Week 8, Rethinking Immigration--Allison Miller

On my trip to San Diego, I noticed a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment.

 

 

In the small town that I grew up in, when I was younger I would always hear my friends’ parents complaining about how immigrants would come here illegally for the sole purpose of “stealing our jobs.”  Suarez-Orozco (x’s 2) summarizes this idea well:  “In recent years, the dominant anti-immigration narrative has ignited fears that immigrants are flooding our shores, taking our jobs, overwhelming our social services, and inflating our crime rate” (p. 38).  Since I was only in elementary school when exposed to these ideas, I didn’t really understand what they meant.  As I have gotten older, however, I realize how ridiculous this viewpoint really is.  As Suarez-Orozco (x’s 2) claims about immigration:  “the preponderance of evidence from the most reliable sources points to a relative economic benefit at the national level and modest economic costs at the local level” (p. 45). 

Contrary to the opinions I grew up hearing in my hometown, immigration actually benefits the economy, and many immigrants who are supposedly “stealing our jobs” are actually doing jobs that many Americans don’t like to do. 

            I think that since there are so many Americans who are all for this anti-immigrant sentiment, that the government needs to address this issue head-on by exposing the truth about immigration.  Americans should know that immigrants are helping our economy, not stealing jobs.  In addition, since so many people are under the impression that most immigrants illegally living in the United States, they should be publicly informed that this number is actually significantly smaller than they think.  I also believe that the American public should be taught more about the psychological stressors that immigrants face in the hopes that maybe our entire viewpoint will shift and we will see immigrants as equals.  The first step to acceptance is empathy, and many people do not partake in this empathetic attitude because they are ignorant to the facts.