Thoughts about Children of Immigration

After completing my reading of the Children of Immigration by Carola and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, my first thought was about the final quote in the epilogue, “… that the history of the United States is fundamentally the history of immigration.”  A couple of years ago, I subscribed to Acestry.com to research my own heritage, and it didn’t take me very long to discover that I would have to get a lot better at navigating the international records if I were to successfully complete my family tree.  In fact, I couldn’t go much further than the 1920s before all my ancestors were living in Ireland. 

I then started thinking about how immigration was dealt with by our public educational system and government in those early decades in the 1900s when immigration was peaking in the U.S.  What methods were used to teach these immigrants English?  Was it “sink or swim”?  How were the children of these immigrants treated in school? To some extent, I may be a product of the folkloric myth that the authors point out in Chapter 2, which idealizes these hard working immigrants who gladly entered the country, went to work, and readily assimilated into the American melting pot.     Everything I have been taught and told has instilled this vision in me and I associate—with pride—the entire American dream with these views.  As the authors point out, the reality of public opinion towards immigration was hardly as idealistic as this mythical folklore.  Clear historical evidence shows a strong trend of negative opinion, often directly correlated with the health of the U.S. economy at the time. 

Despite public opinion, the exponential growth of urban manufacturing in America was likely responsible for the many immigrants’ success during some of this time period.  Labor jobs didn’t require an education or high levels of English proficiency.  While there may not have been any accommodations made to improve their English proficiency or education, they were able to enter the middle class and, as a result, give their children upward mobility. 

Today, the percent of immigrants in the U.S. is almost as large as the early 1900s with a trend line predicting further growth.  As a result, I believe there has been an authentic desire by government and by school districts to focus on and improve the education of immigrants.  While some of these advancements, such as bilingual instruction, have since been retracted, many states are now mandating sheltered language instruction and professional development for content teachers and are assessing districts on their ability to instruct ELLs.  However, there are also macroeconomic factors at the same time which are not helping progress.  The U.S. economy is clearly faltering, limiting Americans’ appetite for investment in all areas of education.  The significant loss of manufacturing jobs in the country creates a bimodal distribution of low education/low wage jobs with high education/high wage professional ones, predominantly in the engineering, science, and business sectors.  The result, in my opinion, creates a similar immigration distribution.  On one hand, there is a group of immigrants entering the U.S. with low or interrupted formal education who are seeking a better and more prosperous life.  On the other, there is a significant and growing sector of immigrants who have high levels of education from the U.S. or elsewhere and are entering the U.S. to fill technology jobs.  The latter group generally has high levels of English proficiency, along with their children, while the former must master content courses despite their particular English proficiency levels.  Unfortunately for many, reaching this objective may be unattainable and, as the authors pointed out, these immigrants may quickly become disillusioned with the American dream and fall further behind. 

During these times of economic difficulty, tension is obviously growing between the haves and have-nots.  In my view, the American public often looks at immigrants as either the uneducated illegal aliens coming in to get a “free ride” or the wealthy immigrants coming in to “take our professional jobs.”  Either way, these polar and negative views can dominate political jargon and policy.  I am somewhat concerned that our political leaders fall prey to this public polling rather than focus on the real issue at hand—an economy that is limiting growth for all its residents.  As American history continues to be a story of its immigration, I am anxious to see whether the country will succumb to paranoia and distrust of immigrants or wisely rally around its newest members by utilizing their creativity, culture and labor to strengthen its weakened foundation.