How Immigration Laws And Policies Impact The Latinx Community

The very next year, in July 4, 1864, the U.S. government approved an act that encouraged immigration by authorizing the federal government to enforce contracts made on foreign soil and sanctioned imported laborers as well (Gyory 20) Properly speaking, the United States welcomed outside immigrants to join the land of freedom at first, nevertheless, this policy eventually was crushed and restrictions on

On May 6, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed a federal law prohibiting Chinese laborers to immigrate. This U.S. federal law was called The Chinese Exclusion Act. During the California Gold Rush, many Chinese immigrated to North America. As gold became harder to find, hostility built up towards Chinese immigrates. A combination of racism and misunderstanding of another culture cause fear that turned into hate.

Mexicans were first allowed in the United States in 1880, when they were used as workers to build the railroad between Mexico and the US (“Mexican Immigrant Labor History” paragraph 4). This was the start to hundreds of years of false hope and abuse toward Mexican workers from the United States government. The US government treated Mexican workers harshly and unfairly. The US only decided to allow Mexican workers to come into the country during the Bracero Programs. These programs were temporary agreements to allow Mexican laborers into the states to work until they were no longer needed.

In the article “50 Years Ago, Immigration Changed America” by Kenneth T. Walsh it explains the impact of immigration, legal and illegal, on the United States. Immigration is a controversial issue now in whether people who migrate over are boosting or declining our economy and what will be done about it. Immigration and its laws have changed significantly over the years and have greatly affected the United States whether people believe positive or negative and statistics need to be shown to prove it. Walsh tries to show how things have changed overtime.

Work at the time was also easy to come by for laborers with the expansion of the railroad in the United States. “Chicanos were… heavily employed by the railroad companies.” (320) Although many Mexicans worked for low wages, they were willing to worked hard. Takaki states, “Actually, many Chicanos found they had no choice but to work on the railroads.” (320) Many Mexicans were forced into this line of work because it was a tough job, work not many wanted to do, and so they were exploited for their willingness to work. It is also important to note “Most Chicanos, however, worked in agriculture.”

I think the Mexican immigrant group can be compared to the Chinese immigrant group. The Chinese came to the U.S in the middle of the 19 century and then the Mexican who came at the end of the 19th century. Both groups both faced discrimination and worked as laborer. Also, they came possibility to creating opportunities for their families that were not possible in their home country.

The signing of the NAFTA agreement led to a high migration of Mexicans into the United States. Although there were restrictions in the migration process, a lot more people found their way into the US as compared to the time when NAFTA had not been ratified. This move seemed to benefit only the United States. There was a kind of exploitation of the poor Mexicans who went to seek employment opportunities in the American soil. Companies would hire the Mexicans in the lowly placed jobs and underpay them.

Like African Americans, Mexican American children were not allowed to attend white schools, so they created segregated schools to keep the races separated. Also, when it came to jobs both African and Mexican Americans were restricted to low-paying and unstable jobs, because they were both viewed as being inferior and inadequate. Another thing that both groups were restricted from was voting rights. Although, both groups were granted to right to vote whites did whatever they could to restrict them being able to. They added a literacy test, an education requirement and a poll tax to the voting requirements.

Hundreds of thousands fled from their leader, Fidel Castro’s communist rule. Many came across ethnic discrimination in jobs and housing once they arrived. Many Mexicans lived in barrios, which is Spanish-speaking neighborhoods that were often poor. Thousands of immigrants worked on California’s fruit and vegetable farms which was backbreaking work for subtle

It is important to call attention that this type pf policy categorization has other costs to consider such as stigmatization and victimization, in addition to creating benefits for group membership. According to how political and economic institutions treat and interact with people from other ethnic groups can help impose and affect the definition of ethnicity. An example of this that is states in the text is Latinos is the Mexican Americans’ experience since the 1960’s as well as the development of the pan-ethnic term Hispanic. The rem Hispanic became widely used in the 1970’s after critics suggested that the term was a product of Madison Avenue public relations firms, Capitol Hill press corps, major media, outlets, and government bureaucrats. By this happening the rise in marketing efforts reinforced the evolution toward identifying Mexican Americans and other Latinos as Hispanics; which created a blur between distinctions across the various Latino subgroups.

The Immigration Act of 1965 abolished the national origins quota system that had composed American immigration policy since the 1920s, replacing with three immigration principles of family reunification, need for skilled workers, and the admission refugee. Before the immigration act of 1965 many Japanese and Chinese faced racism and discrimination upon when they arrived to the united states. The reason why many Chinese, Japanese, and other Asians race left their hometowns was either to live a better life or they left because of the opium war that devastated their country. Once they arrived to the united states they had nothing and were basically employed in hard labor jobs and work for minimum wages such as miners, plantations, farming, fishermen and railroads because those are jobs Americans would not consider working.

However, after the depression ended and the beginning of World War 2 the demand for labor emerged again. The United States created Law 45 with Mexico so they can import thousands and all the way to millions of workers. The Bracero program brought millions of Mexicans to come and work during the war, this is when the dependency intensified. The Mexican workers helped greatly with the agriculture

However, the temporary work visas are not easy to obtain and require a specific skill set. Usually a specific employer wants the individual who meets their needs extraordinarily well would seek out the immigrant and the immigrant would not find the employer ("Green Card Through a Job"). For the immigrants seeking lifetime employment in the United States there is a limited number of immigrants per category per year totaling one hundred forty thousand ("How the United States Immigration System Works: A Fact Sheet"). Eighty thousand visas are reserved for people with advanced degrees and are not for average immigrants seeking employment. Thirty-five thousand are reserved for immigrants who have a minimum of a two-year degree and the other twenty thousand are for special purposes such as investors and religious purposes ("Green Card Through a Job").

They are not only the largest Latino group in this country, but they have also deep ties to this countries. The inhabitants of the annexed territory that now form part of the United States were Mexican, thus demonstrating that not all Mexicans migrated to this country in the beginning. In fact, Mexicans are the only Latino group that can claim to have been here way before any other Latino groups. According to Menkedick, “The first sizable population of Mexicans was here when the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, requiring Mexico to cede more than half of its territory to the U.S”.

Immigration began when the Civil Rights movement was growing, and people wanted to enter the US. Congress created the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, which is when the US population increased dramatically with the new immigrants. “Between 1965 and 2000, the highest number of immigrants (4.3 million) to the U.S. came from Mexico, in addition to some 1.4 million from the Philippines” (US Immigration par. 6). The Act created two new amnesty programs for unauthorized aliens and granted amnesty to the majority of the illegal immigrants. Amnesty also provided the admissions of immigrants from a variety of countries to increase the diversity of the immigrant flow.