Negative Impact Of Dominant Culture On Immigrants And Refugees

Racial oppression in the United States has been present for almost a century now. Although slavery was abolished in the 1860s, people associated in target groups are still being mistreated by racial oppression in different ways. In the article “Being Poor, Black, and American” written by William Julius Wilson, a sociologist and professor at Harvard University, Wilson shows that political, economic, and cultural forces are the primary forces that contains the distinction between target and agent group positions. From the immigration policies, the workplace policies, and stereotypical views portrayed by society, these all have an impact on how an individual can live their life. Altogether, these forces ultimately keep people in check with society’s rules and regulations on what is right and wrong and keep them from stepping out of their place.

Over the years, laws have been put into place to handle issues dealing with immigrants and the law. Immigrants are still held responsible for their actions regardless of their legal status in the country. The Illegal Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRAIRA) was established to define the consequences of laws that are broken by immigrants. The laws that are analyzed are ones that would result in deportation and or possibly detention. IIRAIRA may have limited the scope of immigration-related litigation in the United States is that it frequently puts immigrants in the same category as criminal defendants, which most likely influences how they are viewed by courts and by policy makers. Indeed, this conflating of the criminal and the immigrant has had its own subconscious negative effect on the view of immigrants (particularly those from Mexico and Central America) within the judiciary and, one would

America is perceived the world over as the “Promised Land” where everything is possible. This lucrative perception leads many immigrants to seek diverse ways to enter this vast land of promise, with the aim of living the American dream. Illegal immigrants are considered the medium behind some of criminal activities perpetuated in America. Their participation in such criminal activity is prevalent in most criminal prosecutions and convictions, in state and federal criminal justice departments. The American criminal justice system has bared the brunt of illegal criminal activities, alleged to have been committed

There were some laws set by the United States that culturally dominated the immigrants in terms of their knowledge of english. One example is the Immigration Act of 1917, passed by congress, mandated a literacy test that required immigrants to read & write in their own language (law). This change of law of level education was an example of cultural dominance because the educated people dominated culture. The immigration act of 1917 displays the United States caring more about the immigrants knowing enough English in their standards than knowing only a certain portion that did not meet their standards, even if they're willing to meet their standards and are very determined to work. Also, in 1980, A law in Florida made English the official language

Life can be strenuous and arduous. Throughout American history, immigrants have struggled to live equally amongst the rest of society. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act suspended the immigration of all Chinese workers to the United States and barred Chinese immigrants from becoming U.S. citizens. The federal government believed the Chinese threatened the job market in California and disapproved their cultural practices. As a result, Chinese immigrants lost their life, liberty, and property. In 2002, the federal government established the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) that singled out Muslims and Arabs. The government was determined to fight terrorism, but discriminated innocent people. Today, Congress continues to ruin American culture by deporting immigrants. Yet researchers have shown the positive effects of immigration. Immigration is beneficial to America because immigrants provide cultural diversity, supports the economy, and eliminates uniformity that creates a dystopian society.

The main focus of this week’s readings was about the United States reception of immigrants through policy. From the Martin reading, we saw that there are two main approaches to immigrant policy. They may be accommodating or they can also be restrictive. For the former, these policies extend rights to unauthorized immigrants, such as access to health care or tuition assistance. These policy tend to appear where there has been a history of unauthorized immigrants and the local populace does not see the harm in having them within their city. Varsayani describes sanctuary ordinance as a cities declaration of noncooperation with federal immigration authorities. These cities will choose to deal with unauthorized immigrant as a citizen of that city and will only contact federal immigration authorities in case of a felony. On the other hand, there are the exclusionary policy approaches that are undertaken by state and local level governments. Varsayani explains that when a city or state experiences a large influx of immigrants whether they may be legal or illegal there sometimes is a negative reaction to their arrival. Often fueled by fear many citizens make assumptions about illegal immigrants and join together to pass ordinances or propositions that would make it difficult for those immigrants to live in their city or state. Whenever states or local governments do this they preempt their power over immigration issues that are not part of their jurisdiction. This is often done

Not only are all Americans becoming more aware of the egregious inequalities in our economic system, more people are being turned on to understanding the ways in which women and minorities are disparately affected by these differences. Women and minorities are effectively “locked out” of the highest reaches of wealth and power, as can be seen in The New York Times’ list titled: The Faces of American Power, Nearly as White as the Oscar Nominees. In this exposition, The New York Times reviewed 503 of the most powerful people in American culture, government, education, and business, and found that just 44 are minorities. They note, “any list of the powerful is subjective, but the people here have an outsize influence on the nation’s rules and

As I slowly gained more exposure to different races and began to understand more about discrimination and racism I saw how often times society went against the minorities. One day it was brought to my attention that men were minorities. That is that women made up a slightly higher percentage of the U.S. population. This went against what I thought to be in that women were the majority yet often time it seemed they were the ones treated like a minority. This led me to look at women closer and wonder why do we often times think of women as minorities when they are in fact the majority. This thought process ultimately led me to the question of “Why don’t we think of the 1% as a minority?” So I set off to better understand how we perceive minorities and I settled on power. In order to better understand the role of power among minorities I investigated how the two previously stated aspects of power affect three different demographic areas those being race, gender, and class. The following is what I

Immigration has, and continues to be, one of the most contentious issues in the United States (U.S.). While some see immigrants as opportunistic thieves, others view them as enormous economy boosters. Immigrants—foreign-born individuals—often have to deal with the negative outcomes of anti-immigrant policies. These exclusionary laws not only increase racial prejudice but also make foreign-born individuals feel less valuable than their native-born counterparts. The laws to some extent also justify the unequal treatment of immigrants (Almeida et al., 2016). Immigrants also

Modern and historical forces combine to separate many racial and ethnic communities disconnected from networks of economic opportunity and upward mobility. Among those forces is constant racial discrimination that, while subtler than in past decades, continues to deny opportunity to millions of

Slavery, religious persecution, and patriarchies all have one common quality: the dominance of one group over another. This inequality of power can create the oppression of a population and lead to an unstable society. To address the injustice, we need to ask how certain groups are able to achieve superiority over other populations?

In this approach, it is believed society functions to harm some groups of its society while harming other groups. For example, prior to the Civil Rights Act, many Caucasian’s were privileges and benefitted in various aspects, white African Americans were treated unfairly and harmed. Questions asked by this approach include “How does society divide a population?”, “How do advantaged people protect their privileges?”, and “How do disadvantaged people challenge the systems seeking change?”” (Macionis, 1). Overall, this approach shows that inequalities exist amongst different groups that make up a

It took centuries and a vast amount of coercion, before this became a white country” (1984, p. 1). This is not to say that people do not have differing amounts of skin pigmentation, but rather that the privilege or oppression conferred upon an individual because of their skin color exists only because society confers recognition. If a society did not have a racialized past and therefore did not organize power by that social category, race would not exist. However, in the historic and current U.S. contexts, race is a clear and potent lived reality that has impacted the ways in which different groups have access to resources and capital (Lewis,

Contemporary privileged American society is largely idealistic in its attitudes towards racial relations; many Americans believe that the United States is a place where hard work and dedication will lead to success, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, or other perceived difference. In this idealistic mindset, the only thing keeping you down is yourself. However, this ignores the very real disadvantages that some members of society experience based on their identities. Ignoring problems such as racial discrimination may be an example of “ignorance is bliss” for some but only if they have the privilege and means to achieve bliss, for the remainder, it means that these problems go on being ignored in order to ease the public’s mind.

I connected how these racial groups are treated to Domination and Subordination. In our reading it said that “some people or groups are defined as unequal by means of what sociologists call ascriptions… Criteria may be race, sex, class, nationality, religion, or other characteristics ascribed at birth” (pg 110). Black people, Middle Eastern Muslims, and Hispanic people are discriminated against because of their ascriptions. They are seen as the subordinates and white people see themselves as dominates. The passage also stated that, “There is no assumption that the goal of the unequal relationship is to end the inequality” (pg 110). The dominates do not strive to level the playing field and have equal privilege. Instead of doing that, they deny