country at the border of legal immigration vs. illegal immigration, and, elsewhere, at the ideological crossroads of capitalism vs. socialism, or Christianity vs. Islam. The latter, is distinguished as a color line only because those whom hold those ideological ideals judge others by their absence of those same ideals. It is the perception of most Americans that illegal immigration is a majority Hispanic; socialism, right or wrong, is represented by Asian sectors of what they perceive as an outdated Cold War era and one that should have ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. They exclude the Caribbean socialists because color obliterates the political ideology, grouping them together with Hispanics as a group, and one which includes even European Spanish immigrants. The color line as represented by the Middle Eastern immigrant is one that is shaded only in terms of religious ideology. If a Middle Eastern or African immigrant is a Christian, then for the most part Americans will ignore the distinguishing characteristics of color and genetics that become absorbed in Christianity. if, however, the immigrant is Muslim, then those same characteristics that are absorbed by Christianity become resistant, and color prevails as a dividing line between Americans in much the same way as do illegal Hispanic immigrants.

In other words, Americans see color in shades of the laws that they embrace and fiercely hold to in the same way that the Muslim holds to the religious ideology of Islam, or the Socialist holds to the political ideology of socialism. The color of any cultural group is by and large one that Americans are color blind so long as that cultural group is Christian. This color scheme of the American social fabric is exemplified in the recent election to the highest office in the United States, and one which has long been touted as "leader of the free world;" the office of President of the United States. It is this office to which the direct descendant of an African Muslim and an American Christian, who spent an influential part of his childhood in the largely Islamic country of Malaysia, but who embraced his American heritage and Christianity when he married, was elected in November, 2008 by an overwhelming majority of American voters. That man, Barack Hussein Obama, is the country's first leader of color. This is the formula by which Americans distinguish color, and which, right or wrong, influences the flow of immigration into the United States.

The diversity of the United States demonstrates that Americans are open to immigration, and, except as mentioned above, are very much color blind.

"The current population of the United States is approximately 288 million people. Of this number, its is estimated that about 13% are of African-American ancestry, 11% are of Hispanic origin, 4% are of Asian Pacific ancestry, and 1% are of American Indian/Native Alaskan ancestry. A quick accounting indicates that approximately 30% of all residents of the United States are now of nonEuropean ancestry or origin. Of even more interest is the fact that more than 26 million people in the United States today are foreign born -- about 1 in 10 people. More than one fourth of these foreign-born residents are from Mexico. Other nations contributing sizable numbers to the U.S. population are the Philippines, China/Hong Kong, Cuba, Vietnam, India, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Great Britain, and Korea (Reimers, 1992) (Adler, Lenore Loeb and Gielen, Uwe, 2003, 6)."

In this research essay, we are going to show how Americans are impacted by color only when the immigrant's color is associated with the statement of thesis here. The research here will show that the ways immigrants enter the country impacts their success in America. If the immigrant is illegal, it will impact the American perception such that it becomes all but impossible for the illegal to live other than underground at a minimum wage capacity. Also, those illegal immigrants are part of a work system that evades the rules of employment law, and they have no recourse if they become sick or disabled (Haines, David W. And Rosenblum, Karen E., 1999, 357). Immigrants whose cultural traditions are in such stark oppositions to the American tradition are viewed with suspect and caution.

The International Perspective on U.S. Immigration

Lenore Loeb Adler and Uwe P. Gielen (2003) say that the human tendency towards migration (in modernity under law observed as immigration), is an instinctual tendency inherent in humans in general (3). It is in large part what happened before there were distinguishing borders of citizenship by nation (3). Today, because of those borders by nation, the movement from one place to another when it goes beyond the borders of a nation is known as immigration. There are laws that govern immigration, and they vary from country to country. As the world moves towards a global community, we will probably see these laws become less distinct as pertains to a specific country, and more uniform on a world-wide scale. For now, however, they vary to the extent of law, process, and documentation.

The United States is a country which relies largely on documentation to establish its legal immigration status, and to distinguish those individuals from temporary or even permanent resident statuses. The documentation distinguishes the legal immigrant, from the illegal immigrant, whose document should be non-existent, although we see a move to "document" the illegal immigrant in the United States. When immigration occurs by individuals whose country of origin is Mexico, or South America, and especially when that immigration status is illegal, which means that the terms associated with the remaining family are uncertain; then there is a level of psychological stress that impacts the individual crossing the border, even when that border crossing is legal (143).

The psychological factors that weigh on the immigrant from south of the United States border involve a psychological concern about those left behind; and the fact that there are family members left behind for what is expectedly an undetermined amount of time (143).

"When addressing issues related to migration, however, it is a common error to speak only from the perspective of the migrant and ignore those who are left behind. This is reflected in the great number of studies that have been conducted with immigrants in the host countries, and the very little knowledge that exists about the immigrants' family members, friends, and acquaintances that remain in the country of origin. This chapter, based on recent research findings, focuses on the psychosocial impact of Mexican migration to the United States on the lives of the immigrants and on the spouses, children, and significant others they left behind. It should be noted that this chapter addresses these issues mostly in the context of male labor migration, because the majority of Mexicans who go north are males and heads of households who are seeking jobs and opportunities to improve their and their families' living conditions (143)."

The move north of the Mexican border is associated in large part with the desire to increase income, and to provide for the family left behind. It is often the goal of Mexican and South American immigrants to return to the country of their origin, and, before that, to provide as much economic assistance to their families who remained behind in their country of origin (Adler and Gielen, 145). Adler and Gielen cite Bustamante referring to the situation of many illegals as subjective and objective; on one hand, their family wants them to travel north for the economic benefits. On the other hand, the separation that the family must endure is often psychologically wearing, and the trials that many illegal immigrants face are often dangerous and extreme in nature (145).

These psychological factors and the dangers that illegal aliens experience in coming into the United States illegally are often overlooked by Americans, who consider illegal immigrants from south of the border to be risks to the criminal justice systems, and health risks, because in crossing the border illegally they also evade the system of checks and balances on a health level that legal entrants go through (Haines, and Rosenblum, 379). Whether or not the new and more virile strains of tuberculosis that have been detected in the United States in recent years are as a result of illegal immigrant traffic is unknown.

We do know that a significant number of illegal immigrants who cross the border into the United States have health issues that if they are allowed to go untreated, like tuberculosis, that those individuals, once deported, will be less likely to follow up with the appropriate medical care. This in and of itself would be detrimental to the treatments that we now use for this kind of disease, because failure to pursue and follow up with treatment after deportation would be creating strains of the disease that are resistant to our current methods of curing it. For that reason alone, it is imperative that illegal immigrants entering the United States who are apprehended and found to be infectious receive treatment before deportation. However, this question of the health risks posed by illegal immigration has only served to heighten the tensions in the border communities, and cause Americans to be more cognizant of the ethnicity of the illegal immigrants.

In Review

So far, in review, the key issues Americans have about immigration are: illegal immigrants vs. legal ones; healthcare, because of the illegal immigrant rate of contagious diseases. This is in support of the thesis of the statement here, but socialism, because Americans believe socialism is the theoretical opposite of capitalism; and religion if the religious group is not willing to conform to the American law and tradition of an all encompassing religious society have not yet been discussed with the supporting peer reviewed expertise that is necessary to support the thesis. Now, we will look at those areas of discussion with peer reviewed expertise in support of those ideas.

Socialism and Capitalism

It is with the tenacity that only those who have known no other way of life but capitalism, or whose own dreams were, or are, to immigrate to the one place in the world where ownership of property and conspicuous consumption are not frowned upon, but celebrated. It has long been with a suspicious eye that Americans have viewed the European immigrant, because of their magnetic draw towards socialism (Tichenor, Daniel, 2002, 71).

"Anxieties about foreign radicalism reawakened anti-Catholic nativism. The missionary Josiah Strong's best-seller, Our Country, warned the nation's Protestant majority of a "Romanist Peril" that would overwhelm American government, schools, and culture. 122 Robust European immigration, he warned, was "mother and nurse" to socialism, labor unrest, "continental ideas" of faith and liquor, party machines, and "rabble-ruled cities (71)."

That sentiment changed in mid twentieth century when America elected its first Catholic, Irish-American president, John F. Kennedy. At that point, and moving forward, Americans no longer stood in fear of socialism, but felt stronger than that force, and embraced immigrants of socialist countries as persons whose lives were restricted economically by socialism as having been persecuted. When refugees began pouring into America from Cuba and South America (which Americans might put into a Spanish speaking category of Hispanic, but recognize as refugees of socialism), they were well received by Americans. They established their selves in a community largely in Florida, within close proximity of whatever connections they could maintain with the island of Cuba. Unlike their Mexican and South American immigrant counterparts, the Cuban American has experienced more success in education.

"Overall, Cuban Americans' average educational attainment levels exceed those of Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Central Americans, and Dominicans but are exceeded by those of South Americans and the non-Hispanic population. Second-generation Cubans, however, display a greater tendency to finish high school and continue their education beyond their high school diploma than do their first-generation counterparts. This suggests a marked level of polarization between the two generations (Hill & Moreno, 1996). Economically, Cuban Americans tend to fare better than other Hispanic groups while lagging behind Anglos (Hill & Moreno, 1996) (Adler and Gielen, 79)."

Others, from El Salvador and other South American countries have had difficulty demonstrating for the Immigration service that they were refugees of political persecution, because they were largely of the peasantry class, and stories that they were being sought for their political threat to the ruling junta governments were not plausible when considering the elements of poverty vs. prosperity in the U.S. (Cox, Adam B. And Posner, Erica a, 2007, 809).

That the common lower class citizen in South American countries where there is never ending civil war in a struggle to install socialism cannot find political asylum in America, but Cuban refugees can, suggests that America is selective in its preferences in apply its immigration laws. Asian refugees, like Cubans, are admitted with favor by Americans, who are blind to their ethnicity in large part because they, like the Cubans, are perceived as victims of political persecution. Vietnamese refugees, because of the close relationship their history has with that of Americans, are particularly welcomed as refugees, and as refugees of communism.

"Another stream of post-1965 immigrants that was also new and of significant size was the group of Vietnam War refugees who came to the United States after 1975 from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. These individuals could change their refugee status to that of immigrant a year after being offered asylum. The majority of them were less educated and possessed fewer skills that were transferable to the U.S. workforce. The third Asian stream, since 1990, has consisted of relatives of earlier migrating Asians who have arrived under family reunification permits and who are not as skilled and educated as the early post-1965 immigrants (Segal, Uma a., 2002, 77)."

The same holds true of Chinese immigrants, whose image as a people will forever be linked in the minds of Americans to the broadcast news reels of the Chinese student uprising at Beijing's Tiananmen Square that was quashed by Communist Chinese troops who opened fire on the students killing students and innocent bystanders (Liang, Zhang, Nathan, Andrew, and Link, Perry, 2001, 24). When images or personal associations are made between the American political conscience and the immigrant, the American citizenry become color blind to the immigrant's ethnicity.

Religious Implications for Immigrants

Prior to September 11, 2001, when Islamic fundamentalist terrorists commandeered commercial airliner jets and used them as weapons of mass destruction; then most Americans probably paid little or no attention to the enclaves of Muslims and Muslim Americans who were immigrants from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. That changed after September 11, 2001, and even though Americans have elected a man of Muslim cultural experience, they remain for the most part wary of people who are Middle Eastern immigrants (Haddad, Yazbeck Yvonne, Smith, Jane, and Moore, Kathleen, 2006). For the most part, Americans have a tendency to think of the Muslim in terms of the Middle East, and, therefore, when immigrants of other Islamic nations are encountered, they probably experience less suspicion than do those immigrants who are distinctly Middle Eastern in appearance and language.

Muslims in America are evolving in a way that their other world area counterparts are not. It is the American system, the framework for the equality of life and pursuit of happiness that prevents the Muslim community from manifesting an Islamic fundamentalist way of life at all levels of society. In America, Muslim women are finding a greater, louder voice in their community, especially in their mosques (Haddad, Smith, and Moore, 61). This distinction sets them apart religiously and politically from their other world area counterparts, and to the extent that they openly demonstrate these distinctions, the less suspicious they would be viewed by Americans in general.

Jewish-Americans, while of an ancestry that arising in the Middle East, are not viewed with any suspicion whatsoever for their religious convictions. Jewish immigrants have assimilated into the American culture and fabric in a seamless way.

Opportunity for Immigrants

Sports have long been a way that male immigrants could essentially be invited to America. The Cuban and other South American country immigrants being highly visible as baseball players and in other sports is becoming a natural occurrence in America (Miller, Patrick, and Wiggins, David K, 2004, 332). Since World War II, when many ethnic groups, especially Japanese immigrants who were prohibited from professional organized sports (Odo, Franklin, 45), today we see Japanese-American baseball players the American sport.

The stereotypical image of the immigrant has evolved over time, and today there is little that is pre-conceived about the immigrant so long as the method of entry into the United States is consistent with those methods that give rise to compassion in the American citizens.