Chapter 6:

Regardless of time period, it appears as though transnational ties to homeland communities are a crucial if not intrinsic part of the immigrant experience. These networks provide a flow of information and resources to often distended families and societies. Do these ties actually help temporary immigrants improve their socio-economic station in the old country? Are they more effective at doing so now? Naturally, these aspects would vary from group to group, but I think it is mostly outside factors (i.e. quality within the mother country, etc.) that define whether or not people actually go back (or did go back, rather, in the 1900s), like the social differences between Russian Jews who were persecuted in many of the countries they fled from and Italians, many of whom expected to return home with their newly-earned wealth. Obviously the greatest factor that changed the nature of “transnationality” is technology, connecting people socially, but does it really create more opportunities for immigration today than it did in the last great immigration wave, when the rise of industrial technology was a significant “pull” factor?

Chapter 7:

Education continues to be a major factor in immigrant success however the extent to which people attain education (i.e. how long the stay in school, higher education if applicable, etc.) has changed drastically. It was the nature of work to be found that has affected the rate at which immigrants seek education (the predominantly low-skill manual labor of the early 20t century vs. the increasingly professional work that attracts immigrants to higher-paying vocations today), and unsurprisingly overall immigrant children obtaining education in the US today are more successful than in the past. Completion of high school, and even college is becoming more and more of a staple in the projected tract for upward mobility. On another note, enters the factor of race in immigrant success in the educational arena; once again it is important to mention the significantly higher levels of performance of Asian immigrants in schools, more so than any other no immigrant groups, and in some cases, native Americans (attributed to culture and community resources).