The dominant narrative surrounding illegal immigration is that people who come to the United States illegally are stealing jobs from U.S. citizens because companies can pay them less than minimum wage. This idea that immigrants steal jobs from Americans is not a new idea - the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibited any Chinese workers from immigrating into the United States because there was a misconception that the Chinese workers were taking all the jobs from White workers despite the fact that Chinese workers only comprised .002% of the total population at that time (
Source). Over the years the nation's ideas about which immigrants are acceptable has changed drastically, and there have been many other narratives and even laws designed to bar certain groups of people from entering the country (
1,
2). Illegal immigration differs from other immigration topics because, of course, of its illegality. Narratives that circulated in the past about "job theft", "security threats", and "threats to American culture" are now circulating again in regard to illegal immigrants. While all of these narratives arguably stem from what were at one point legitimate fears, there is little evidence to show that illegal immigrants are truly preventing U.S. citizens from finding employment, that they're a burden on society, or that they are a threat to either national or personal security.
Our hope with this project is to provide information about immigration that is based in fact rather than sensationalism. Our hope is that you will be able to find resources on this website that allow you to share fact-based information with students about illegal immigration and immigrants so that your students are able to form well-educated and honest opinions regarding this subject.
On this website you will find three interviews and the results of a survey.
The
first interview was conducted by one of our group members, Ella. She interviewed Shaolu McLaren, who came to the United States as a Chinese immigrant and has since obtained legal citizenship status. In this interview Shaolu discusses why she decided to come to the US, what the immigration process was like, and what her life is like in the US as an immigrant. She also briefly discusses her thoughts on illegal immigration.
Our second and third interviews were not conducted personally, but were found online. We wanted to hear the voices of undocumented immigrants, but due to the sensitivity of the topic and the anonymity of being undocumented, we were unable to find someone to personally interview. So, our
second interview was conducted by Mark Laita, who interviewed an undocumented immigrant from Mexico named Raul. In this interview Raul discusses how he grew up, why and how he came to the US, and what his life in the US has been like ever since he came.
Our
third interview was a TEDx talk conducted by Erik Gomez, who was a child immigrant, and later achieved citizenship status in the U.S. in his teenage years. In the talk, Gomez describes the kind of negative mindset that Americans have toward immigrants, and what America could look like if we embraced the different cultures and people who helped found "the greatest country in the world."
Finally,
our survey was conducted online via Google Forms and was distributed mainly via social media. The purpose of this survey was to find out what participants had learned about immigration in school and how this may have differed from what they learned outside of school.
