Equal Opportunities Among Immigrants

For centuries, immigrants have traveled to the Americas for a variety of reasons: equal opportunities, fresh starts, or to ensure a better life for themselves or their families. Many immigrants, who left their home countries to come to somewhere else (the Americas in this case), were not necessarily treated how they expected. Many faced mistreatment and cruelty from the citizens, while also being unable to find a job due to their background. This salvo caused the benefits of immigration to hide away, which left many wondering why they had immigrated in the first place. Although immigration’s benefits were not clearly visible immediately due to poverty and mistreatment due to background, the benefits were much more apparent later when those
For Amy Tan, she became comfortable with her culture years after the fateful Christmas dinner, but once she accepted her background, she had done so for good. “It wasn’t until many years later-long after I had gotten over my crush on Robert-that I was able to fully appreciate her lesson and the true purpose behind our particular menu. For Christmas Eve that year, she had chosen all my favorite foods”(Tan). Tan’s mother attempted to teach her daughter pride, and although it took several years, Tan realized exactly what her mother had strived to accomplish. In addition, the fact that Tan decided to publish her work in Seventeen Magazine displays how she’s grown and matured when it comes to her story and Chinese background. Also, the economic situations immigrants dealt with slowly ameliorated as they lived in the country for longer periods of time. In fact, at a certain point, immigrants had lower poverty rates than natural-born citizens. According to the aforementioned study, immigrants who inhabited the country for 30-31 years had a poverty rate of 13.3%, which is .2% lower than that for natural-born citizens, and that percentage only continues to decrease. For immigrants who lived in the United States for over 61 years, the poverty rate is 7.2%, which is an astonishingly diminutive number in comparison to the aforementioned statistics. That decreasing rate of poverty allowed for immigrants to ensure good, secure lives for not only themselves, but for their future generations. Newcomers to the United States may have had early struggles, but once those were over, the better lives they so heavily pursued were