Chapter 17: Immigration in an Age of Globalization

Chapter 17: Immigration in an Age of Globalization

All the Chapters in this book have been very interesting. Chapter 17 centers about America’s Immigrants. There are a lot of key/main points in this chapter. I took notes as I was reading to the parts that I thought were interesting.  I found immigrants and education an important topic.  One of the facts that really grabbed my attention was when the book stated; “some 2/3 of those twenty-five years of age and older are at least high school graduates as opposed to almost seven-eights of the native born.” (412)  This was the educational achievement for “contemporary immigrants.”  Another fact the book mentioned, “large numbers of foreign born have little or no formal education: 22% of them had less than a ninth-grade education, as opposed to only 4.7% of the natives.” (412) These are facts that I thought were important, but nobody really pays attention to. I wasn’t surprised when I read “23% of the science and engineering Ph.D.s and 12% of the non-science and engineering Ph.D.s were foreign born.” (412) I found that to be an amazing and cool fact.  The bigger picture here is mankind. it doesn’t really matter where you are from, what  matters is what you bring to the table.  Charles Darwin is mentioned in the next page and the book quotes him “there are no species, only individuals.” (413) I don’t know why but reading that and blogging about it now, it really makes sense to me.  In 1998, the number of legal immigrants decreased rapidly.

“Nonimmigrant” Immigrants

                “Nonimmigrant” Immigrants also known as “temporary immigrants.” (according to the book)  A person who is “temporary immigrants” is someone who comes to the United States on various kinds of visas, but they don’t apply for permanent resident status. Basically they let their visa expire. We all know someone who at some point might have been or is a temporary immigrant. I knew “family members” who would be considered temporary immigrants except they weren’t really family members we just called them family out of respect. Tourists were also thrown into the category of being “temporary immigrants.” Another group mentioned in the book was “visitors for business.” This includes students and temporary employees. The books states that “it is visa overstayers—that is persons who entered legally as non immigrants who compromise the major portion of what are called illegal immigrants….” (420)

                Immigration is such a controversial topic. I think we as Americans need to take in account to why people migrate. There is always a push, pull factor. I know I’ve mentioned that before but I think its really important to remember that. There are many reasons why people would migrate to America. If I was in the Islands I too would want to migrate here. We have opportunities here. We are lucky to have simple things like clean water. I’m so glad that I live in America!