Month: March 2017 (Page 3 of 4)

In class today we discussed a controversial poster that read “looking for roommates Chinese preferred.”  At first I did not really like the sound of it.  It seemed unfair to those of other ethnic descent to display such a thing publicly.  However, now that I have thought about it some more I think that if having a Chinese roommate was very important to the person who made these posters, then there should be no problem with what he wrote.  We discussed the possibility that perhaps he should have written nothing and eventually just only reached out to those of Chinese descent, but I think this would have created more problems.  If I was looking for a roommate and saw this poster I would realize that applying would be useless, but if it said nothing about preferring a Chinese roommate then the poster would probably get my hopes up just to have them later crushed.    If somebody would prefer to live with someone similar to themselves, then I probably would not want to live with that person anyway and wouldn’t want it to be a secret that they preferred someone with a different background.

Applying for things is very stressful.  I have recently applied to many internships, and honestly I have no idea if I am going to get any of them.  One reason that I am left with this mystery is that when applying to jobs there aren’t always clear cut qualifications that indicate what the employer is looking for.  I’m not saying that employers should point out that they are looking for a 6’2 , 20 year old Jewish guy that goes to Baruch, but I think that would definitely make the whole process easier.  Now, while that gets fishy when it comes to finding a job because of all of the laws protecting different ethnicities…  I think that restricting a search may be a good idea in other types of applications and processes.  For example, there is an honors program at a college in New York which states that a student cannot get in unless they have a 1400 or over on their SATs.  This system may not seem fair at first, but imagine when applying to colleges there was no stress because you pretty much knew whether or not you were getting in.  I think that would take a huge weight off of people’s shoulders and decrease a lot of worries.

While singling out a certain ethnicity nowadays may be frowned upon I think that unless it is truly damaging to another ethnicity it may not be the worst idea.  We should consider the fact that while writing “Chinese preferred” on a poster might bother some people I think that not being accepted as a roommate and being in suspense for a while could bother people even more.

With President Trump’s recent pejorative comments against illegal immigrants and an executive order banning six countries (Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Iran) that have a Muslim majority population from entering the United States, it becomes increasingly transparent of the xenophobic characteristics of policy makers in Washington and their supporters. Often not, these comments and orders are backed up with fallacious comments that the Trump Administration advances as the truth.

In class on Wednesday, we discussed the New York Times article “Here’s the Reality About Illegal Immigrants in the United States.” The article was an interesting read that shed light on the actual facts based on real statistics and data about the current situation with illegal immigrants in America, and not the one purported by the Trump administration.

For example, the article elucidates that only 2.7% of all illegal immigrants have been convicted of a felony. In comparison, based on a Princeton University study, “about 8.6% of the adult population has a felony conviction.” Trump uses phrases such as “rapists” and “murderers” to describe illegal immigrants, but this is clearly not the situation.  Furthermore, another interesting fact in the article explained the means of how most immigrants essentially became “illegal.” Rather than furtively crossing the Mexican-US border, most illegal immigrants are illegal due to just overstaying their visas.

The graph above shows that although crossing over the Mexican border may have been the largest cause of illegal immigration during the turn of the century, the most prevalent cause of illegal immigration today is overstaying one’s visa. I was personally most astonished by this fact because the Trump administration so vehemently asserts that a wall needs to be placed in the Mexico-US border to effectively stop illegal immigration. However, this graph shows that border security in the south has been improving and efforts should actually be placed in monitoring visa stays.

I think this article brings about many key points and it was great we got the chance to discuss its importance in class on Wednesday. Moving on, we should monitor more carefully what politicians and people with power say so that “alternative facts” are not accepted as the truth. I think social media sites such as Facebook allows for these “fake news” stories to be shared so frequently and then eventually be accepted as facts by the general population. Facebook has heard of these complaints and had created a new service which starts to flag fake news stories (http://wwlp.com/2017/03/10/facebook-taking-steps-to-stop-the-spread-of-fake-news/). Although this feature is too late because I think these fake news stories played a vital part in swinging the election, it will ultimately be very beneficial and eventually stop false facts from permeating social media.

In Monday’s class, we discussed how immigrants should assimilate into the American society and how immigrant children should learn English in school. I was able to relate to the topic with my own experiences. When I first began school as a sixth grader in America, I was somewhat directly thrown into the English learning environment. Although there was an ESL program in my middle school, I was able to pass the placement test and was not placed into the program. However, my English level was nowhere near that of the others in my classes. Before going to school, I had trouble understanding third grade English materials as I did not know most of the words in the passages. Therefore, although I passed the placement test, I still could not understand most of the things that the teacher was saying in class, and often need the help of a Chinese-English dictionary to know what to do for the assignments. And where there are other Chinese speakers in my class, I would choose to talk to them in Chinese instead of English because I couldn’t find the necessary words to express myself in the English language. Sometimes I was actually envious of the kids who were placed into the ESL program, as they seemed to form their own group, whereas I was neither in the group of ESL students nor had the English capabilities to speak with other students normally. But this experience of being thrown into the English environment actually helped me learn English faster than my peers in the ESL program, since I had to force myself to speak English and expand my vocabulary on a daily basis. In the meantime, my Chinese hadn’t deteriorated much because I also spoke Chinese daily with my friends in ESL program as well as in my family.

But in my cousins’ case, what I saw was completely different. Both of my cousins were born in America. When they were little, they learned how to speak Chinese first because that was the only language that was spoken at home. But as they grow up, they first began to learn English from watching television, and then they would communicate to each other with a mix of Chinese and English. When they started school, they began to communicate to each other exclusively in English, and they also began to communicate to their parents in English only. The only times that they would speak Chinese at home is when they are talking to the grandparents, who understand almost no English at all.

I think that although it is important to maintain someone’s native culture during the assimilation process, it is only a matter of time before the mark of a family’s native culture eventually disappears if they truly want to assimilate into the American society. If it does not happen in this generation, then it will happen in the next generation, or the one after that. In order to assimilate into a new culture, one is planting new roots in another land in the world, so it is inevitable that the person also have to eventually be disconnected from his/her original roots. It is not America that Americanize its immigrants who come to this land, it is the immigrants who want to Americanize themselves.