The Struggle of Immigrants [1]

1. Introduction

The out of africa theory revealed that our ancestors, who lived around 200,000 years ago, was a group of immigrants who had made incredible long journey from one place to another, originating from eastern Africa and spreading out across the earth. They immigrated as a form of adaptation to gain more favorable opportunities for their groups (Roberts 2009). It can be said, that the population of the world nowadays is actually a product of immigration. The phenomenon of immigration still continues until today. People immigrate for various reasons. Immigration has become an alternative for those who want a proper job in developed countries, or to improve their quality of life. Some people seek asylum to avoid conflict and war.

During Cold War, from the late 1940 to the early 1970, the largest number of immigrants, around 2,5 million immigrants per year, continued to come from third world to the United State and Europe. Most of them were forced to avoid wars and political persecution (Castles 1993). Similarly, between 1995 and 2000, around 2,6 million immigrants per year moved from one less developed country to another, as an example from Paraguay to Brazil or from Ghana to Ivory Coast. In southeast Asia, immigrants from Cambodia, Indonesia and Myanmar seek jobs in Singapore, Thailand, South Korea, and other newly industrialized countries in Asia (prb.org).

As a matter of fact, not all of those immigrants fared well in terms of jobs and economic status, in other words, many of them worked for low wages and forced to work long hours. Moreover, the immigrants are faced with many barriers once they arrived in their host countries because of ethnic and racial differences, and considered as the major cause of population increase. The aim of this essay is to discuss about what the challenges facing immigrants, and why the immigrants should have the same rights as others to stay.

2. Pro and Cons Arguments

2.1 Border Controls

Border is where checks take place. Before you enter to one country, you will need to prove your identity and present papers to borders. These official papers can be different, depending on where you come from, your nationality, the reason you are visiting, how long you plan to stay. Border control is extremely important thing in controlling and examining all those movement of citizens in and out of the country, controlling the spread of diseases, and preventing the smuggling of weapons, drugs, and illegal substances or objects. Border controls became more stringent since the terrorist incidents on September 11, 2001 in United States (Walker 2004). As a consequence, immigrants are associated with the acts of criminalization.

For some liberal thinkers, border controls should be eliminated. The argument is in accordance with what was championed by ‘the free movement’ activists’ in the early 2000s. They argued, that mobility is a right of all human rights, in other words, border controls should generally be open and that people should normally be free to leave their home countries and settle in another which is normatively refers to Article 13-1 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights that ‘Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country’. Hayter (2004) argued that border controls caused discrimination on mainly racist grounds between foreigners, they would still discriminate against foreigners in general, as opposed to natives or residents. Governments make us of whatever measures they choose to deter, punish and eject people they don’t wish to receive in their territories. To exemplify, million of foreigners who are national of the European Union are free to enter and settle in Britain, others are not or when immigrants come from the Middle East who have name Arabic names; they easily be accused as a terrorist. It can be said, that border controls are inherently racist.

2.2 Assimilation

The general definition of assimilation is the process of two different things coming together to blend and create a new things all together. In this case, assimilation is a process in which formerly distinct and separate come to share a common culture and merge together socially. Immigrant as a members of the minority group have to learn the culture of the dominant group (resident), such as learning the natives language, changing eating habits, adopting new value systems, and altering the spelling of the family surname (Gans 1997). Gordon as an American sociologist argued that if immigrants failed to assimilate, they would not be able to compete for jobs or other opportunities in the secondary sector of the social structure as a consequence until they had learned the dominant group’s culture. That argument is based on maintaining the rule of the original ethnic group, or in other words, immigrants need to abandon the original cultural attributes and conform entirely the culture of their host countries.

It’s natural when a community that already exist for a long time becomes resistant or try to prevent their original culture from another new culture that comes into their territory, which often appears as minority group (immigrants). On the other hand, it would be excessive and inhuman when the immigrants forced to alter their true identity, in other words, assimilation is a crime against humanity. For example, in French, North African immigrant Muslim women have to give up wearing their chadors or their veil, and in Germany, how Turkish communities still being called aliens or foreigners even if they were born in Germany and have German citizenship (Mueller 1997). We cannot forget history: how Jews have been the main target of racists, in Britain and elsewhere, or how black people have been the main target of discrimination due to the color of their skin, blamed for crime, violence and riots (Castles 1993).

to be continued...