The Peopling of New York City

These two reading sections were really filled with a good balance of straight-forward information and personal stories. It really allowed me to get a full picture of the situation, one that in my opinion is almost tragic. I posted a link on this site a couple of weeks ago to an article that describes a concept called “maternity tourism”. The article referred to pregnant Chinese women who enter the United States on a tourist visa, give birth during their “vacation” and then return to China. Chinese women do this so that if their child should decide to live in the United States or they decide its best to send their child there in the future, the option is legally open to them as the baby is now considered an American citizen due to his/her being born in here. At the time of the publishing of this article I thought this practice was bizarre and extreme. I still think its bizarre, but not so extreme after reading about things Chinese parents have been and continue to do for the welfare of their children. At least in this case, the practice is technically legal and the parents remain with their children for the time being. God in Chinatown includes accounts of children not seeing their parent/s for over ten years and immigrants sending their young babies to China to be cared for by grandparents.

Such stories are heart wrenching (which was clearly the point of including those accounts- so it worked!) and tell a tale not always publicized in the media or even written about in scholarly publications. Kenneth Guest mentions theorists such as Ong and Nonini who write about overseas Chinese but with a focus on the elite, leading to “a failure to account for class stratifications within the Chinese diaspora” (64). Stories of the successful Chinese businessman, the “model minority,” are always in circulation, but experiences such as these are rarely mentioned. As we’ve been seeing in most of our readings this semester, the author tries to bring to life the other side of the story of these immigrants and Guest does so in a convincing way.

As I read this chapter, I was immediately drawn in.  Unlike the other books that we read, this book starts out with more of a personal approach.  Although the facts were interesting, I felt that the personal accounts which were strategically placed throughout the chapter had a stronger impact on me.  I was somewhat reminded of Guadalupe in New York when we were able to learn more about the individual struggles over the immigrant group as a whole.  The firsthand account definitely produces more of an emotional and empathetic reaction from the reader than just reading about the  experiences or just reading facts.

Reading this once again reminded me of how much of a struggle some immgrants will go through just to get to America.  The amount of money these immigrants paid- from 25,000 to 50,000 seems to be a bit much for the hard, long journey that they had coming over, lacking food and under the control of angry snakeheads.  -But I guess that when this is their only method of getting here, when it has to be illegally, that the price they can get is what they will take.

While I was interested in all of the stories, some parts of them really stood out to me.  In the second story, a young woman who came to America was saying how even her uncle would ask her for “special favors” that he would pay her for, in her demonstration of how women immigrants were taken advantage of.  If I interpreted that correctly, I was kind of shocked that a family member would do that.  The last story also stood out to me a lot.  I felt so bad when I read that the man was crying because he had to send his 70-day old baby back to China because he could not afford to take care of her in America.  I can’t imagine how upsetting it would be to have to send my young baby halfway around the world because I could not afford to take care of it. Finally, the story about how the man was beat when he got off the boat because the snakeheads did not believe he would pay, was very engaging.  I believe that his story about how he was praying to God, and how that helped him heal later on, will be somewhat of an introduction to the rest of the book and how religion has had a strong influence on helping the Chinese immigrants, many of whom probably have these terrible stories of their journeys and beginning of life in America.  I’m interested to keep reading and hope that there will be more personal accounts throughout the book.

(I dont have the book with me right now to put in the names of these people, so I’ll edit this post later just to clarify who I’m talking about for anyone who reads this)

In the past, people sent letters.  Today, people send emails.  In the past, people used the Post Office.  Today, people use Western Union.  In the past, people traveled in ships across the sea.  Today, people travel in planes across the sky.

As you can see, the world has undergone many technological advancements within the past decades.  As Nancy Foner points out in “Transnational Ties”, such advancements have allowed immigrants to maintain closer ties to their homeland, and even actively participate in life in their homeland.  This does not mean, however, that immigrants in the past were not able to maintain ties to their homeland.  Contrary to what some believe, Foner points out that immigrants in the past were also successful in maintaining “familial, economic, political, and cultural links to their home societies” while simultaneously developing “ties and connections in their new land” (Foner 171).  Immigrants in the past may not have enjoyed the same benefits of technology that immigrants of the present do, but they were still able to maintain ties to the homes and families they had left behind.  They were able to do this by sending letters through snail mail, traveling for weeks on ships across the sea, and creating associations that sent monetary aid to their home country.    The Italians, for example, continuously traveled back and forth between New York and Italy, working in New York to earn enough money for land back in Italy.  I couldn’t help but wonder what impact this must have had on the domus centered life that Italians held.  Although it may have been harder, I would think that familial connections would have remained strong despite the separation of space.

Today, it is easier than ever for immigrants to maintain connections to their homeland.  They can pick up a newspaper to see what is going on in their country, they can send videos to each other to keep in touch, and if they ever forgot how to say “wine rack” in Portuguese, they can frantically and easily place a call to Brazil to find out how indeed is it that you say “wine rack” in Portuguese.  I can say that I see a lot of transnationalism in my aunt’s life, whose days center around receiving endless calls from people in India, and watching the Indian news morning, afternoon, and night on cable television.  Furthermore, transnationalism no longer holds the same negative connotations that it once did.  In the past, transnationalism was frowned upon.  People claimed that immigrants were not interested in becoming American, but merely interested in reaping the benefits of a life in America so that they could return home to their families.  Today, however, with technological advancements and companies doing business internationally, such ideas have changed.  I would only wish that it was this easy to change all the other negative thoughts people still hold about immigrants today.

An important point that is made in this reading is the recognition that transnationalism is not a new movement as many people argue and believe, but rather it has always been prevalent and is just seen more now than ever before; this  is why so many people believe that it is a new phenomena.Looking back at the ways of past immigrants we see that this concept of transnationalism has always been present. Close ties between immigrants and there home countries have always remained.  Immigrants would come here in hopes of making enough money to one day return back to their home countries much more better off than when they had left. The money that was made in the United States was split between their basic living necessecities in the United States and their investments back home, which included paying off loans, buying homes, and sending money back home in order to support the families that many had to leave behind.

Transnationalism is definitely much more visible now and there are many factors of why this has been able to happen. Perhaps the most important and most influential factor is technology. The amount that technology has improved over the years has greatly changed the very nature of transnationalism. As Foner states, “Technological changes have made it possible fir immigrants to maintain more frequent and closer contact with home societies, and in a real sense, have changed the very nature of transnational connections.” (176). Technological advances make things that once would have taken weeks to do now so readily accessible that it can be done in a matter of minutes or even seconds, even trips that once would have taken months or weeks now only take a few hours. My family has felt this influence since we’ve been able to keep in touch with our family much more easily through email and videochatting. This has changed the nature of everything and has helped to contribute to transnationalism being something that is now acceptable, whereas in the past it was looked down upon, as it was seen to be taking away from the American identity and American pride. This new acceptance of transnationalism is seen in all of the ethnic festivals and parades that now take place. These parades and celebrations of ethnicities are promoted by the city and they glorify the multi-ethnic nature of the city.

Something that I found very interesting was when Foner says “as they extend their stay and as more family members join them, they become increasingly involved with life and people in this country. Ties to the homeland seldom disappear, but they often become fewer and thinner over time.” This is interesting because you would think that things would be similar to the way things were in the past, when everyone would want to just leave America after they made their money and go back to their home country. However I can see how now since people are getting more involved in the country and others are more accpeting of transnationalism that the longer you remain in the country the least likely you are to go back to the country you left. I see this with my family. My dad would joke around saying that he was going to take us all back to Portugal and I used to actually believe him. Now I realize that my father would never actually do this, especially because of all of the things that he already has here. Still he says that once we all get married and move out he will be gone, but I’m sure that once he starts having grandchildren and getting our careers, there’s no way my dad’s going to want to leave all of us behind.

Does this mean that transnationalism is going to eventually stop happening? Well no, I don’t think so. I feel it will always still be present, but maybe now since its more accepted we will see more people choosing to remain in America rather than return to their home countries, but this won’t take away from the pride people have in their home countries.

The chapter on transnational ties provides insight on how international migrants maintain ongoing ties with their communities of origin as well as their diasporic communities. International migrants differ from immigrants in which they do not necessarily have to remain in another country permanently. This is noteworthy as Foner mentions many immigrants migrated with the intention of returning to their home countries (171). Moreover, this outsourcing of labor did not hurt the migrant’s original home society and instead fostered growth and stronger familial ties. However, Foner does recognize the decline of migrants returning home, which may adversely affect their country of origin.

First-generation immigrant children, including myself, may connect strongly to the text as it provides a real picture of why your parents migrated in the first place. My family for instance, sends money back to Taiwan on a monthly basis. My father was not capable of supporting his parents with his job in Taiwan. The money he earned in New York was intended to help pay for property taxes and to support family abroad. The book does note that much of the money earned in New York is used to pay for foreign taxes, which does not surprise me.

Although we do not return travel to Taiwan as often or as easily as the text makes it seem, we do occasionally visit because it will always be considered home. The word home encompasses sentimental and cultural values important to my father in particular since he was born in Taiwan. In my case, I consider New York my one true home.

The continuity of transnational ties was clearly explained in the first few pages; however, we can still speculate to what extent will these migrant connections with their homes change. These include changes in communication and the transfer of money [both of which apply to my family]. For instance, hand written letters are now being replaced with text messages and money orders being replaced with PayPal transactions.

Chapter 6 in Nancy Foner’s From Ellis Island to JFK explores transnationalism and the impact and influence of technology on it. I’ve never really heard of this word before but I was familiar with its concept. My great-grandfather in fact lived in New York while my grandmother and her family was in Albania and I always found this weird and hard to understand. How and why would he leave his family and go across the globe? As I grew up though, and after reading this chapter, it made perfect sense. In fact I have an aunt in Greece at the moment who is thinking of doing the same thing because she has 5 children to support and her current job has not paid her in months. I also remember learning about this in High School when one of my teachers mentioned that when the dollar was worth more than the currency of certain European nations, people would come and work here and then send their money back home. It’s interesting to see though that now this still goes on even though the euro is worth more than the dollar.

It was so interesting to think about how technology has such a big impact on transnationalism and how it changed over time and made everything so much faster and more efficient. Thinking back it’s funny how I got to experience all these changes myself. When we first arrived in the US my mother received letters from home and I also would write to my cousins and my old classmates. Over time the letters stopped and we would get phone cards and call instead. Then we got a computer and we would send pictures of basically every event and holiday to each other. I totally forgot we did this but the book mentioned videos and I remembered that we would also make home videos and send them to each other when a relative would visit. Facebook came along and took the world by storm and I found my 2nd grade classmates on it (although we barely talk we’re still Facebook friends). Now my mother uses Skype almost every day to talk with my aunt. Although there was a period in time when we felt like we were at a distance from everyone in Greece since we hadn’t seen them face-to-face in a long time, things such as Skype and Facebook helped us reconnect with the past.

Another aspect that was brought up that I found very interesting was the concept of International Citizenship. I think it sounds great and it makes sense. Since we have so much trouble even defining what being an American citizen means, I believe it would be much easier to just make it that we are all citizens of this world. How feasible would this actually be? I don’t know, but I think it is an interesting thought to ponder over.