Like many of my classmates, I was struck by the downright chasmal difference between the respective experiences of the “old” and “new” immigrants. Sure, many modern immigrants face more than their fair share of hardship, and by no means am I belittling the sorts of xenophobic prejudices and economic difficulties that often plague the so-called “new” immigrants. There is certainly still more than enough strife and suffering to go around, but when it comes down to it, modern immigrants seem to have gotten a much better deal than their “old immigrant” predecessors.
After all most modern immigrants are not fleeing certain starvation or sold into childhood slavery, which I suppose begs the question of why they would come to America in the first place. Relocating is sort of a no-brainer when the alternative is death-by-potato-blight, but what convinces the skilled and highly-educated foreigners that Foner wrote about to trade their well-established lives for the generally grim occupational prospects of illegality? It’s a pretty puzzling question, and one that I don’t really have a satisfying answer to. We are so used to thinking of America as the land of opportunity, but I honestly don’t see where opportunity fits in with trading surgeon’s scrubs for a janitorial jumpsuit. Then again, I guess that’s precisely the sort of question we’re trying to answer with this class…
