The US was and is a shiny gold bar laying on a beautiful tropical quiet island where people are promised with opportunities to improve their living condition and a peaceful life. Therefore, it entices red wetting eyes and resulted in mass population coming into the US ever since. On the other hand, Americans look at them strangely, questioning why different colors are blending in, contaminating the opaque white. Why should we allow immigrants into the US? No laws were created, forcing us to accept them as an addition to an united whole, but morally speaking, we should lend our powerful hands when others are suffering and in the need of help. In addition, although the US is an awe-inspiring country, it could be improved in numerous aspects with the addition of great minds, who have walked on different trials and seen the other side of the world that many of us have not experienced.
Informing the audience that tragic events that happen in their countries, causing them to leave, would not be as descriptive as The Grapes of Wrath. The book depicts pictures of migrants traveling West due to events happened in their beloved Oklahoma and how they face discrimination everywhere they go. In the beginning, the destructive drought ruins the crops, the only income of farmers, which resulted in them not being able to pay the landowners. Therefore, they are forced to leave the land with their family “half starved” and “got no clothes, torn an’ ragged.”(42) In other words, not only they have to quickly adapt to all of the sudden changes such as moving away from the land that many of the previous generations have lived and leaving behind all of the warm-hearted memories , they are also trying to survive with nothing but their rough empty hands. Besides mourning for the loss of invisible yet loving connection between them and the land, they also face great obstacles along the path of searching for a place to hopefully start their life over again. The landowners loathe them, believing that “it is easy to steal land from a soft man if [they] are fierce and hungry and armed. Therefore, the migrants are viewed as “ants scurrying for work” and only get paid merely enough to feed their family once a day. In the reality, Californians own “many things, accumulation, social success, amusement, luxury, and a curious banking security” while struggling migrants who play little roles in the society hope for nothing but “land and food.” Humans are often afraid of changes therefore they must be pushed or motivated to immigrate, which unfortunately means starting a new life, again. Unable to live or even survive under tragic circumstances, one would have to leave and find a place where light would shine on their miserable life. Seeing how immigrants fight for better life similar to the migrants in The Grapes of Wrath and understand the motives behind their decision to immigrate, why can’t we help them by simply being accepting?
Discrimination against immigrants, believing they take job opportunities that are meant for people here in the US. Setting your foot in a foreign country, with minimal communication skill, no education records, nor an identity, do you really think you could effortlessly be hired from a job with minimum wage salary? The reality for immigrants is not even close to what we think, standing on the side where grass is greener. According to the article In the Strawberry Field, an average migrant worker, born in Mexico, “earns about $5,000 a year for twenty-five weeks of farm work.” Since ‘labor costs constitute 50 to 70 percent of the total costs in strawberry production,” the owners tend to break the law and cut their wages. In other words, their salaries do not reflect on their actual performances and they are often exploited by their owners. As the California strawberry production begins to increase, the need for workers also rises. Americans, who are at least aware of the requirement to pay employees an amount of money, wouldn’t even think about becoming farmers. Migrants accept jobs that are all denied by Americans, how is this called stealing? Bottom line, as mentioned earlier, struggling people do come to the US, seeking for opportunities with no bad intention. If we have jobs available, they should be welcomed.
The United States is one of the most advanced, prosperous, and admirable countries in the world. How? Did ‘Americans’ get this country to where we are right now ? Immigration causes debates and conflict, in any given time era, but we still can’t deny their contributions to the greatness of this country. According to the article 17 Famous Immigrants Who Helped Shape America, published by Global Citizens, the co-founder of Google, a billion dollars company which Internet-related services and products are sold worldwide, is an immigrant. Sergey Brin was born in Russia and with his family, escaped from anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union and set his bare foot in the US in 1979. Years later, he developed Google with co-founder Larry Page while they were both PhD students at Stanford, where they filled their dorm with inexpensive computers and work, work, worked. In other words, immigrants never come to the US with bare hands, they come with creative ideas and dreams, believing this is where they could potentially be carried out. To be concluded, we should never define and judge a person’s worth without knowing their potentials. They should be accepted since without them, we would never be where we are today.
We discriminate against groups of people, knowing nothing about the tragic events or experience they’ve had. We discriminate against groups of people, unable to see the brown burned hair and tears and sweats on their faces when they are on abandoned farms. We discriminate against groups of people, denying the fact that they are who brought us and our nation the pride. The more of us live with open minds and be more accepting, the more we will receive in return. Or else, everything we have now will be gone.
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