“Sentenced Home” is a documentary produced, written and directed by David Grabias and Nicole Newnham. It is about three Cambodian refugees, Kim Ho Ma, Loeun Lun and Many Uch, two who are deported to Cambodia and the third who, at the end of the film, is awaiting deportation, respectively. The film follows their stories about why they are being deported and the hardships they face.

The film is presented very much like an unbiased documentary. The opinion on the situation of deporting refugees is expressed from various angles, including the people who are awaiting deportation and the officials who are enforcing the deportation laws. The U.S. officials explain the reasoning behind the U.S. deportation law and why it must be enforced, especially after 9/11.

The film utilizes music, scenes of the refugees’ everyday life and voice overs to convey the seriousness of the situation. Added to the somber mood of the documentary are the interviews with family members, friends, and officials who contribute their opinions and anecdotes to the situation the three refugees are faced with. The film switches between scenes of Seattle, where all the refugees lived, and Cambodia, but only after Kim Ho Ma arrives there, who is the first of the three to be deported.

I thought the film was moving because the three Cambodian refugees and their loved ones had to face such a hardship. They were forced to deport the United States because of a past mistake, which I agree is extremely unfair, especially since all three of them have served their time. It is inspiring because Loeun Lun and Many Uch are trying their best to improve their life with the best resources they have, and Many Uch is trying to provide an alternative for gang life for Cambodian American children.

In the early 1900s, Bensonhurst’s population consisted of a majority of Italians and Easter European Jews. Up until the mid-20^th century, there was a steady flow of Italians into the Brooklyn neighborhood and Jews began to leave by the 1950s. From then until today, Bensonhurst is predominantly Italian-American.

In Williamsburg/Greenpoint, the majority of the population consisted of Eastern European Jews and Poles, respectively. Since the beginning of the 20^th century many Jews resided in Williamsburg, as for in Greenpoint, Poles began to move in towards the second half of the 20^th century. Today both neighborhoods are gentrified and the populations of the two Brooklyn neighborhoods are much more diverse.

The American Fact Finder contains census data on individual PUMAs from 2008 to 2010. The information we looked into is the Caucasian ancestry in the two PUMAs. According to the American Fact Finder, Williamsburg/Greenpoint (PUMA 04001) and Bensonhurst (PUMA 04017) have a population of more or less 143,092 and 167,537, respectively. For Williamsburg/Greenpoint, the largest population is Polish, with 15,952 residents, followed by 9,683 Italian residents. Bensonhurst, on the other hand, has a total population of 34,497 Italian residents, making them the majority in Bensonhurst, followed by 11,872 Russian residents. For each division of the population there are estimated margins of error, which are taken into consideration, but the data appears to be accurate when taken into account of the past immigration history of the two PUMAs.

We also looked at the economic characteristic of the two PUMAs. The civilian employed population 16 years and over in Williamsburg/Greepoint is 13,926 and in Bensonhurst it is 70,365. These numbers are very close. Both in Bensonhurst and Williamsburg/Greenpoint, the majority of the population works in educational services, health care and social assistance. The data once again is very similar, with 13,926 residents of Williamsburg/Greenpoint working in that category, and 12,812 residents of Bensonhurst.

Visiting the Tenement Museum was an interesting experience because we’ve always had an image in our minds of how early 20^th century immigrants lived.  We had previous knowledge from books we’ve read, like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, and from our American History classes.  This trip was enlightening because we were able to compare our predisposed notions to the reality of the actual apartments.

The Tenement Museum is an unorthodox museum in most ways.  First of all, it’s not set up like an actual museum.  Rather, it has a gift shop through which you enter, which is where we met with our tour guide, and she took us through into the preserved tenement apartment building it’s attached to.  Inside, we toured through the actual apartments, which are furnished with genuine artifacts from the 1900s to the 1910s.  Going from one apartment to the next brought us to a different time period, so we were able to compare how drastically living conditions changed from then to now.

Generally, our ideas of what living conditions in tenements were like were accurate.  However, there were certain aspects of the lifestyle that caught us by surprise.  For example, we did not picture anyone actually setting up workshops for garment production in their own homes.  These apartments are barely large enough to live in, much less hold workers, materials, and fabrics.  Such working conditions were most common when factories had not yet sprung up.  Up to three people would be sleeping on one couch, a crib would be sitting in the kitchen corner, and there would be no room for kitchen tables to eat at.

Eastern European Jews frequented these apartments in the early 20^th century, so it occurred to Ellie that if she had been born 80 years earlier, those living conditions would have been her own.  That put the whole experience into perspective for Ellie, and made it more personal.  She really enjoyed the interactive nature of the tour, and the fact that she knew the personal histories of the actual families that lived in the apartments.  It made envisioning the past much easier.

Adrianna is of Polish descent. She could relate to the inhabitants of the tenement because she is also Eastern European, although her ancestors were not persecuted and forced to leave their home country because of her religion, Roman Catholicism. Instead, she can relate to the inhabitants because other factors such as economic prosperity encouraged other Eastern Europeans to move to New York City. Eastern European Jews and Italians were not the only people who lived in tenements that were similar to the Tenement Museum—other nationalities lived in the neighborhood too. Like Ellie, if she had been born in Poland and moved with her family in the 1900s then she too would have lived in a small cramped tenement, and most likely with more than three other people like she does now. She imagines she would have to work to help her parents bring food to the table and resign from school.

The United States of America has been coined the “land of opportunities” for hundreds of years, a cliché that both spurred and caused vast surges in immigration. Even as far back as the 19^th century, the United States had a reputation of welcoming tides of hopeful newcomers— the land of opportunities.  Mexico and Russia have always provided a good proportion of those newcomers.  The 2000 census reported a population of 20,640,711 people of Mexican origins living in the country, and 2,652,214 Russians.  It’s clear that there is a much larger Mexican population in this country, and there probably always will be, but there is also a much greater distance from the United States.  Considering how much harder it is to get to America from Russia, the huge differences make a lot of sense.  Despite that, both countries’ immigration patterns to the States are great testaments to how much of a staple this country has been for providing people with new life and new prospects.

The reason this country is so diverse today is that for over a century now, the immigrants pouring into the United States have hailed from every type of culture.  Mexico and Russia are two perfect contrasting examples of this.  The people in those countries had very different problems in the 19th century, and they still do now: different forms of leadership, different economic hardships, different roots of oppression, different reasons for wanting to leave.  And yet, immigration from both of those countries showed a strong preference of the United States of America.  The flow of new residents increased consistently from 1880 to 2000, according to the New York Times’ “Immigration Explorer.”

However, there are interesting differences that play into the pattern of almost polar variances between Russia and Mexico.  19^th and 20^th century emigration from Russia was the result of anti-Semitism, with many Eastern European Jews looking for an escape from the prejudices and a better life.  The early Mexican immigration in the U.S was in response for the demand of labor.  All of those immigrants were laborers who were brought into the country for cheap wages and bad conditions.  Another disparity between the two countries’ immigration trend is geographical. The exact opposite happened in Mexico, with immigrant habitation starting out on the west coast and approaching the east as the years passed.

With these geographic patterns came corresponding patterns in the concentration of immigrants in each area.  Russian immigration displays a pattern of fluctuation in rates throughout time.  Within the 20^th century, Russian immigration increased and reached a peak between the years 1910 and 1950, and tapered off slowly for the rest of the century.  In 2000, there seemed to be another surge.  Mexican immigration, however is a slightly different story.  The rates steadily increased throughout time, with the numbers for the year 2000 being the largest recorded.

Russian immigration surged in early 20^th century. The 1910s was the largest influx of Russian immigration to the United States.  They concentrated mainly on the east coast of the U.S. and most Russians settled in Manhattan, New York, Brooklyn, New York, and Cook County, Illinois.  To be exact, there were 312,985 Russians in Manhattan, 160,596 in Brooklyn and 128,369 in Cook County.  Immigrants from Russia arrived at the east coast in the early 20^th century and that’s where the Russian population was mostly concentrated.  As time progressed, they moved further west and spread out throughout the entire nation.

Mexican immigration has been increasing gradually over the 60 years, since the 1950s.  In 2000, which the data in the “Immigration Explorer” reaches, displays the greatest number of Mexican immigrants in the country.  The most are located in Los Angeles County, California, with 1,525,157 Mexican immigrants.  The whole west coast of the United States contains Mexicans, but they are also in South-western United States, mainly in Dallas County and Harris County in Texas.  The populations born in Mexico are 295,678 and 395,459, respectively.  Lastly, another large amount of Mexican immigrants is in Cook County, Illinois, where Russian immigrants used to settle, and in 2000 there are 430,156 immigrants from Mexico there.

The message from all of this data is representative of immigration in the United States of America as a whole.  Despite the differences in rates and time between different immigrant origins, there is a strong history of people coming here that shows no signs of stopping.