Mae M. Ngai's Essay: Reforming Immigration For Good

Improved Essays
I write in contribution to Mae M. Ngai’s topic on “Reforming Immigration for Good” and other clusters on immigration to deepen my argument. The idea of immigration brings up skeptical responses on what happens and needs to happen during migration in the United States. It has not only been an ongoing topic for many decades, but also heavily dismissed recently by the President elect Donald Trump. He highlighted many controversial topics about the Mexican-American border, Mexican natives, and other ethnic backgrounds. For this reason, I whole heartily agree with Ngai’s central claim of adopting a new immigration system, because the system is ineffective, but I further argue to advance immigration our society ought to willingly set aside differences. …show more content…
I title this act, “drawing non-existing conclusions.” Ana Aparicio, Professor of Anthropology and Latino studies at Northwestern, wrote, “it takes a great deal of courage to endure challenges in a place that labels you a criminal.” Her quote is the epiphany of realization, which people are known to generalize based on stereotypes and mere conceptions. Notably, the phrase most Americans throw around, “they are here to take our jobs,” contributes to drawing conclusions. Firstly, I deem the phrase as a meaningless justification on why illegal immigrants should not be here. Whose jobs are being taken? As said previously, they come to America to work, but they are being employed by the very people who complain about these so-called jobs. These jobs are minor short term labor jobs with small wages, and have been abandoned for mere decades, it is to be considered ironic. Ngai is concerned more with the system being corrupt than with how the system became distorted to begin with. In other words, this is a game we play habitually. The players are immigrants with the stake of giving up their “American …show more content…
Nevertheless, small businesses owed by immigrants employed 4.7 million people in 2007 generated $776 billion dollars annually. Of course, the production of more jobs is beneficial, but this does not affect half of immigrants. Ngai argued the need to give more opportunities by being flexible and fair, she said “the proposals for controlling future immigration are ‘certain to fail’ -- the reasonable way to progress is to return to the tradition of welcoming immigrants.” Equally, her point justified my claim, but nevertheless, Bryon York suggested the immigration system is not broken but politicians should be honest enough to state they want to expand a system which already works. Behind this statement, York explained, “the part of the system that lets people into the United states works, not without flaws but successfully manages the country’s immigration needs every day.” Of course, I understand the immigration system is not broken but it is not effective either. Without an effective system and people immigration will always stay a

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