Immigration in Color: Does Racial Profiling Affect Treatment of Immigrants?
Racial profiling has been an issue for centuries. People generalize other groups of people all the time: Muslims are terrorists, African Americans are poor or criminals, and non-English speakers are illegal immigrants. In his article “I Belong Here,” which The Sun magazine published in January 2010, Amin Ahmad tells a firsthand account of being racially profiled as a colored immigrant. Ahmad immigrated from Calcutta, India to Boston, Massachusetts (38). Once, he decided to go on a recreational trip with his American fiancée to the United Kingdom. His story begins at an airport in London, in front of a British immigration official (38). With one short story, Ahmad gives readers a glimpse of everyday discrimination, and he proves that racial profiling can affect people’s daily lives.
Ahmad first compares his tattered and misspelled passport to his fiancée’s clean and polished one. Apparently, he is pointing out the underlying implication in their passports: American immigrants are cleaner and more innocent, whereas immigrants from other countries such as India are dirtier and more secretive. Then, he compares the official’s treatment of his fiancée versus himself—she was waved through customs without hesitation, and he …show more content…
The second issue is that he does not provide a solution on how to fix racial profiling in immigration. Perhaps he could have suggested that each person who might be hired as an immigration official must take a racial bias test before being employed, or that every flyer, regardless of skin color, must undergo the same amount of scrutiny. These solutions could help prevent racial profiling in
Racial profiling has been an issue for centuries. People generalize other groups of people all the time: Muslims are terrorists, African Americans are poor or criminals, and non-English speakers are illegal immigrants. In his article “I Belong Here,” which The Sun magazine published in January 2010, Amin Ahmad tells a firsthand account of being racially profiled as a colored immigrant. Ahmad immigrated from Calcutta, India to Boston, Massachusetts (38). Once, he decided to go on a recreational trip with his American fiancée to the United Kingdom. His story begins at an airport in London, in front of a British immigration official (38). With one short story, Ahmad gives readers a glimpse of everyday discrimination, and he proves that racial profiling can affect people’s daily lives.
Ahmad first compares his tattered and misspelled passport to his fiancée’s clean and polished one. Apparently, he is pointing out the underlying implication in their passports: American immigrants are cleaner and more innocent, whereas immigrants from other countries such as India are dirtier and more secretive. Then, he compares the official’s treatment of his fiancée versus himself—she was waved through customs without hesitation, and he …show more content…
The second issue is that he does not provide a solution on how to fix racial profiling in immigration. Perhaps he could have suggested that each person who might be hired as an immigration official must take a racial bias test before being employed, or that every flyer, regardless of skin color, must undergo the same amount of scrutiny. These solutions could help prevent racial profiling in