Every year thousands of immigrants have been coming to the United States of America in search of a better and happier life. This country promises its citizens a decent life where people have equal rights and opportunities regardless of their ethnicity, race, religion, or social class. This means that every person who is able and willing to achieve success can do it in the USA. The American dream attracts people from all around the world, but not all of those who decided to leave their homes behind and move to America consider problems that they may encounter here. In her essay “American Dreamers,” Mukherjee reveals the difficulties that many immigrants have to deal with when starting a new life in America. In this paper, the downside of the American dream is seen from the perspective of immigrants.
America is the desired country for many people, but when they come and learn it from the inside out, they face certain problems. Mukherjee tells her story of moving first to Canada and then to the USA and points out that this time was not easy for her (35). The author found that the American government and Americans may not be happy to have immigrants coming to their country. Mukherjee provides an example where “an April Gallup poll indicated that half of Americans would like to bar almost all legal immigration for the next five years” (36). These statistics reflect the real attitude towards immigrants in America. As a result, people coming to the USA may suffer from injustice, prejudices, and intolerance on the part of residents and the government.
In many cases, trying to achieve the American dream means losing one’s ethnic identity and cutting off the roots. The USA has many people from Spanish-speaking countries. Brugger notes that “Spanish as one’s dominant language is declining among later generations” (4). At the same time, English usage among the Hispanic population increases. This means that such an essential part of the immigrants’ cultural heritage as a language might be lost under the influence of the dominant American culture. Mukherjee writes that when she was a little girl and lived in India, she felt her identity: she had her relatives near and spoke the native language – Bengali (35). First, in Canada and then in the USA, she learned about racial harassment, intolerance, and injustice.
In reality the American dream may cause sense of frustration when migrants coming to the USA encounter discrimination. Although America is known as a multi-cultural country, and the rate of discrimination here is relatively low, the problem of various kinds of intolerance still exists (Quillian et al. 486). According to Brugger, “over 50 percent of Latinos reported having experienced ethnic, racial, or culture-based discrimination” (5). The Spanish speaking population is one of the largest ethnic groups in America, and it is still growing each year. Despite this, Hispanic immigrants face various forms of discrimination, including language-based and racial ones. It has been noted that people with a darker skin tone experience discrimination more frequently compared to those with a lighter one. Linguistic stratification is another cause for intolerance that manifests itself in mock-Spanish and English-only movements. People migrating to the USA may expect life in America to be perfect, but the practice shows that the American dream has a downside.
Poverty is another reason why the American dream may fail in meeting immigrants’ high expectations. The heaviest blow receive older people who migrated to the USA. Scommegna states that “immigrant elderly are more likely to have incomes below the poverty line than U.S.-born elderly” (37). As is well known, language plays a crucial role in getting a high paid job. Furthermore, the ability to speak a native language facilitates immigrants’ assimilation into a new culture. The younger generation has more opportunities to acquire this skill as they grow up in a foreign culture, attend local schools, where people speak this language, and in general, are quicker to learn. People who migrated to another country at an early age may have fewer difficulties with building a career and integrating into society compared to the seniors. Therefore, older immigrants in the USA are more vulnerable to unemployment and poverty. These problems mentioned above prove that life in America has certain disadvantages and is not ideal.
All in all, for many people, the USA is the country of dreams, and they have high hopes when coming to America. However, the problems which immigrants may encounter should not be disregarded. One of the writers who raised the issue of immigrants in the USA was Mukherjee. She described her experience of moving to America and wrote about the difficulties she had to overcome. Some of the most popular problems that many immigrants face in the USA include poverty and unemployment. It might not be easy to find a well-paid job, especially for an older person. Language barrier hinders an individual’s assimilation into a new culture and decreases the opportunities to become employed in a foreign country. Moreover, immigrants may experience various forms of discrimination connected with different skin color, race, language, and religion. Taking everything into account, the American dream appears to be an elusive and sometimes unattainable goal.
Works Cited
Brugger, Laura Jean. Discrimination, Cultural Heritage Importance, Ethnic Identity, and Immigration Attitudes: Perspectives of First-Generation Immigrants from Spanish-Speaking Latin American Countries. 2019. Saint Louis University, PhD dissertation.
Mukherjee, Bharati. “New American Mosaic: Are Becoming a Universal Nation?” The New World Reader, edited by Muller, Gilbert H., Cengage Learning, 2016, pp. 28-57
Quillian, Lincoln, et al. “Do Some Countries Discriminate More Than Others? Evidence from 97 Field Experiments of Racial Discrimination in Hiring.” Sociological Science vol. 6, 2019, pp. 467-496.
Scommegna, Paola. “Elderly Immigrants in the United States.” Immigration and America’s cities: A handbook on evolving services, 2016, p. 33.