In this chapter of One out of Three: Mexicans: Civil Engagement, Education, and Process Achieved and Inhibited,” the author provides a history of Mexican immigration in NYC and discusses their place in civic engagement and education. Mexicans, more than any other immigrant group in NYC, are undocumented because of congressional reforms in the 1990s.

What I found interesting was the discussion of how CUNY is at the forefront of reaching out to Mexicans and making education accessible for this group that has low numbers of people completing high school and college and who often don’t even enroll in college. My question is, do you think institutions like CUNY are successful in helping Mexicans break out of the patterns and receive an education? Or do you think it is more important for the government to be involved in making public policy that makes education more accessible?

In his article “Beyond co-ethnic solidarity: Mexican and Ecuadorean employment in Korean-owned businesses in New York City”, Kim discusses the relationship between immigrant employers and employees. It is interesting that Korean employers of businesses in the city are hiring less Korean employees and actually more Mexicans and Latinos. Kim says the cost of co-ethnic employment has increased, which is often the case of immigrant groups with high self-employment. One of the reasons Koreans have opted to employ Mexican employees instead of people of their own ethnicity is that Korean employees see the job as temporary.

Considering this unique case of Korean employers not hiring co-ethnically, what do you think are its implications into other parts of the Korean community? Will the Korean employers’ decisions to hire outside their ethnicity create tension within the community or will it affect the community dynamic in other ways?

In “Dreams of Pakistani Grill and Vada Pao in Manhattan: Re-inscribing the Immigrant in Metropolitan Discussions of Taste,” Krishnendu Ray asserts that discussions of taste focus on the consumer but not on the producers of the food, who are often immigrants. In his paper, the author introduces factors like the memories and habits and of immigrant entrepreneurs and shows how their ethnic restaurants are the connection between “taste and toil”.

Ray puts forth the theory of ethnic entrepreneurship which includes low capital costs, the importance of cultural capital, social capital, and self-exploitation. These are themes that keep coming up which we have explored in other readings throughout the semester. Do you think these are the reasons immigrants begin business in the city or are there other factors at play?

The author says immigrants may be ignored because people see them as marginal. Their lives are full of poverty and suffering so taste loses its energy and character and is therefore put on the back burner. Do you agree with Ray’s claim? Why do you think immigrants have been ignored in the discussion of taste? 

In the article, “The Good Old Days of Poverty: Merchants and the Battle Over Pushcart Peddling on the Lower East Side,” Suzanne Wasserman discusses the history of pushcarts in New York City. There was a campaign by “self-proclaimed reformers” to replace these pushcarts or open-air markers with indoor markets which Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia vehemently supported by creating laws to facilitate this reform. My question is, why was it so difficult for merchants and peddlers to live and work simultaneously? Why was there so much contention between them throughout the 20th century? Were merchants so eager to rid the Lower East Side of because they disliked people of Jewish and Italian ethnicities or did they believe the peddlers were bad for business? To what extent did these factors (as well as policies by Mayor LaGuardia) combine and lead to expelling pushcarts from the Lower East Side?

Why does the United States promote such bad health, even though we have a very complex and extensive health care with high access to medical care? Why do people in the United States, compared to people in other developed countries in the world, have unhealthy diets and such inactive lifestyles?