Immigrants And Diasporic Communities

Joshua Weg
Professor Guevara
POLS 197
20 May 2016
Immigrants and Diasporic Communities

This year’s election seems to focus on immigration. You here politicians stating their positions and their reasons: the economy, terrorism, unemployment, social welfare, crime, drugs. My thesis is that today immigrants still face many obstacles to becoming American citizens, mainly political and social ones. This is extremely difficult for those of the diasporic communities, who wish to maintain strong ties with their homeland. You can see this struggle through the intersectionality of classes and race that will hopefully allow us to overcome race and ethnicity. Though many individuals all over the world want to immigrate to America there, still face many
Immigrants can come to America if they qualified based on three conditions: the one was if they had family currently in the United States, next they could come to America if the possessed a skill needed by the government of employer, final possibility is if the immigrants were refugee (Shaw 338). Refugees are individuals who flee their home country because they are fleeing from a war that is ravaging their home (Shaw 338). Though this policy sounds very general and open, it still managed to prevent so many people from being able to immigrate (Shaw 338). This is because there are a large number of people all over the world who do not fit any of these requirements.
Then there was the passing of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986. This mandated that “employers verify the work eligibility of all new employees within the first three days of employment and created legal penalties for employers who knowingly hired unauthorized workers (Shaw 339). This put pressure on all the undocumented immigrants in the country at the time. This also led to more detail background checks for several things (Shaw 340). Things were getting tougher for immigrants as the laws became more
Mateo Pimentel wrote an article on May 13th discussing the National Border Patrol Council’s endorsement of Donald Trump (The Border You Keep).He also discusses the brief history of the border, and the individuals that have died trying to cross it illegally (Pimentel). “Migrants and border entrants is anything but an ‘unfortunate consequence’ of a misguided decision to cross in the first place.” Is a quote that Pimentel wrote trying to demonstrate the absurdity of the thought. He follows, “It is a premise that so infuriatingly ignores the intersectionality of the economic, the political, the social, the cultural—the endless forces that render impossible any tenable notion of a solitary choice on the part of the migrant or border entrant.” (Pimentel). This discusses how the factors literally push people to try to cross the border, as a way of looking beyond the individual’s