Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-01-21-immigrant-healthcare_N.htm
Article Title: Rising health care costs put focus on illegal immigrants
By: Richard Wolf
- In Texas, where the state comptroller estimates illegal immigrants cost hospitals $1.3 billion in 2006, the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston is considering denying cancer care to such immigrants.
- On a national level, an effort to add legal immigrant children to the State Children's Health Insurance Program was blocked in the Senate last year. Instead, lawmakers added language to ensure that illegal immigrants were excluded.
- llegal immigrants can get emergency care through Medicaid, the federal-state program for the poor and people with disabilities. But they can't get non-emergency care unless they pay. They are ineligible for most other public benefits.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/25/opinion/25Duk.html
Article Title: Raise Wages, Not Walls
By: Michael S. Dukakis and Daniel JB Mitchell
- Millions of illegal immigrants work for minimum and even sub-minimum wages in workplaces that don’t come close to meeting health and safety standards.
- But if we want to reduce illegal immigration, it makes sense to reduce the abundance of extremely low-paying jobs that fuels it. If we raise the minimum wage, it’s possible some low-end jobs may be lost; but more Americans would also be willing to work in such jobs, thereby denying them to people who aren’t supposed to be here in the first place.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Chances of Inheriting a Social and Economic Status:
Even those acquiring a rich status are likely to not keep that same status as the years go by. However it is harder for those who inherit a poverty status to rise and become of a higher economic status due to inherited debt and such.
Immigrants and the American Dream
Topic: Immigration and trade
Immigrants and the American Dream
Some Americans accuse current immigrants of being a threat to the American dream. I wonder what they are dreaming of?
by rtbohan
(libertarian)
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
We Americans like to talk about American values and the American dream. But I really wonder what dream they are talking about. There is nothing new about anti-immigrant agitation, usually invoking the danger of a particular group of immigrants because they don't fit into the American mold. But the country has been fortunate throughout its history that the resistance to this agitation triumphed in the past and has limited the success of the exclusionists more recently.
A part of the rhetoric of the current anti immigrant warriors is that the admission of immigrants threatens the American dream. But exactly what is the American dream? Both our the political leaders and their followers seem a little confused about it. Barack Obama, in touting his national health care plan, said that it is a part of the American dream that "when we get sick we will get well." That would seem to be a universal dream, and most of the time it comes true, as we know from experience. We also know that it will not always come true. Eternal life is the busines of religion not of the doctors. But having someone else pay the doctor is not a part of the American dream.
The American dream that drew the original colonists and has drawn every wave of immigrants throughout American history is the dream of freedom, first of all. The dream of having freedom of, or from, religion. The dream of not being taxed to support an established church to which you do not belong. The dream of finding work, working hard and advancing yourself economically, and having your children start with advanges you did not have so that your children can begin their economic life at a higher level than you did. It is the dream of a republic where the citizens ultimately make the decisions, and do not simply receive orders from above.
But just as these were the dreams that drew people to American in colonial days and during every wave of immigration throughout our history is that when the dream began to be realized, a different dream began to appear. The colonists who cam seeking religious freedom saw no reason not to prevent other religions from being practiced. The Pilgrims outlawed all churches except their own. The more tolerant Carolinians welcomed Jewish immigrants and had no established church, but outlawed Catholics. Virginia established the Church of England and used tax monies to pay the salaries of the Anglican ministers. Maryland was open to all Christians and Pennsylvania to all who believed in God. It was the American Revolution and the Constitution which gave real impetus to the idea of a society which in which the people were religiously and economically free to pursue happiness in their own way.
After the Revolution, Americans followed the American Dream and succeeded to a large extent. Because there was a high demand for labor wages were for the most part relatively high in the United States, land was available for the establishment of farms and the American economy was prospering. The people did work hard, they did advance their economic and social position and gave their children a better start in life than they had had themselves. The success of the American experiment in political, social and economic freedom brought immigrants who wanted to share in it.
For the Americans who achieved the American dream, the dream became less important. Once a measure of wealth was achieved, the need for hard work and advancement was less important, and conspicuous consumption and a desire for less taxing work became more important. For the next generation, which was, as the dream suggested, starting on a higher level, the desire was for immediate attainment of the more leisured and pleasant life their parents had earned without earning it themselves. During the Nineteenth Century there was a saying in America: " Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations ". The first generation worked hard and raised themselves from poverty. The second lived on the interest from what the first generation had earned, and did not work as hard. The third generation consumed the principle and the family was starting again from the bottom. This formulation is not, of course, completely true, But it was not and is not completely false.
A part of the appeal of America was high wages. These existed from the beginning because of a shortage of labor. As native Americans moved up, they wanted ever higher wages, and would not take the jobs which paid less money for harder work. These were the jobs the immigrants filled as they began their own pursuit of the American dream. There was always complaint about the new immigrants. They came from societies with different values. They worshiped in strange churches. They did't talk "like us" , they didn't dress "like us", they tended to be "clannish".
This last group of objections, by the way, was applied not just to immigrants but to native Americans who migrated from one state to another in search of more prosperity, more freedom, and a better life. When the depression and the dust storms of the nineteent thirties drove people from Oklahoma to move to California, they were regarded as foreigners, and attempts were made to exclude them by law. During World War II, there was a joke in Indiana: "Did you know there are only forty five states left in the United States"" "No. What happened?" "Kentucky and Tennessee moved to Indiana, and Indiana went to Hell" . The same reaction greeted the black descendents of the slaves when they migrated to the North in large numbers following World War I. The earlier resdents of the area (including the descendents of the Irish, Jewish, German, Italian and Polish immigrants, now in the second and third generation were just as vociferous in their objection to the newcomers as earlier Americans had been in opposing their families immigration. The resentment of newcomers is a given, no matter where they come from.
But the immigrants, in each of their succeeding waves, and the internal migrants of the past and of today are the ones who are keeping alive the American dream. To leave your home and the society you are familiar with to travel to a strange place to do menial work for the chance to advance is not a drag on the society which receives you. It was primarily the immigrants who built the canals and the railroads of the nineteenth century, it was primarily the immigrants who supplied the industrial work force which made America an economic giant. it was largely the immigrants who settled the west. America became great because of the American dream, and it has been the immigrants who have kept that dream and come here to fulfill it themselves, while each new native born generation moves farther away from it, and relies on credit cards and the government for support. The immigrants, on the whole, do not come here to collect welfare or social security, and through their taxes they fund these programs for the natives.
The current version of the war against the immigrants, like all the previous manifestations, has an explanation of why this time is both the same and different. It is the same since it claims that the immigrants deprive native Americans of high paying jobs. The immigrants, however, expecially those who are the special objects of disdain, do not get the high paying jobs. In this society and this economy, there are still low paying jobs, and today most Americans will not take them because they invelve more work, particularly physical labor, for less pay. When the United States several years ago decided to apply the minimum wage to agricultural work, they discovered that there were not many native born Americans who were willing to take them. That is why the immigration from Mexico continued. The former President of Mexico, in an undiplomatic but true statement, observed that in the United States, the black citizens fill the jobs which the white citizens will not take, and the Mexicans fill the jobs that the black citizens will not take. Not every job is a high paying job. High pay brings high prices. American citizens want high wages and low prices. This depends on people willing to take low paying jobs as an entry to the American dream. But businesses cannot provide low priced goods if every job is high paying. Either workers willing to take the lower pay (this means either immigrants or migrants from poorer states) must come to the businesses or the businesses will move either to the poorer states in the United States or in American territories or to other countries. Follow the history of the American textile industry, which moved from New England to the Carolinas in search of cheaper labor, and has now moved largely overseas.
The new element in the attack on the immigrants is that they are here illegally taking the high priced jobs. But it is the legal immigrants in the "high demand professions" who are getting the high priced jobs, a lot of them paid for by taxes through, for example, medicare and medicade. The illegal immigrants are illegals because we are trying once again to slam shut the door to opportunitu, the golden door to the American Dream. A dream which today has been largely forgotten by the American citizens and is kept alive, now as in the past, by the immigrants who risk their lives and suffer disdain in their effort to achieve it.
NOTE: I am sure that some people will be annoyed that I talk about American History and do not mention the institution of slavery or the dispossession of the Native Americans. I am awre of these things and I do not minimize their importance, but this article is about something else.
Immigrants and the American Dream
Some Americans accuse current immigrants of being a threat to the American dream. I wonder what they are dreaming of?
by rtbohan
(libertarian)
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
We Americans like to talk about American values and the American dream. But I really wonder what dream they are talking about. There is nothing new about anti-immigrant agitation, usually invoking the danger of a particular group of immigrants because they don't fit into the American mold. But the country has been fortunate throughout its history that the resistance to this agitation triumphed in the past and has limited the success of the exclusionists more recently.
A part of the rhetoric of the current anti immigrant warriors is that the admission of immigrants threatens the American dream. But exactly what is the American dream? Both our the political leaders and their followers seem a little confused about it. Barack Obama, in touting his national health care plan, said that it is a part of the American dream that "when we get sick we will get well." That would seem to be a universal dream, and most of the time it comes true, as we know from experience. We also know that it will not always come true. Eternal life is the busines of religion not of the doctors. But having someone else pay the doctor is not a part of the American dream.
The American dream that drew the original colonists and has drawn every wave of immigrants throughout American history is the dream of freedom, first of all. The dream of having freedom of, or from, religion. The dream of not being taxed to support an established church to which you do not belong. The dream of finding work, working hard and advancing yourself economically, and having your children start with advanges you did not have so that your children can begin their economic life at a higher level than you did. It is the dream of a republic where the citizens ultimately make the decisions, and do not simply receive orders from above.
But just as these were the dreams that drew people to American in colonial days and during every wave of immigration throughout our history is that when the dream began to be realized, a different dream began to appear. The colonists who cam seeking religious freedom saw no reason not to prevent other religions from being practiced. The Pilgrims outlawed all churches except their own. The more tolerant Carolinians welcomed Jewish immigrants and had no established church, but outlawed Catholics. Virginia established the Church of England and used tax monies to pay the salaries of the Anglican ministers. Maryland was open to all Christians and Pennsylvania to all who believed in God. It was the American Revolution and the Constitution which gave real impetus to the idea of a society which in which the people were religiously and economically free to pursue happiness in their own way.
After the Revolution, Americans followed the American Dream and succeeded to a large extent. Because there was a high demand for labor wages were for the most part relatively high in the United States, land was available for the establishment of farms and the American economy was prospering. The people did work hard, they did advance their economic and social position and gave their children a better start in life than they had had themselves. The success of the American experiment in political, social and economic freedom brought immigrants who wanted to share in it.
For the Americans who achieved the American dream, the dream became less important. Once a measure of wealth was achieved, the need for hard work and advancement was less important, and conspicuous consumption and a desire for less taxing work became more important. For the next generation, which was, as the dream suggested, starting on a higher level, the desire was for immediate attainment of the more leisured and pleasant life their parents had earned without earning it themselves. During the Nineteenth Century there was a saying in America: " Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations ". The first generation worked hard and raised themselves from poverty. The second lived on the interest from what the first generation had earned, and did not work as hard. The third generation consumed the principle and the family was starting again from the bottom. This formulation is not, of course, completely true, But it was not and is not completely false.
A part of the appeal of America was high wages. These existed from the beginning because of a shortage of labor. As native Americans moved up, they wanted ever higher wages, and would not take the jobs which paid less money for harder work. These were the jobs the immigrants filled as they began their own pursuit of the American dream. There was always complaint about the new immigrants. They came from societies with different values. They worshiped in strange churches. They did't talk "like us" , they didn't dress "like us", they tended to be "clannish".
This last group of objections, by the way, was applied not just to immigrants but to native Americans who migrated from one state to another in search of more prosperity, more freedom, and a better life. When the depression and the dust storms of the nineteent thirties drove people from Oklahoma to move to California, they were regarded as foreigners, and attempts were made to exclude them by law. During World War II, there was a joke in Indiana: "Did you know there are only forty five states left in the United States"" "No. What happened?" "Kentucky and Tennessee moved to Indiana, and Indiana went to Hell" . The same reaction greeted the black descendents of the slaves when they migrated to the North in large numbers following World War I. The earlier resdents of the area (including the descendents of the Irish, Jewish, German, Italian and Polish immigrants, now in the second and third generation were just as vociferous in their objection to the newcomers as earlier Americans had been in opposing their families immigration. The resentment of newcomers is a given, no matter where they come from.
But the immigrants, in each of their succeeding waves, and the internal migrants of the past and of today are the ones who are keeping alive the American dream. To leave your home and the society you are familiar with to travel to a strange place to do menial work for the chance to advance is not a drag on the society which receives you. It was primarily the immigrants who built the canals and the railroads of the nineteenth century, it was primarily the immigrants who supplied the industrial work force which made America an economic giant. it was largely the immigrants who settled the west. America became great because of the American dream, and it has been the immigrants who have kept that dream and come here to fulfill it themselves, while each new native born generation moves farther away from it, and relies on credit cards and the government for support. The immigrants, on the whole, do not come here to collect welfare or social security, and through their taxes they fund these programs for the natives.
The current version of the war against the immigrants, like all the previous manifestations, has an explanation of why this time is both the same and different. It is the same since it claims that the immigrants deprive native Americans of high paying jobs. The immigrants, however, expecially those who are the special objects of disdain, do not get the high paying jobs. In this society and this economy, there are still low paying jobs, and today most Americans will not take them because they invelve more work, particularly physical labor, for less pay. When the United States several years ago decided to apply the minimum wage to agricultural work, they discovered that there were not many native born Americans who were willing to take them. That is why the immigration from Mexico continued. The former President of Mexico, in an undiplomatic but true statement, observed that in the United States, the black citizens fill the jobs which the white citizens will not take, and the Mexicans fill the jobs that the black citizens will not take. Not every job is a high paying job. High pay brings high prices. American citizens want high wages and low prices. This depends on people willing to take low paying jobs as an entry to the American dream. But businesses cannot provide low priced goods if every job is high paying. Either workers willing to take the lower pay (this means either immigrants or migrants from poorer states) must come to the businesses or the businesses will move either to the poorer states in the United States or in American territories or to other countries. Follow the history of the American textile industry, which moved from New England to the Carolinas in search of cheaper labor, and has now moved largely overseas.
The new element in the attack on the immigrants is that they are here illegally taking the high priced jobs. But it is the legal immigrants in the "high demand professions" who are getting the high priced jobs, a lot of them paid for by taxes through, for example, medicare and medicade. The illegal immigrants are illegals because we are trying once again to slam shut the door to opportunitu, the golden door to the American Dream. A dream which today has been largely forgotten by the American citizens and is kept alive, now as in the past, by the immigrants who risk their lives and suffer disdain in their effort to achieve it.
NOTE: I am sure that some people will be annoyed that I talk about American History and do not mention the institution of slavery or the dispossession of the Native Americans. I am awre of these things and I do not minimize their importance, but this article is about something else.
Who Gets a Chance to Pursue The American Dream?
In this cartoon we can observe the crude reality of what has now become the American Dream. The wealthiest people in America are the only ones who are actually living the dream of a better life for themselves and their families in the years to come, while they don't really "share" their wealth most of the middle-class population "feeds" off of the remains of that dream.
Making It in America: Social Mobility in the Immigrant Population
Journal Issue: Opportunity in America Volume 16 Number 2 Fall 2006
Making It in America: Social Mobility in the Immigrant Population
Authors: George J. Borjas
An Economic Perspective on Social Mobility
From a broad perspective, social mobility in immigrant households includes the cultural adaptation that immigrants and their children make to their new environment, their adoption of social norms and attitudes that may differ widely from those in their home countries, and their accumulation of “human capital investments,” such as education, language skills, and geographic relocation, which improve their economic status in their new country. In this paper I focus exclusively on this economic aspect of social mobility—the rate at which the economic status of the immigrant household improves from one generation to the next—and thus provide only a limited picture of the intergenerational changes that immigrant households inevitably experience in the United States.
There is, however, an important link between the economic notion of social mobility and the cultural issues traditionally emphasized in the immigration debates in the United States and many other countries. To make economic gains, an immigrant will often have to acquire skills that are valued by American employers, such as learning English and adopting the norms of the American workplace, and will often have to move to economically vibrant areas far from the ethnic enclave. Each of these steps helps weaken the link between the immigrant's foreign past and his or her American future.
Many immigrants, therefore, face an important trade-off: they may have to discard some of their native attributes, habits, and cultural characteristics and pick up new ones that enhance their chances of success in the American economy. Put differently, economic and noneconomic forms of social mobility may often complement each other: there will be more mobility of one type when there is more mobility of the other.
Research on immigrant economic performance has provided two insights that are widely accepted in the immigration debate. First, upon arrival in the United States, the typical immigrant worker suffers a sizable earnings disadvantage (relative to native-born workers), a disadvantage unlikely to disappear during his or her working life. Second, the many national origin groups that make up the first-generation population vary widely in socioeconomic status and earnings.4
Even within the boundaries provided by the narrow economic definition of social mobility, any study of intergenerational economic progress in immigrant households needs to examine two related, but distinct, phenomena. First, to what extent does the initial economic disadvantage of the immigrants narrow across generations? Put differently, do the children (or grandchildren) of immigrants “catch up” to the average economic status of native-born workers? It seems reasonable to suspect that the children of immigrants enjoy a “head start” in their earnings capacity that is not experienced by any other previous generation. After all, they are typically the first of the immigrant household to graduate from American schools, the first to benefit from having English as a native tongue, and the first to know about the internal workings of the U.S. labor market before getting their first job.
Second, it is well known that the relation between the earnings of parents and children, regardless of whether the parents are foreign- or native-born, is driven by a phenomenon known as regression toward the mean. Even though the children of highly successful parents are themselves likely to be successful, they are not likely to be as successful as their parents. Their economic performance will probably revert downward toward the population average. Similarly, even though the children of low-skill parents are themselves likely to be low-skilled, they are unlikely to be as unskilled as their parents; again there is a reversion upward toward the population average. Regression toward the mean acts like a double-sided magnet: it pulls the economic status of the children in outlying groups toward the mean of the population, regardless of where the parents start out.
The explanation for this phenomenon is that parental skills and family background are not alone in influencing the transmission of skills from one generation to the next. Because many other unknown and random factors, such as luck and imperfect genetic transmission of ability, motivation, and drive, are also at work, children of parents at either tail of the wage distribution will probably lie closer to the middle of that distribution as adults.
The concept of regression toward the mean is crucial in understanding social mobility in the immigrant population. Some ethnic groups who enter the United States do very well in the labor market, while other groups perform poorly. Part of these ethnic differences will likely be passed on to their offspring. The melting pot metaphor argues that these differences disappear relatively quickly, leaving ethnic groups indistinguishable. In terms of the economic status of different ethnic groups, the melting pot suggests that regression toward the mean is an important phenomenon. Economic differences among ethnic groups in the first generation are fleeting, and an immigrant's ethnic background will have little effect on his descendants' economic well-being.
http://futureofchildren.org/publications/journals/article/index.xml?journalid=35&articleid=87§ionid=526
Making It in America: Social Mobility in the Immigrant Population
Authors: George J. Borjas
An Economic Perspective on Social Mobility
From a broad perspective, social mobility in immigrant households includes the cultural adaptation that immigrants and their children make to their new environment, their adoption of social norms and attitudes that may differ widely from those in their home countries, and their accumulation of “human capital investments,” such as education, language skills, and geographic relocation, which improve their economic status in their new country. In this paper I focus exclusively on this economic aspect of social mobility—the rate at which the economic status of the immigrant household improves from one generation to the next—and thus provide only a limited picture of the intergenerational changes that immigrant households inevitably experience in the United States.
There is, however, an important link between the economic notion of social mobility and the cultural issues traditionally emphasized in the immigration debates in the United States and many other countries. To make economic gains, an immigrant will often have to acquire skills that are valued by American employers, such as learning English and adopting the norms of the American workplace, and will often have to move to economically vibrant areas far from the ethnic enclave. Each of these steps helps weaken the link between the immigrant's foreign past and his or her American future.
Many immigrants, therefore, face an important trade-off: they may have to discard some of their native attributes, habits, and cultural characteristics and pick up new ones that enhance their chances of success in the American economy. Put differently, economic and noneconomic forms of social mobility may often complement each other: there will be more mobility of one type when there is more mobility of the other.
Research on immigrant economic performance has provided two insights that are widely accepted in the immigration debate. First, upon arrival in the United States, the typical immigrant worker suffers a sizable earnings disadvantage (relative to native-born workers), a disadvantage unlikely to disappear during his or her working life. Second, the many national origin groups that make up the first-generation population vary widely in socioeconomic status and earnings.4
Even within the boundaries provided by the narrow economic definition of social mobility, any study of intergenerational economic progress in immigrant households needs to examine two related, but distinct, phenomena. First, to what extent does the initial economic disadvantage of the immigrants narrow across generations? Put differently, do the children (or grandchildren) of immigrants “catch up” to the average economic status of native-born workers? It seems reasonable to suspect that the children of immigrants enjoy a “head start” in their earnings capacity that is not experienced by any other previous generation. After all, they are typically the first of the immigrant household to graduate from American schools, the first to benefit from having English as a native tongue, and the first to know about the internal workings of the U.S. labor market before getting their first job.
Second, it is well known that the relation between the earnings of parents and children, regardless of whether the parents are foreign- or native-born, is driven by a phenomenon known as regression toward the mean. Even though the children of highly successful parents are themselves likely to be successful, they are not likely to be as successful as their parents. Their economic performance will probably revert downward toward the population average. Similarly, even though the children of low-skill parents are themselves likely to be low-skilled, they are unlikely to be as unskilled as their parents; again there is a reversion upward toward the population average. Regression toward the mean acts like a double-sided magnet: it pulls the economic status of the children in outlying groups toward the mean of the population, regardless of where the parents start out.
The explanation for this phenomenon is that parental skills and family background are not alone in influencing the transmission of skills from one generation to the next. Because many other unknown and random factors, such as luck and imperfect genetic transmission of ability, motivation, and drive, are also at work, children of parents at either tail of the wage distribution will probably lie closer to the middle of that distribution as adults.
The concept of regression toward the mean is crucial in understanding social mobility in the immigrant population. Some ethnic groups who enter the United States do very well in the labor market, while other groups perform poorly. Part of these ethnic differences will likely be passed on to their offspring. The melting pot metaphor argues that these differences disappear relatively quickly, leaving ethnic groups indistinguishable. In terms of the economic status of different ethnic groups, the melting pot suggests that regression toward the mean is an important phenomenon. Economic differences among ethnic groups in the first generation are fleeting, and an immigrant's ethnic background will have little effect on his descendants' economic well-being.
http://futureofchildren.org/publications/journals/article/index.xml?journalid=35&articleid=87§ionid=526
Rhetorical Summary: Death of a Salesman
Death of a Salesman – Rhetorical Summary
In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, an aged salesman deals with the differences between reality and what his dreams hoped for in life. While in reality, he was just another salesman with little importance to his company and his family is in a state of turmoil and economic instability; but in his dreams and false perception of reality, he was a well-like and recognized salesman whose family is picture perfect and is well off economically. His dream and false perception of reality depicts the idea of the American Dream.
What Arthur Miller tries to show in his reading or what his argument is that a someone’s desire to get ahead in life and gain the American Dream can sometimes arise consequences if he doesn’t tread carefully. In the novel, Willy Loman tries do everything to get ahead in life and be well-liked that he doesn’t lend any attention to other important things. The biggest example in the novel is when he tries to teach his son how to get ahead in life. He tells him that being well-liked is more important than getting an education. This and other events cause Biff to become a workless wanderer as his friend who did focus on his studies gets ahead in life.
Arthur Miller uses pathos in his argument as he uses the characters to show deep emotions of sorrow and grief as their family descends into turmoil and instability, both economically and psychologically. The reader is to feel sorrow for Willy Loman and his family as they continue to descend throughout the novel.
In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, an aged salesman deals with the differences between reality and what his dreams hoped for in life. While in reality, he was just another salesman with little importance to his company and his family is in a state of turmoil and economic instability; but in his dreams and false perception of reality, he was a well-like and recognized salesman whose family is picture perfect and is well off economically. His dream and false perception of reality depicts the idea of the American Dream.
What Arthur Miller tries to show in his reading or what his argument is that a someone’s desire to get ahead in life and gain the American Dream can sometimes arise consequences if he doesn’t tread carefully. In the novel, Willy Loman tries do everything to get ahead in life and be well-liked that he doesn’t lend any attention to other important things. The biggest example in the novel is when he tries to teach his son how to get ahead in life. He tells him that being well-liked is more important than getting an education. This and other events cause Biff to become a workless wanderer as his friend who did focus on his studies gets ahead in life.
Arthur Miller uses pathos in his argument as he uses the characters to show deep emotions of sorrow and grief as their family descends into turmoil and instability, both economically and psychologically. The reader is to feel sorrow for Willy Loman and his family as they continue to descend throughout the novel.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Is The American Dream Still Alive For Immigrants?
American Dream Still Alive and Well for Immigrants, Report Says
Economic assimilation remains strong, with greatest rewards for best educated
By Jeffrey Thomas
Staff Writer
Washington -- Immigrants to the United States continue to find a land of opportunity both for themselves and for their children, according to a new report.
“America offers dramatic mobility for immigrants,” said Ron Haskins, the author of Economic Mobility of Immigrants in the United States, during a teleconference July 25, 2007. “The great story of America is that it still offers a job to first-generation immigrants and better jobs to their children.” Haskins serves as a principal of the Economic Mobility Project, a collaborative effort involving individuals from four major U.S. think tanks, which recently issued the report. The Economic Mobility Project is an ongoing examination of the so-called American Dream, a concept that embraces social justice, social advancement and equality of opportunity.
Legal immigration to the United States has grown substantially in recent decades -- from 3.3 million per decade in the 1960s to 9.1 million in the 1990s, according to the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The State Department reports that between 2000 and 2005, 3.7 million immigrants became citizens and the United States granted legal permanent residence to 5.8 million people.
Estimates of the number of illegal immigrants in the United States vary widely. The Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group, calculates an unauthorized population of 11.5 to 12 million as of March 2006, based on Census Bureau and other data. Haskins estimates that 500,000 undocumented or illegal workers arrive each year, most of them from Mexico.
Haskins did sound a note of caution: “Historically, the U.S. economy has successfully created opportunity and economic mobility for immigrant families, but the scale of recent immigration -- and especially of poorly educated immigrants -- could be cause for future concern.”
Educational attainment has a dramatic effect on the wages of both first-generation and second-generation immigrants, and therefore on economic mobility, the report shows.
There is not one typical immigrant, according to the report -- there are two. And an accurate portrait of new arrivals is complex: a much higher percentage of legal immigrants have advanced degrees than is true for the nonimmigrant population, but large numbers of immigrants -- particularly undocumented workers from Latin America -- have relatively low levels of education.
A recent study by the National Science Foundation found that, unlike less-educated immigrants, 67 percent of immigrant scientists and engineers cited family reasons or educational opportunities as their primary reason for coming to the United States, and only 21 percent cited job or economic opportunities. As of 2003, there were 3,352,000 U.S. scientists and engineers who were immigrants.
Historically, immigrant workers have on average earned more than nonimmigrant workers, as have the children of immigrants, the so-called “second generation.” In 2000, the most recent year for which statistics are available, second-generation immigrants continued to earn more than nonimmigrant workers, by 6.3 percent (versus 17.8 percent more in 1940 and 14.6 percent more in 1970).
First-generation immigrants, however, earned 20 percent less in 2000 than the typical nonimmigrant worker (versus 6 percent more in 1940 and 1.4 percent more in 1970), according to U.S. Census data, the source of all statistics for the report.
“The U.S. economy seems to be increasingly rewarding education,” said Stuart Butler, an expert on economic policy studies at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research institute.
High school graduates from Mexico working in the United States earn less than nonimmigrant workers, but they earn eight times as much as they would if they remained in Mexico, Haskins said. “The American economy provides a huge boost to the mobility of first-generation immigrants,” even those with less education, and even if they earn less than nonimmigrants, he added.
The report shows that the children of immigrants attain higher levels of education than their parents -- and indeed, are more likely to attain college degrees and advanced degrees than the children of nonimmigrants.
The report concludes, however, that the economic prospects of the second generation are very much tied to their educational attainments. “Economic assimilation appears to be working well,” Haskins says, but “the children of low-wage, poorly educated immigrants may well have an uphill climb to continue reaching economic parity with nonimmigrants.”
LINK: http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2007/July/200707261445221CJsamohT0.1857721.html
Economic assimilation remains strong, with greatest rewards for best educated
By Jeffrey Thomas
Staff Writer
Washington -- Immigrants to the United States continue to find a land of opportunity both for themselves and for their children, according to a new report.
“America offers dramatic mobility for immigrants,” said Ron Haskins, the author of Economic Mobility of Immigrants in the United States, during a teleconference July 25, 2007. “The great story of America is that it still offers a job to first-generation immigrants and better jobs to their children.” Haskins serves as a principal of the Economic Mobility Project, a collaborative effort involving individuals from four major U.S. think tanks, which recently issued the report. The Economic Mobility Project is an ongoing examination of the so-called American Dream, a concept that embraces social justice, social advancement and equality of opportunity.
Legal immigration to the United States has grown substantially in recent decades -- from 3.3 million per decade in the 1960s to 9.1 million in the 1990s, according to the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The State Department reports that between 2000 and 2005, 3.7 million immigrants became citizens and the United States granted legal permanent residence to 5.8 million people.
Estimates of the number of illegal immigrants in the United States vary widely. The Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group, calculates an unauthorized population of 11.5 to 12 million as of March 2006, based on Census Bureau and other data. Haskins estimates that 500,000 undocumented or illegal workers arrive each year, most of them from Mexico.
Haskins did sound a note of caution: “Historically, the U.S. economy has successfully created opportunity and economic mobility for immigrant families, but the scale of recent immigration -- and especially of poorly educated immigrants -- could be cause for future concern.”
Educational attainment has a dramatic effect on the wages of both first-generation and second-generation immigrants, and therefore on economic mobility, the report shows.
There is not one typical immigrant, according to the report -- there are two. And an accurate portrait of new arrivals is complex: a much higher percentage of legal immigrants have advanced degrees than is true for the nonimmigrant population, but large numbers of immigrants -- particularly undocumented workers from Latin America -- have relatively low levels of education.
A recent study by the National Science Foundation found that, unlike less-educated immigrants, 67 percent of immigrant scientists and engineers cited family reasons or educational opportunities as their primary reason for coming to the United States, and only 21 percent cited job or economic opportunities. As of 2003, there were 3,352,000 U.S. scientists and engineers who were immigrants.
Historically, immigrant workers have on average earned more than nonimmigrant workers, as have the children of immigrants, the so-called “second generation.” In 2000, the most recent year for which statistics are available, second-generation immigrants continued to earn more than nonimmigrant workers, by 6.3 percent (versus 17.8 percent more in 1940 and 14.6 percent more in 1970).
First-generation immigrants, however, earned 20 percent less in 2000 than the typical nonimmigrant worker (versus 6 percent more in 1940 and 1.4 percent more in 1970), according to U.S. Census data, the source of all statistics for the report.
“The U.S. economy seems to be increasingly rewarding education,” said Stuart Butler, an expert on economic policy studies at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research institute.
High school graduates from Mexico working in the United States earn less than nonimmigrant workers, but they earn eight times as much as they would if they remained in Mexico, Haskins said. “The American economy provides a huge boost to the mobility of first-generation immigrants,” even those with less education, and even if they earn less than nonimmigrants, he added.
The report shows that the children of immigrants attain higher levels of education than their parents -- and indeed, are more likely to attain college degrees and advanced degrees than the children of nonimmigrants.
The report concludes, however, that the economic prospects of the second generation are very much tied to their educational attainments. “Economic assimilation appears to be working well,” Haskins says, but “the children of low-wage, poorly educated immigrants may well have an uphill climb to continue reaching economic parity with nonimmigrants.”
LINK: http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2007/July/200707261445221CJsamohT0.1857721.html
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