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Project #2 Reflection

The most rewarding part of doing this project was finding out more about my fathers background story that I didn’t even know about. If it wasn’t for this project, I feel like I still wouldn’t have known that my own father was an illegal immigrant. I was pleased with the steps that I took when it came to doing this project; the step that I was mostly pleased with was being able to have a long conversation with my father and not having an awkward moment of silence when I see him after work. It gave us a topic that we could both discuss about and have fun talking about. My research could have actually gone better because most of the information that I found was basically the same reason that most immigrants come to the United States for which is for a better life and a chance to accomplish the so called “American Dream”. The most difficult part of this project was the research aspect because as stated before, I was hoping to find different reasons on why immigrants come here and don’t go to another part of the world. I would change the questions that I asked my father throughout the interview due to the fact that I was trying to achieve more sentimental answer to my questions, I wanted him to go more in depth with his responses. The section that I enjoyed writing the most was the introduction because I was able to share my reasoning of choosing that topic and I was bale to write the knew information that I learned from my own father that didn’t require any type of research at all. My least favorite part to write the data analysis since it was the most boring part of the paper based on the how I had to compare my findings with my research which didn’t go as well as I thought it would be. The most stimulating discovery was finding out that my father was an illegal immigrant and hearing his stories of what he had to go through to cross the border to the United States. I prefer ethnographies since they are more interesting to write and have a different format of traditional papers, which can get repetitive to write.  

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Project #1 Reflection

Coming up with the idea of who I was going to interview wasn’t challenging at all, when it came to choosing someone to interview, I decided to try to find somebody who I thought wouldn’t come to mind at first when you think of the word identity. I would say that the most successful part of doing my interview was being able to contact my friend Claudia Urbano for the interview and actually getting her to agree to explain the hardships that she has to go through to become successful in this world that we live in. If I could change anything to do about the interview, the thing that I would change would be the location of where the interview was held at, the reason that I would change the location of where the interview was held at was because Mason kept on crying while doing the interview which made the actually interview take longer than it needed to. The way that I decided to choose this format is because it got the main points that I wanted to explain out there, I didn’t want the reader to look for the specific answer that he or she is looking for. It was also an easier sample to write like; it was easier than the other formats. It would impact the audience that is reading it because if the reader is in the same current situation that Claudia was in, it can give them hope and help give them guidance. There are no other stylistic choices worth mentioning at the moment. I realized on how difficult it was to maintain a high grade in school while taking care of a kid at the same time. I was bale to see how hard Claudia had to work to be where she is now, especially since now she is in the process of going to college next semester. Identity doesn’t have to be defined of belonging to a specific race, it just means being part of a certain group that can be identified as different from others. The response that really hit me the hardest was “I feel like when you’re younger, everyone thinks the littlest things mean your world is coming crashing down when its really not and when you have a child you learn to appreciate the little things like sleeping 5 minutes or eating breakfast”. It helps to show the emphasis of everything that we have and everyone in our lives, we must appreciate them or else one day we won’t see then again.  

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Escape from Home to A Better Place

Introduction

           Immigrants, they come from their home country to find a better home here in the United States. Back in history people use to come to the United States and think that the streets were paved in gold and that everywhere that they turn they would just see riches.  Whether the reason that they come for is for a better life for themselves or their family, they come here to accomplish something big and be part of something. Some come to the United States hoping to become a millionaire and become successful in anyway possible. The main idea behind this research is to see what is the main cause that causes people to migrate to the United States, because everyone that comes to the United States doesn’t come for the same reasons. This is going to be my main topic for this research due to the fact that since immigrants don’t have a huge voice in the world, I feel that since they won’t be able to get their story out, I should be able to help them tell their story and their struggles. This is relevant due to the fact that now with the huge conflict with immigrants and how our now so called president is abusing his power and not letting the immigrants stand up for themselves. We should come together as a nation and stand up for each other instead of letting our people get pushed back down and not be allowed to accomplish their goals that they set for themselves and the dreams that they try to achieve. All of us should have the same opportunities; it shouldn’t matter where we come from.

           Assumptions & Early Hypothesis

                       Going into this research of immigrants and their stories, I felt like it would help me understand and see the stories of many people on how they thought America would treat them and I feel like it would give me a better understanding of what my parents went through when they first came to the United States. Most things that I expect to here from doing my research and interviewing my father would be just hearing the same story which would be coming to the United States to find a better life and to get a better job since probably the jobs that were available at their home country wasn’t paying enough or there wasn’t enough work. I also assume to hear that it was very difficult to adapt to the United States culture due to the fact that many immigrants come from countries where English isn’t the main language, the language barrier would be a huge obstacle that they would have to overcome when it comes to adapting an American culture. An article written on November 17, 2006 entitled Why Do Immigrants come to the United Stated written by Elizabeth Arizaga states “Immigrants chose to come for various reasons, such as to live in freedom, to practice their religion freely, to escape poverty or oppression, and to make better lives for themselves and their children”. This is the main cause for immigrants to the United States just the hope of creating a better life for themselves and their family. The research that I found was very similar to the assumptions that I made about the push and pull effect of why most immigrants come to the United States for a better life and don’t stay in their own country. An immigrant from Mexico stated that the main reason for his long journey to the United States was to start a better life for his family and give them the life that they deserve, the life that he didn’t have when he was a kid. He wanted to make sure that his kids would be provided with the best education possible and be able to become somebody in this world. Sometimes the immigrants that we though that immigrated here the most aren’t actually the number one origin of immigrants entering the United States. Turns out an article states, “In 2015, 1.38 million foreign-born individuals moved to the United States, a 2 percent increase from 1.36 million in 2014. India was the leading country of origin for recent immigrants, with 179,800 arriving in 2015, followed by 143,200 from China, 139,400 from Mexico, 47,500 from the Philippines, and 46,800 from Canada. In 2013, India and China overtook Mexico as the top origin countries for recent arrivals”. Most people thought that the immigrants that mostly from the south but it turns out Indian immigrants actually migrate here more than any other country. They migrate mostly to escape the pressures of their country and try to have a nice calm one here in the United States. As states in another article “Immigrants in the U.S., however, are more likely to define the American dream as the pursuit of opportunity, a good job, owning a home and in many cases, safety from war or persecution”. The American dream is what most of us try to achieve and that is what immigrants try to achieve when they come to the United States, doesn’t matter what their definition of that dream is, all that matters is that they come here to the United States to achieve it.  

Methodology

           The methods that I took to make sure that everything went into my favor is that I made sure that my work schedule was able to match the same work schedule that my father had. Over the past couple of days I would ask my father a series of questions to see what information I would be able to gather on the background story that I never heard of before, this story unfolded to me piece by piece everyday that I spoke to him. I didn’t want to ask him all of my questions in one day due to the fact that I felt that the story that he was going to tell me was going to have a huge effect on the emotions that he would have for the rest of the day. I would make observations by asking him the questions about his journey to the United States and see how he reacted to every single question, and I tried to see if with each response, he would actually answer with a different type of emotion. I would just go to my house and to the park because that is where my father would like to spend most of his free time, if it was a long day at work, he would just got straight home and relax for the rest of the day. If it wasn’t that bad then he would travel to our local park which is 4 blocks away and just watch all of the kids and then men play volleyball since that was always considered his favorite sport. During the interview I didn’t take any photographs do to the fact that these photographs that would be taken during the interview wouldn’t benefit me in any way possible. Instead for the photographs I included pictures of him when he used to live in Ecuador before he actually crossed the border. I felt that with these photographs, it can tell his story and the family that he left behind to pursue a better life. To answer my questions I decided to interview my father based on the fact that he was an illegal immigrant that crossed the United States border. The reason I decided to interview him was because it always interested me to know the back-story to how my father came to this country.

Data Analysis

           Based on the data that was collected during the interview with my father, I realized that the main reasons that my father decided to leave his home country and come to the United States was the reason as anybody else would, he came for a better life for himself and for his family to come. Turns out he came to this country because he wanted a better life for himself, my mother which he was married to at the time, and for my siblings which both of them were born during the time of his crossing. The research actually helped me to get a better understanding of why immigrants in general come to the United States for a better life and why they actually decided to come here instead of any other part of the world. It actually helped me to understand the hardships of what immigrants had to go through just to get a better life, meanwhile some of us here take advantage of the things that we have here. People in other countries would travel and pay thousands of dollars to come to the United States and get a better education that they aren’t able to get in their own country, but others here take school as a joke, by not even showing up to class at all. They are aligned to my research due to the fact that they mostly tie together with the same main points of why they actually came to the United States in the first place. What mostly surprised me was that Indian immigrants are the immigrants that mostly migrate to the United States and the thing that really shocked me was when I was actually trying to choose a topic to write about. The reason that choosing my topic shocked me was because I was thinking about doing immigrants that crossed the border for a better life but couldn’t think of anyone that I was going to be able to interview because I didn’t think I knew somebody who was an illegal immigrant. When my father told me that he was actually an illegal immigrant that crossed the border, it shocked me because I didn’t know.

Conclusion

           Throughout my research my findings were pretty clear to me, they gave me a better understanding of what immigrant had to go through to come to this country, it helped me to open my eyes onto a more giant scale. Especially hearing it come from a person that I thought I knew so well, but I didn’t. We put immigrants throughout such hell on a daily basis, whether it be discriminating them or just being mean towards them since they are “taking away jobs” but all they want is a better life for themselves and the people that mean the world to them. Everybody in their position would do the same thing to benefit him or herself. Instead of putting them in their own “section”, we should try to understand them and actually help them achieve whatever it is that is trying to be achieved. Life is hard especially if you have people that are trying to go against you and tell you that you won’t be able to accomplish anything positive in this world, which is why we shouldn’t separate ourselves form them, we should come together as one nation under God and help each other out. Especially since America is basically made up of immigrants, legal or not this is was makes America great then anywhere else, here you can see a huge diversity of people and they can tell you stories that had happened to them while they were back in their own home country. Here everyone should be considered the same and nobody should be considered left out just because they can be seen as different then anybody else, we shouldn’t even be calling ourselves full on America since all of our ancestors have migrated to the United States from some different part of the world, I would say that the only people who have the right to call themselves full on American would be those who were here before us which are the native Americans. I would have improved on this interview by asking more questions with more meaning behind them.

   Citations  

1.     Arizaga, Elizabeth. "Why Do Immigrants Come to United States of America?" The Gramblinite. N.p., 17 Nov. 2006. Web. 05 Apr. 2017.

2.     Zong, Jie. "Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants and Immigration in the United States." Migrationpolicy.org. N.p., 21 Mar. 2017. Web. 06 Apr. 2017.

3.     Writer, Leaf Group. "Meaning of the American Dream for Immigrants." Synonym. Synonym, 10 Nov. 2013. Web. 06 Apr. 2017.

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Interview: The Life of A Single Mother

This interview is exploring the journey that some people don’t understand that some women have to face. The struggle of being a young and single mother, they would judge and say that she was dumb for getting pregnant in the first places, but who gives us the right to judge. This story is about the life of one of my friends Claudia Urbano, right now she is a senior in high school and in the process of going to college and study to become a veterinarian. I decided to choose her to interview due to the fact of how she is a strong independent woman, she didn’t let this obstacle crush her dreams, instead her becoming pregnant actually motivates her and makes her work harder for what she wants to accomplish in life. I would be asking her questions based on the first reactions of her family members especially her parents when they found out about her pregnancy, also questions based on the struggles that she has to go through while becoming a single mother. I feel that this interview will actually help any other women that are going through this same journey that Claudia is going through and it will help to show them that they are not alone. This interview can actually be inspiration for them and show them that’s even though they had a kid at such a young age, that shouldn’t stop them from achieving their dreams. It will positively impact the reader knowing that another person that is in their same situation isn’t letting this impact their life in a negative way, this will help to show them that know they even have to become a better person for their offspring.

                                                                   Journey of Claudia

Me: Well thanks for taking some time out of your day for this interview

Claudia: Well thanks for having me

Me: Well I asked you to come in and share your story

Claudia: What story?

Me: The story about your child?

Claudia: Ohh I am glad to

Me: Let’s start off by asking how old is your child and what is his or her name?

Claudia: His name is Mason and he’s about five months.

Me: What was your first reaction when you found out you were pregnant?

Claudia: I was worried and I couldn’t really wrap my head around it.

Me: May I ask whether your family was supportive of your pregnancy?

Claudia: They were neither or at the moment when I told them, just needed time to process the whole thing.

Me: Does the father of the child help in anyway possible?

Claudia: No not really

Me: Did you ever consider abortion or putting the child up for adoption?

Claudia: I don’t believe in abortion and I feel that adoption would be really hard for a woman that has had her child in her stomach for nine months

Me: Is it hard to balance your day with work, school and taking care of Mason?

Claudia: Not really I have a fixed schedule for each day for who takes acre of him when I go to either work or school

Me: Financially who helps to support you and Mason?

Claudia: My parents and me

Me: Does anybody look at you in a different way due to the fact that you had a kid at such a young age?

Claudia: Umm yeah pero I don’t really let it get to me I guess it is something that happened so I have to deal with it

Me: How does having a kid change your view of the world and its blessings?

Claudia: I feel like when you’re younger everyone thinks the littlest things means your world is coming crashing down when its really not and when you have a child you learn to appreciate the little things like sleeping five minutes or eating breakfast

Me: What advice would you give to other mothers that are in the same path you are going down?

Claudia: They’re never alone, that you can always reach help and that women are strong enough to have a child and give labor so they are strong enough to get through things

Me: Such inspiring words spoken by an intelligent woman and I hope the best for you and Mason. Claudia: Thank you for having and I wish you the best as well.

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Current Events Rhetorical Analysis Essay

An article written by Michael D. Shear and Helene Cooper called “Trump Bars Refugees and Citizens of 7 Muslim Countries” on the NY Times website is a perfect example of literacy devices that we see on a daily basis. Throughout the years there have been many incidents where people have been judged based on their identity, whether it be their sexual orientation, their native background, etc. Instead of judging them on their identity we should be there to encourage them and help them get through any tough situations that they are trying to overcome. In today’s world, the most debated idea is the executive ban that president Donald Trump has placed which temporarily banned all refugees. This is one of the most controversial actions taken by Trump due to the fact that this country is mostly made up of immigrants and other types of refugees as well.

           The reason that this refugee ban is such a huge deal is because groups that he was specific with banning are those of Muslim countries. This ban was more of a racial type instead of just trying to lower the number of refugees that enter the United States. Trump mostly put this ban towards Muslims due to the fact that he is paranoid and feels that anybody from a Muslim country is a threat to our nation. Just by reading the stories of what these immigrants have gone through to come to the United States, it gives me chills and I can feel the emotions that they probably felt when they came to the United States. Imagery is used in this article and helps the reader feel more sympathetic towards the refugees. An example from the article is “ I used to wrap me and my two girls in long clothes so if the lion came, he would have to eat all three of us.” This technique that he used to write this part of the article helps me to feel the pain of the refugees that came to the United States and how I should be on their side and go against the ban that president Trump put against refugees, especially ones from Muslim countries. This example is also used to help us get an idea of the struggles that they have to go through and that we shouldn’t be banning them from entering the United States. Anybody that had to go through that much just to get here should be allowed to stay and enter the state no matter what his or her background is.  

           Repetition is also used throughout the article. The use of repetition is used to show significance that the word ‘family’ and ‘struggle’ have in the article. Throughout the article it describes the life of many refugees and how they came to the United States and how because of this ban, they will become even more separated from their families who were probably coming to the United States so that they could be reunited. All the stories say how they wish all they could do is just be with their family and have them right by their side. All this talk about their struggles shows us how strong the repetition of these stories and those words can affect our emotions and make us realize what Trump is doing is wrong. Even though there are those who actually agree with him, this technique he uses shows us that maybe Trump’s point of view is the wrong side to be on. Persuasion is normally a method that is used throughout all types of media, especially those of a newspaper article. The use of persuasion is to get the reader to side with a certain group of people or an idea. Michael’s use of persuasion is used to show how we should show sympathy for these refugees from Muslim countries, and example is “ordering that families fleeing the slaughter in Syria be indefinitely blocked from entering the United States.” This use of persuasion is used to show that they aren’t coming because they want to; instead these refugees need to escape to the United States to escape the horror that is happening in their own countries. Like this technique used is helping us see from the refugee’s point of view, it is trying to show that we should let refugees come into the United States and disagree with Trump’s ban. He’s even trying to show that Trump’s plan will just cause inequality, not just on an ethic background but also on a religious one. Trump states that “Christians and others from minority religions be granted priority over Muslims.” This will cause people to feel more superior to other and could even cause conflicts between different religious groups in the United States. We shouldn’t be treating each other as if we are greater than them, all of should be treated equally no matter what our beliefs and religion is.  

           The different tactics and writing methods that these authors have such a huge impact on what they can make the reader feel while reading their article. These methods just help us to see what these refugees have gone through without having to be put in their situations and the struggles that they had to go through to be here and be part of the United States of America. We should just be there and support them instead of pushing them away from the United States, we should protest and help them in their fight for equal rights.    

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Identity: The Story Behind A Person

Identity is what makes everyone different from each other; it is the history of where we come from and who we really are. Since everyone has a different identity, nobody can really compare themselves to others or even judge others because they don’t know the journey that they have gone through to be the person that they are today. To begin and describe my identity as an individual, it would have to start with the word Hispanic; the reason that this would be the first word to use is because sometimes people who actually come from Hispanic roots are actually ashamed of it, but not me. Instead of being ashamed of coming from a background root, I embrace it as much as I can no matter what other think of me.

I’m Ecuadorian and I am proud to say that I am from there and so is my whole family. Even a hard worker can be one of my individual characteristics, this characteristic first developed when I was in high school and my sister told me to make my parents proud of the person that I’m going to become especially since neither one of my parents got higher than a high school education, so this characteristic is what drives me to become the person that I am today. Ever since my sister told me that, I have always tried my hardest throughout the rest of my high school journey and my first semester of college. After receiving only A’s and B’s, I dedicate myself this semester of my college journey to getting A’s and nothing below that. Identity is what can help us tell our story to any person. Some believe that if you come from a poor or abnormal family, it should be something to be ashamed of and is something that they have the right to judge a person on. On the other hand no matter what your identity is, it doesn’t have to be used against you, instead it can be used as motivation to strive and achieve great things in your life. That’s why having an identity and accepting it can help to make you a better person, it will show others that you don’t care about what they think, and will show that no matter where you come from, it doesn’t shape what is the highest capacity you are able to achieve in a certain situation