Challenges of Immigration: The Shimerda’s Struggle Willa Cather’s novel, My Ántonia sheds light on the topic of immigration. Immigrants have many different reasons for why they might migrate to the United States. Some were trying to escape something from their old country such as avoiding a war, trouble with the law, or shame as is the case of the Russians Pavel and Peter. Reasons for immigrating could also relate to chasing the American dream as is the case with the Shimerdas. Challenges and hardships encountered by foreigners immigrating into the United States are demonstrated through Jake’s experiences with the Shimerdas, the Russians, and other foreigners. Due to the Shimerdas limited capacity to speak, read, write, and understand …show more content…
You can’t trust ’em to be fair.”(84), but these Americans like Jake were immigrants themselves only a few generations ago. Assimilating to American culture takes time along with learning the language and social norms. The first few generations are the most difficult, but afterwards the immigrants can be accepted as American people and in many cases slowly become more and more successful as time goes on. The Shimerdas were aware of this, as Atonia explains to Jim shortly after New Year’s Eve why her family would be able to pay off a debt to the Burdens.”But my mama, she want Amrosch for be rich”(59). Immigrants come for the future generations, “For Ambrosch my mama come here.”(59). It won’t be Mr. and Mrs. Shimerda that become wealthy, CONJUNCTIONit takes time to become established. The generations to come, and to a certain degree Ambrosch and Antonia will be the ones to live a better life. In fact, life in America for the Shimerdas is more difficult than in Bohemia. Antonia transltes Mr. Shimerdas words to Jim’s grandmother after recieving help from the Burdens, “he wanted us to know they were not beggars in the old country”(50). The Shimerdas were a well respected and self-sustaining family in Bohemia, but America has been tough on them. The Shimerdas are somewhat reliant on the generosity of their neighbours who also build the
Since the late 1800s and, especially since the US signed the NAFTA and GATT, whose purpose is to reduce trade tariffs and therefore simplify the trade between U.S. and other countries, the contracted migration from Mexico to the US increased and converted slowly into undocumented migration born from necessity. Concluding, the topic of undocumented migration to the US splits the opinions and concerns large numbers of authors. Reyna Grande and Luis Alberto Urrea, both authors with a migrant background, discuss the subject of unauthorized immigration in their works. Grande 's Across a Hundred Mountains tells the stories of Juana Garcia, a twelve-year-old girl, who is searching for her father and Adelina Vasquez, a young prostitute, who returns to her family after running away with a man. Juana and her family lose her younger sister and daughter due to a terrible accident, therefore Juana 's father Miguel finds himself forced to borrow money from the richest man in the village.
With this interpretation, the focus is Antonia’s lasting effect on Jim- with not as much thought of how the latter affects his older neighbor. Throughout My Antonia, Antonia’s life is shaped by her relationship with Jim. When the Shimerdas first move to the Nebraskan prairies, Jim has just moved in with his grandparents. Jim and Antonia become friends immediately, and it seems as though all will go well for the young girl. Along with being a friend, Jim fulfills Mr. Shimerda’s request of being a teacher to his new neighbor, helping Antonia learn English.
Immigrants faced discrimination from American citizens and had to make a living for themselves, while still trying to fit in. As it is said in the article, ? The Philosophy of Immigration,? ?? the power of absorption possessed by the people of the United States is astonishing?? (The Philosophy of Immigration).
Immigrants face a great deal of hardship on coming to America. Many of these immigrants were on uneducated and fell into the trap of Robber Barons. During the Great Migration (1880-1921) about 56% of the immigrants migrated to the United States not knowing what to expect. Therefore, when coming to America many of the defenseless immigrants had to pay a price. “The shipping industry guarantee good profit, but they had to send their children which caused their family to be separated, this was because these immigrants did not have enough money to have them and their children going together” ( Morgan Prezi).
However, it is possible for them to find common ground based on them both being able to see the difficulty as well as willingness for immigrants to adapt to American culture. Also, they both are able to see the importance of American values and beliefs. Both Chavez and Marcus discuss the effects that assimilation could have on immigrants. Marcus mentions self-fulfillment and how it is hard to attain “without a robust culture that provides structure, meaning, and purpose…”
Immigrants were coming from all around the world for a better life and better opportunity in the new nation. “A working Man’s Recollections of America” by Knights Penny Magazine (1846), mentions that “ The new emigrant, again, has heard of the successes of some of his acquaintance who went out years ago, and be looks for equal success in his own case, losing sigh of the multitudes who left their homes with the same views and have been miserably disappointed. That means immigrants come for a better life but they find out that they have to working out of their power to achieve their dreams, they find it difficult to keep pace with the stirring rivalry around them, plus the income was not high as they expected when they left their country. The immigrants expected to go through life with less working and less difficulties and basically an easy life, but they ended finding that they have to work harder than they used to work in their own country to dream of getting a comfortable life. However some were quite happy about leaving and immigrating to the United States as John Doyle’s letter to Fanny explains how he was when he moved to the new nation.
Very few, if any, immigrants have the chance to learn English before traveling to the U.S. Because of this barrier, it is nearly impossible for organizations such as the Border Patrol to warn, aid, and communicate with them as they travel to the U.S. Although there are helpful signs along the border, they are written in English and are therefore indecipherable. Furthermore, the language border hinders an immigrant’s ability to survive in American society once they arrive. English is the written and spoken language in almost every city, thwarting immigrants’ opportunity to find jobs and interact with others. As they struggle to communicate, they become ostracized and do not fit in.
Ultimately, “How Immigrants Become ‘Other’” is more credible than Cohen 's “Monster Culture (7 Theses)” because the authors have more authority to write about the subject of their source and this source
The Namesake Essay Melody Su A Block Immigration is when people leave their original homelands for various reasons, carrying their distinct cultures, religious beliefs, and live permanently in the new land. In the book The Namesake, Lahiri uses the Ashima and Gogol’s experiences to suggest the dark sides of the immigration, which involves the lost sense of belonging, loss of identity, presensence of microaggression, and the generation gap between the first-generation immigrants and their children.
Numerous stories are heart retching and devastating. Trying to imagine being in the shoes of those immigrants is almost impossible, as I have been blessed with a wonderful problem-free life. Unfortunately, I am unable to even relate to any of the several issues immigrants encountered daily, as I have never experienced anything they have suffered through. Although, I personally cannot attest to such horrible experiences, I can promote acceptance and equality among immigrants in America. Similarly, a quote by Carlos Ramirez suggests the same.
Firoozeh writes about her life as an Iranian immigrant to America. Her family is treated with kindness by neighbors when they come to live in America and get lost on their way home from school: “…the woman and her daughter walked us all the way to our front porch and even helped my mother unlock the unfamiliar door,” (Dumas, 7). Firoozeh and her mother are not discriminated against because they are immigrants who don’t speak English, the Americans help them despite their differences. Had the neighbors not been helpful and patient, Firoozeh’s journey home would have been somewhat traumatic and daunting. While this a rather specific isolated example, it can serve as an analogy for all immigrants’ experience.
For many new immigrants coming to America, it is difficult to adjust into the new society. Many come to America without the basic knowledge of English, the new immigrants do not have the ability assimilate to American society because of the lack of possible communication between the immigrant and an native. Non-English speaking immigrants that come to America face harsh challenges when trying to assimilate to U.S. society because immigrants are often segregated into ethnic communities away from natives, Americans do not know basics of words of other well known languages, and the lack of government funding education programs. Assimilation into a new society is difficult enough, but when the society pushes any new immigrants to separate part
“The Immigrant contribution” and “The Quilt of a Country” are two essays that share a similar focus, however, they cover two drastically different sides of the topic. Both of them share the main idea that America is a country made up almost entirely of immigrants. Kennedy’s essay, “The immigrant Contribution”, focuses on how immigrants have affected our country, whereas Quindlen’s essay discusses how people of many different cultures coexist and work together. The essays both concentrate on immigration in America and how immigration has shaped and molded our culture. The two authors describe the many different aspects of immigration in immensely different ways.
They have impacted most aspects of life for American society more than one can imagine. In The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver, she depicts the immense injustice that immigrants have to endure when they migrate somewhere, particularly the United States. Kingsolver sends the message that immigrants are oppressed and taken advantage of by society which she illustrates through her use of dialogue, diction, and rising action. The theme of this novel proposes that immigrants face much adversity because they feel constantly ostracized by society because of misconceptions that society has about them. This suggests that for society to progress, it not only needs to change the way that they treat immigrants, but their entire way of thinking towards
A wealthy family has no worries in having a fancy house, good quality clothes and items, a high paying job, higher education, and money. What makes immigrant families and wealthy families bedifferent from each other is there financial standing and education. Therefore, the advantages the wealthy families have been mention from there no worries and including that they have financial freedom to travel, to spend, and to invest. Certainly, in an article named “America’s wealth gap between middle-income and upper-income families is widest on record” written by Richard Fry mention that the wealthiest families “have a median net worth that is nearly 70 times that of the country’s lower-income families” (1). In fact, they are living the life more than immigrant families however they do have disadvantages as a wealthy family.