Family Stability- Child- Shifting

Family stability within the Caribbean population can be disturbed when they decide to migrate. Child- shifting can also take place. This is when the family in the US decided to send their child back to their home island, while they continue working in America. Or the child can initially stay on the island while their parent(s) works abroad. After a while, the child is usually able to join the family in America. This is very common in places like Jamaica, Barbados, Haiti, and Trinidad. These kids who spend their time between the US and the West Indies are usually called ‘barrel children’. The name ‘barrel child’ comes from the fact that parents usually send clothes, toys, and money back to their kids and the caregivers, in barrels.

‘Barrel children’ can usually live with grandparents while parents are gone. However, there are many kids that live with older siblings or even strangers. There have been multiple unfortunate cases where children are abused physically and verbally by their caregivers, and no one is able to do anything. The caregiver believes that he/she can do anything to the child no matter what the parent says since the caregiver is doing a ‘favor’.

Child- shifting can be a bittersweet process. On one hand, the parents are able to leave to make a better life for the family. Parents work hard for the money, house, and education for their kids so they do not have to grow up without opportunities to chase. Then, when life is stable abroad, they can send for their kids. On the other hand, children miss their parents. Children do not see their parents for months or even years at a time. Plus, parents are leaving the kids at such a young age that sometimes kids do not recognize their own mothers and fathers. They just know that someone named mom/dad sends money, toys and clothes every once in a while. The bonds between a child and their mother or father are sometimes damaged and they can feel abandoned, depressed or experience low self-esteem.

Though child- shifting can have unintended negative affects on the child, it is a common and almost traditional way to live and work abroad. Parents do the best they can with the resources they are given, and if this calls for them to leave for better opportunities, it is something that has to be done.

http://barrelchild.blogspot.com/2011/08/child-shifting-and-west-indian.html

http://family.jrank.org/pages/203/Caribbean-Families-Family-Structure.html

http://www.counselingoutfitters.com/Pottinger.htm

http://www.unicef.org/easterncaribbean/Impact_of_Migration_Paper.pdf

The Third Wave of Chinese Immigrants

Through history, there are three waves of Chinese immigrants moving from their home country to the United States. The first wave of immigrants were mainly people who worked for construction and the mining industry in 19th century. The second wave of migration began after the enacting of Magnuson Act in 1943. Most immigrants came from Taiwan, since after World War Two, American government treated Mainland China, Taiwan, and HongKong into separate immigration quotas. The third wave of immigrants came to America after the 21st century. Some of them were people who lived in the lower class in China, so they wanted to come to the U.S to earn money. However, the other group of immigrants were people who were well-educated and had better financial background. They immigrated to American for the convenient for their business, better education for their children and so on. The third wave of Chinese immigrants are more closely to us, and we may know some of them in our lives. It's interesting to see that the social status of the third waves of Chinese immigrants are polarization. From different examples and different people's experience, we can find out that these people live in various way in the United States.

Chinatown in Flushing, Queens

Part of the third wave of Chinese immigrants are undocumented immigrants. They come to the U.S with the visiting Visa, and they stay in the country illegally. Most of them lived in the heavily urban areas and work in Chinatown for some low wages as well as less professional jobs. Since these people are mainly from the poor families in Chine, the goal for them to stay in America is to earn money. Even though they receive low wages in the U.S, they still can earn more money than they do in China. Most of them will send money back to their country if they get their salaries, and they go back to China someday when they have enough money. Social capital is deeply influenced these new immigrants. Most of them came the American under the help of some agencies, and these institutions will also help them to find cheap housings as well as jobs after they arrived in the U.S. Also, some of them connected to some of their acquaintances in the States, so they can settle down easier with their assistances. These immigrants use their origins as tie to connect to others for benefits.

Chinese population in the U.S

At the same time, other groups of Chinese also moved to the United States, but their social status are completely different from those illegal immigrants. Most of them affluent and rich elites. They are scientists, successful business, or at least upper-middle level families. Some of them came to the country to do the scientific research or investigate business opportunities. However, there are also a lot of elites in China immigrating to America for their Children's education. Even though the elementary education in China can train children to have a solid knowledge background on Math and natural science, children are less creativity and only can only do well on tests. The workload for students in China is heavy as well. Also, it's harder for students to get into best universities, like Tsinghua University or Peking University, comparing to got to Harvard or Yale in U.S, even though many students work extremely on their studies. At the meanwhile, other universities are far less competitive than colleges in the U.S. The job opportunities for undergraduate students are limited as well. Most students can hardly find jobs after graduate. There is a common saying now that graduating means losing jobs. Many parents are really concerned about their children's further development, so they come to American to make their children to have better opportunities on education. In addition, the cost of living in big cities like Beijing or Shanghai is very high. For instance, the average price for apartments in Beijing is around $4400 per square meters. For many middle class families, they can live in a better condition in the U.S than in metropolitans in China. Most of these immigrants are living the suburban areas, and most of them prefer to settle down in the America with their children for the rest of their lives. Even though they move to America, they are less connected to other Chinese immigrants. They may connect to some of their friends, but their ties to other people are not as close as the working class immigrants.

Employment Fair In Nanjing

Comparing these two groups of Chinese immigrants, we can clearly see that the large variations between them actually will weak the group ties. Theses two groups of Chinese are living in different areas and approaching different life styles. Even though they are all new to American and share same culture, they are not tied to each other closely, since they are facing different conditions.The gap of income and living standard of Chinese immigrants becomes larger and larger through polarization of the status of immigrants, like the chart we saw on class.

Resources:
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/china-news/third-mass-immigration-wave-37058.html

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/china/121220/chinese-immigrants-america-united-states-schools-education

unaccompanied illegal immigrant minors

  Adult illegal immigrants have to face many problems in society. They need to find a shelter to live, a job to feed their family, and medical treatment for any health issues. However, for unaccompanied illegal immigrant minors, they have to deal with more issues. Recently, a large amount of children from Mexico and Central America tried to cross the border and came to the United States without documents. These children do not have parents or guardians accompanying them. Most of them are growing up on the street in their home countries. When they come to America, they have to solve many problems, and education is an important one. It's necessary for them to get opportunities to receive education. Educating new immigrants can also ensure the stability of society. However, in order to educate immigrant students, the government has to face financial problems, since the expenses for education come of the taxes and government subsides. Helping unaccompanied minor children will indirectly reduce the education expenses for local students whose families had paid more taxes. In addition, accepting the undocumented children to the public schools will also cause the problems about immunisation, academic levels, and also security problems, since schools barely know their students' background.Therefore, the policies from illegal immigrant minors are controversial and crucial for the country's development.

  Through the years, the population of children immigrants has increased largely, and most of the children come from Central America. From the statistics of Washington Times, an estimated 90,000 children may illegally cross American threshold by Sept.30, 2014. The population will keep increasing through the next few years. Therefore, the educational system is under the pressure to accept all these students. Depending on the recent policies, immigrant minors have the right to go to the public schools in America, so the states governments will need to afford the educational expense for these children. Most of the time, the government needs to pay an extra 30% of the money to educate non-English speaking students as compared to local english speaking students. Also, in order to accept this large amount of students, the government has to enlarge schools and recruit faculties, because the original classroom can hardly fit all these students. Schools also need more teachers to take care of these students. The health and immune systems need to pay attention to these immigrant children as well. Most of these unaccompanied children are orphans or lack of the supervision of guardians, so they may not receive the immunization as well as essential vaccines. If they come to school with certain viruses, it is pretty easy to spread the disease among students. Lack of the security check of the students will also bring schools trouble. In the Mother Jones, it talks about a story of a 17 years old boy Adrain who came across the border without guardians. He was instigated by a drug trafficker to carry some marijuana to sneak into America. Adrain was poor and did not have a family; he did not have any other choice. Therefore, he went across the border to become one of the unaccompanied immigrant minors. A lot of children are in the same situation as him. They were involved with the local drug dealing and the gangsters. These students' unwell behaviors may bring negative influences to the local public schools' students. Also, most of them did not systematically accept education, so it is really hard to find a proper academic level for them to fit in.

"Two young girls sit in their holding area where hundreds of mostly Central American immigrant children are being processed and held at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Nogales Placement Center on June 18, 2014, in Nogales, Arizona." (centre for American progress, by Tom. K Wong)

  Even though accepting unaccompanied illegal immigrant children will bring inconvenience to the educational system, I believe that the country should still provide the opportunities to these children. Educational background is important for a person's development. If the government ignores the existence of these children and refuses to provide them educational opportunities, they may have to live on the street and raise themselves by stealing and begging.Since these children can not get education, they can hardly find any decent jobs, so later their future families' living conditions will stay in a vicious circle. They may cause violence to their neighbourhoods, so the crime rates will increase in the future years. Thus the conflicts among races will be more intensive. Fortunately, now the policies allow these children to stay in the countries and help them to find them sponsors or families. The public education is open to them as well. Even though helping these children will cause the burden of the government, non-profits organizations and agencies still keep working to provide these children better conditions.














Resources

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/child-migrants-surge-unaccompanied-central-america

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/09/02/cost-educating-new-class-illegal-immigrant-minors-estimated-at-over-760m/

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/aug/18/simmons-its-school-time-do-you-know-where-the-ille/?page=all

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/news/2014/07/08/93370/statistical-analysis-shows-that-violence-not-deferred-action-is-behind-the-surge-of-unaccompanied-children-crossing-the-border/

Immigration policy

As one of the immigration countries, American population involves various races and ethnicities. The originals of the United States citizens come from different continents around the world. They have different skin colors, speak different languages, and own different cultures, but they came to the US to build the unique American culture through different historical period. Nowadays, still a big amount of people from other countries wants to come to American for various reasons, such as avoiding the political conflict, getting better living condition or searching economical opportunities. Since there were too many people flow to the United States, the congress began to enact policy to restrict the immigration. However, the limiting of immigration caused the inequality among races in the past, and now the immigration policy is still crucial part to the government. 

The early generation of immigrants in the colonial period was Europeans who came to the New World for searching religious freedom. Through 1776 to 1880, American was welcomed to immigrants, but after 1880 the government begin to enact the restrictions to control immigrants. During the Revolutionary War, more people from west Europe moved to the United States, and later these Europeans were considered as predominate populations of America. The first immigration law was set in 1790, and it is about a standard two year residency for naturalization and later in 1795 the congress change the requirement into five years. The first wave of immigration is from 1830 to 1860, and the majority population is catholic Irish, since Ireland was under the pressure of the increasing of the population. After the discovery gold in California, more Asians came to the country to search for the fortune. However, these Chinese immigrants were treated as non-American, because the appearance and cultures were different from the European's. These people received poor welfare in the society, and the congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, which restricted Chinese came to the United States, and it was rescinded in 1943. The great wave and the new immigration period is around 1880 to 1914, because of the War American government wanted more people to help the country, so the immigration population was increased. In addition, the boom of economy required more labors, and then many unskilled people from South Europe, Slavs and Turks came to the country as new immigrants. Also, during that period Jews were under the insecurity conditions, so they immigrated to America for protection. From 1914 to 1965, it is the exclusion period, by the influence of the great depression and the World War I, the population of new immigration decreased and the government highly restricted the immigrants. The most immigrants like Mexicans, their living condition was harsh, and the treatment to different races are various. After 1965, more immigrants came to the United States. Some of them came to the country were highly educated to help the government build programs that can conquer the Cold War. People from latin American immigrated to the US to avoid the conflicts and economics depression in their home countries, like Vietnamese or Cuban  Also many other immigrants moved to the American for the complicated political reasons. Many people among them are undocumented and do not have the legal identity.

Since the expanded of population and the mixing of the races, there were many problems emerged in the United State’s society. The immigration policy tried to control the population and the background of people came to America, but in reality it did not always work well. The number of illegal immigrants is still large, and some of them bring hidden danger to the society.  Many of the illegal immigrants were not well educated and unskilled, so they may indirectly cause the increasing of crime rates. Also, their living conditions can hardly be guaranteed. For instance, the illegal immigrants who worked in New York Chinatown lived in terrible circumstances; they were bullied by their bosses, received the income that lower than the minimum wages, and faced the sexual harassment. These people will not choose to call the police, since their identities are illegal in the country.

 http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/i/immigration-and-emigration/index.html?8qa&module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar%2C%7B%222%22%3A%22RI%3A13%22%7D

Even though the United State is reopened to immigrants, the social statuses of different races are still different. Government agencies are trying to balance the proportions of races, but the majority workers and decision makers are still the whites. Many of the immigrants are more willingly to keep silence on the political issues that are not directly affect their lives. Also, the unequal distribution of resources will cause the conflict among races. Like we read from the academic profiling, most Asian students are in the IB program, and they have better test scores as well as privilege in schools. Therefore, more Asian students that Latino students can get into better college, so they can have better opportunities in their future career. Thus, the equality among races will be enlarged, and if the government cannot fix the problem, the conflict will be more intensive.

Resource:
Credo
New York Times

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