American Immigrant Families

As the plane slowly landed on the airport terminal in Washington D.C., my parents held their excitement. After the long fight of waiting on the immigration list and doing all the paperwork, they finally arrived here in the United States, the land of opportunity and freedom. My parents immigrated to the United States from Vietnam. They hoped to seek a better future. When I was a young child, my parents put in many grueling hours of work to support our family. My mother worked as a waitress and a cashier at a Chinese restaurant while my father worked at a steel factory where he assembled parts for furniture. They both worked for minimum wages which made it more difficult to have extra money. As our family lived here in the United States, my parents

They escaped from the political warfare, the economic collapse, and the poverty from the result of the Vietnam War. These were major factors that caused people like my parents to immigrate to the United States. The United States offered the freedoms unimaginable by countries with communist governments like Vietnam. While many immigrants saw the United States as a place for an opportunity, they faced obstacles from Americans. Many Americans viewed them negatively. There was a man named John Beard who strongly voiced his opinion about immigrants, “‘One of the biggest issues is they do not want to become an American,’ Beard said. ‘They want to keep their language, their traditions. If we don 't put our foot down we won 't get it stopped”’ (Moore). When Kurt Moore, a writer of the Marion Star, interviewed John Beard, he noticed that this exemplified the view held among many Americans. They feared that immigrants changed the dynamics of the American traditions and culture. I thought of things like what did being an American exactly mean? If Americans spoke English, enjoyed Football game nights, and had the freedom to express their religious belief in Christianity, then immigrants should have the exact same rights to do what they pleased. Immigrants were Americans as well. They were citizens after going through the process of paperwork to become

Americans had a strong belief that immigrants drained the resources such as medical services and the education of Americans. This belief stemmed from how people felt the government was not doing enough with the issue of immigration as only 28% of respondents in the study above said they were satisfied with how the government handled the issue. They were unaware that a majority of immigrants took jobs undesired by most Americans, “Migrants usually take jobs that natives are unwilling or unable to do, thus complementing the local labour force rather than competing with it” (“Changing Public Perceptions of Immigrants”). Immigrants helped build the infrastructure of the American society. They did the jobs undesired by most Americans such as being a maid, a housekeeper, a janitor, and a taxi driver. Immigrants did not have much choice in terms of choosing their occupation if they do not have a high school or college degree. More jobs required an education path like technical school and college. The workforce had to accommodate the changes due to the growing and changing economy. As technology advanced, some jobs switched over to automated machines like cashiers. The older generation had more blue-collar