Literary Analytical

I read the short story called “The Swimmers” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This story shows immigration through the eyes of a man named Henry. Henry faced immigration two times; as an American to France and as a Frenchman to America. Because of this, he illustrates the topic from two perspectives. The story showed the setting changing from France to America and through that, the plot changed drastically in mood and feeling. Suddenly, his seemingly perfect French family fell apart. His wife that was his main reason for living in France, Choupette, left him for another man and they were fighting for custody over their sons. This story showed immigration completely changing because of how different American and French cultures are. It is kind of suggesting that it is somewhat of a mistake to immigrate to America. And if not a mistake, it was like the really cold feeling you get coming out of a swimming pool. This idea was echoed throughout the story. Henry decides he wants to come back to America after being taught to swim by an American girl whom he saved. He continued swimming in America and at the end of the story he had to swim to save his life and to get custody of his sons from Choupette. This theme of swimming connects with what Fitzgerald seemed to be trying to portray about immigration: that moving from one culture to another one is shockingly difficult and usually requires a lot of sacrifices. This story added deeper meaning and understanding to the topic of modern immigration. It showed how different cultures are and how American culture is unlike any other culture in the world and vice versa. Fitzgerald writes this through Henry, “In England, property begot a strong place sense, but Americans, restless and with shallow roots, needed fins and wings.” (521) This quote really shows the differences between cultures and how each culture develops its own values and ways of living that may be completely opposite from that of another place. It also shows’ how hard immigrating to America is and how Americans maybe don’t make it any easier.

"The Swimmers" By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Although I didn’t originally think that this story would directly relate to immigration, it ended up really illustrating what can happen to a family that chooses to immigrate. It also illustrated more modern immigration, which helped because I could mostly only picture it in the 18 and 1900s. In this story, a man named Henry moved to Paris from Virginia to start a family with Choupette, a French girl. After a few years, they were at the beach and a bunch of people from America were there. One girl started drowning and Henry saved her even though he didn’t know how to swim. She taught Henry and his sons how to swim and got him thinking about moving his family to America to provide a better life for them. But, once they got to America, about three years later their family was torn apart and Choupette left Henry for another man and he was desperately trying to get custody of his children. I had never really thought about people immigrating here from France before reading this story. I also thought the comments Fitzgerald wrote about America were really interesting because Henry was an immigrant in France and then in America because so much time had passed since he was there last, which proves how quickly a person can adapt to another culture and way of living. “In England, property begot a strong place sense, but Americans, restless and with shallow roots, needed fins and wings.” (521) Here, he is saying that in Europe, people lived by tradition, ancestry, inheritance and property. But, in America, people are all trying to leave their past in the past and leave behind inheritance and traditions; all they need is money and the ability to let go of yesterday. After a lot happened, he ends the story with a last thought: “France was a land, England was a people, but America, having about it still that quality of the idea, was harder to utter- it was the graves at Shiloh and the tired, drawn, nervous faces of its great men, and the country boys dying in the Argonne for a phrase that was empty before their bodies withered. It was a willingness of the heart.” (527) To me, this quote is saying that Americans aren’t really tied down to anything tangible. Each person, no matter how different, lives for the ideas this country was built off of and the willingness to believe that they will get you through to the next day.

America Must Cooperate with Other Nations in Regulating Immigration

This article, by Saskia Sassen, describes how immigration can’t be regulated solely by increased police enforcement and government policies and how these responses are not the only ways to deal with most of the country wanting immigrants out. “When the object of stronger police action is a broad spectrum of people – immigrant women, men, and children- sooner or later it will get caught in the expanding web of civil and human rights, it will violate those rights and interfere with the functioning of civil society.” In this quote, she brings this problem to a place that mostly everyone can connect with. Basically, eventually this problem will not just affect immigrants and those living near them. It could end up touching everyone and will disrupt the balance of all American society. “Sooner or later, this type of police action will touch us, the documented.” Immigrant migration to America is almost unavoidable. As a country, we need the relationships we have developed with other countries for goods, services, technology, and more. Instead of trying to get people out of our country, we should welcome them in, especially those coming from countries that we are often communicating with. Must more could get achieved for both countries if they worked together. Not only this, but because of how seriously violations of human and civil rights are taken recently, it wouldn’t be beneficial for anyone. “Whatever the control achieved, the trade-offs are too costly both for the immigrants themselves but also especially for the receiving societies in terms of violations of civil and human rights and the threats to the fabric of civil society.” From this, it doesn’t really seem worth it to me all that is being done to prevent immigration. Also, how far is America going to go? Through the efforts made to regulate and maintain immigration, we are setting ourselves up for chaos. From everything that can be learned from history, the fact that those who are oppressed won’t allow themselves to stay oppressed forever is something that seems to keep repeating. Another point that Sassen makes is that the periods of mass immigration don’t last forever and are patterned. Just like in America, every country changes and goes through good and bad periods of time, and bad times are not the only reasons that people migrate or immigrate to other countries. She ends saying that people eventually will need to “adopt a more international understanding of subjects such as immigration that used to be regarded in purely domestic terms.”

"America Must Cooperate with Other Nations in Regulating Immigration." Opposing Viewpoints: Illegal Immigration. William Dudley. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2002. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Gale. Deerfield High School. 8 Feb. 2010

Immigration Must Be Restricted to Protect America Against Terrorists

Written only a month after September 11th, 2001, this article showed connections between the fears of terrorism that emerged after September 11th and immigration. The first connection this article proved was that between fear and hatred. The author, Samuel Francis, writes about what he believes to be the two dimensions of the problem. The second one is that there are places in America where “alien terrorists” can live and operate in without really being noticed by everyone else. He also exemplifies the stereotypes that are made about Arabs in this country. The facts that they maybe can’t speak English well and sometimes choose to live in the same areas doesn’t really sound too different than any other minority that has immigrated to America at some point. From a quote from an article written about Patterson, New Jersey, it is evident that the rest of the country at this time also assumes that Arabs exhibiting this kind of behavior are terrorists. “The area was ‘one of several East Coast staging areas for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon,’ and the ‘hijackers’ stay here also shows how, in an area that speaks many languages and keeps absorbing immigrants, a few young men with no apparent means of support and no furniture can settle in for months without drawing attention.’” It doesn’t really make any sense to me how we are so concerned about them blending into our society and culture but when they choose to live together and for their own kind of subcultures, we assume they’re doing something wrong. Francis also talks about lessons that can be learned from other nations concerning this issue. The first lesson is that the enemy is here, not in Afghanistan. He describes how mass immigration and open-borders policies have led to potentially thousands of men that could be going unnoticed in our country but are working with terrorist groups preparing them against their enemies. But, what he wrote at the end of this paragraph really stood out to me and showed more connections of these ideas. “Short of expelling entire populations in a massive act of ethnic cleansing, there is virtually nothing the United States and the West can do about the new enemy within.” This line stood out to me because it reminded me a lot of what happened in Germany during the Holocaust. I had never really connected this at all to immigration, but it shows a possible consequence or result of the issue of immigration in America. Will we get so obsessed with maintaining our American culture and preventing immigrants from taking it over that we will attempt to remove all those who aren’t seen as Americans?

"Immigration Must Be Restricted to Protect America Against Terrorists." Opposing Viewpoints: National Security. Helen Cothran. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2004. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Gale. Deerfield High School. 8 Feb. 2010

Help Haitians, But Don't Throw Open U.S. Borders

Although the people in Haiti need all the help they can get, the author of this article believes that there are ways America can help without just inviting all the Haitians to immigrate here. Of course, in some cases, coming to America and restarting their lives seems like it would be the best option. But, I agree with this article when it describes how all Haitians coming here will not, in the long term, help to rebuild their country. "For starters, inviting thousands to feel Haiti is no way to help Haiti rebuild. To the contrary, Haiti's survival depends on encouraging its best and brightest to remain and work on its revival." Also, it wouldn't really be fair to let anyone affected from the earthquake in Haiti immigrate to America. There are people from countries all over the world living in all kinds of conditions waiting to come here. Despite the suffering going on in Haiti right now, it wouldn't be fair to the rest of the world. Instead of carting Haitians here to America, I think that it would definitiely be more beneficial to them for the future to help improve how things are for people in thier own country. Even though it might seem hash and not helpful enough right now, in the end it will help them more by developing the skills they need to reconstruct their country if anything like this ever happens again.

"Help Haitinas but don't throw open U.S. borders.(NEWS)(Editorial)." USA Today (Jan 29, 2010): 07A. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Gale. Deerfield High School. 8 Feb. 2010

Where I Am Now..

So far, I am pretty sure that I want to focus on the American reaction to immigration and what was doen about it here. So far, I've only really found information about people being against it and not wanting immigrants to come into our country. I want to find more information about people who wanted immigration and why they feel this way. It's interesting to learn about how scared immigrants made Americans. I understand a little bit more about why immigrants weren't wanted here, and why restrictions were made on them, which makes me want to understand from more perspectives why they were for or against immigration and what they thought would/could happen in the future because of them.

Immigration

Immigration began as something America welcomed. Early America needed immigrants to jumpstart the economy and populate the country. But, not long after the creation of this country, Americans began the recurring anti-immigration sentiment. "This periodic hostility toward immigration has been sparked by a variety of motives, from simple anti-alian prejudice to fears of job competition and concerns about real or imagined threats to traditional American culture." After a few generations of immigrants thrived in America, they began to fear what would happen if too many people came in from other countries; that the solidifying American culture and freedoms they have would disappear. Because of these fears, those who immigrated from other countries would not be considered American until they had lived here for generations. This article also describes a little about illegal immigration, which is an issue discussed here a lot lately. The largest amount of illegal immigrants come in from Mexico, which most people know. Because illegal and legal immigrants are mostly living in California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, or Texas, a "disprportionate share of the economic costs and social strains associated with high illegal immigrant populations" is put on a small number of states and localities. Although many economic problems can be associated with illegal immigration, this article also shows how they have benefited the economy. Slavery is illegal, and for good reason, but a large percent of farm workers in California are illegal immigrants. "Without them, many crops in California and similar states would either go unharvested or be forced up so dramatically in price, due to the increased costs of native-born labor, as to put a heavy burden on the nation's food consumers." Despite all the criticism of illegal immigration, I don't really understand why people don't look at the big picture and realize that these men and women are doing many jobs that a lot of us would rather not be doing such as mowing lawns, doing construction, and apparently, farming. "Regardless of the benefits and drawbacks of both legal and illegal immigration, the issue promises to retain its position as one of the most controversial in American society for some time to come." For all the years immigration has been discussed and changed, it is not suprising that it is and probably always will be a problem. To the world, America shows itself as a country of freedom, happiness, and opportunity. Why wouldn't people from countries where the people have little food, choice, and opportunity want to live here?

"immigration." American History. ABC-CLIO, 2010. Web. 28 Jan. 2010. .