Understanding The Struggles Immigrants Face In Canada And The United States
Have you ever been treated differently from other people around you? And not because you did something wrong or committed a federal crime, but simply because you are you. Imagine receiving discrimination and racism and not getting the job you want, or not getting the best treatment when it comes to your health, would you be able to adapt and live in that kind of life? It is an extremely tough journey to even begin with. That is the case of a majority of immigrants’ life, which had happened in the past and still is happening now. Immigrants (mostly from the United States) are treated as outsiders, an excessive factor in the human kind, or they are not welcomed in some countries that they considered their new home. Furthermore, they are also denied of getting the jobs they want since they are not on the priority list, the locals are. It is indeed one of the factors that are rotting our society. A portion of the population might not have the chance to encounter with enough immigrants or if they grew up in the country with one dominated race or speaks only one language their entire life, they might not understand the position that immigrants were put in. As a matter of fact, it is necessary and it is a must for us to raise awareness among those people, in order to let them put themselves in immigrant’ shoes, to open up their perspective and understanding the struggles immigrants undergo. Therefore, this essay will give the readers a chance to understand more of immigrants, predominantly in Canada and the United States. By doing that, it would help to contribute to resolving the problem of immigrants being mistreated, oppressed and tormented.
It is time for our community to stop this toxic, inhumane, and selfish act towards immigrants immediately. We have got to stop judging and start accepting other cultures, religions, and origins of other. It is time, for us to make our world a better place. First of all, it is not a bit difficult to identify an immigrant. There is not much a difference between an immigrant and a non-immigrant, don’t we all belong to the humankind? Yet, there still is a differentiation between the ways they are treated. Think about this, immigrants were born like everyone else were, they all eat and drink, they all talk and think, and they all work. Not only that, they have to work even harder in order to pay for the additional fees where the local population does not need to. It is resentful when people treat you normally when they do not know you are an immigrant, however, the moment they do know, they look at you with a different perspective and attitude. That also marks the beginning of the act of discrimination or racism towards he/she. Discrimination could start off with something small and it seems nothing, such as while using public transportation and you see a passenger struggling to scan their card since they placed it in a different direction or so, you would think “This person has got to be an immigrant, he/she is new here and does not even know how to use the bus card. ”, it would set off that thought and you would immediately give them a not so friendly stare.
Discrimination can go from that simple situation to an extreme example such as the President of the United States, Donald Trump, who called the majority of Mexican immigrants rapists. There is a video of President Trump calling immigrants bad people and portrait them as some atrocious animals was uploaded and has drawn plenty of attention. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people”, said Trump, reported by Wolf (2018); he was stating Mexicans are an awful influence and factors in the U. S, he finds them a threat that affects security and safety blunderingly to the country. The detail where he said “. . . and some, I assume, are good people”, he was implying that a smaller number of Mexicans immigrant are good and the rest are bad. There are many attackers around the world, even in the most civilized countries, there will always be bad people existing, it is the way it is, that is what life is all about, not everyone is good and not everyone is bad, so why are Mexicans, specifically, being aggressively attacked? Later on in the video, he added “probably going to have terrorist coming from the Middle East”; once again, he narrowed down his targets pointedly towards the Middle East and called them terrorist. On the other hand, the surprising thing is, the increasing number of immigrants in the U. S is not the cause of increasing amount of crimes committed, an investigation carried out by Ferraro (2016).
From the investigation, it is proven more than once that the immigrant population not only does not associate with the rise in crime committed, instead it were places with immigrants that has a decrease in property crime. Sometimes, the real enemy is in our own “backyards” and not from a place that is miles away. In addition, discrimination focus on race and skin color as well. “Laundry is the only thing that should be separated by color” - author unknown; that statement could not be any truer. Brown, black, white, yellow… aren’t them all just colors? None of us picked our skin color, it is science, it is a part of who we are, no matter what color it is, we cannot change it and there is no reason to, there is no need to feel ashamed of the color we have. Skin color does not harm us nor affecting the environment around us, it does not determine what kind of a person he/she is it is our action that does, I mean I am sure you have heard this sentence before “Don’t judge a book by its cover” and we ALL know what it means. Skin color creates stereotypes that should stop because it is only there to identify each individual, it is an ethnic classification, we were born with it, it is not like we paint ourselves with that color. The society must not let skin color comes in the way of the success of an individual, for example, an article written by Hochschild (2006) shows the difference in salaries depends on a person’s skin color, the lighter your skin color, the higher the income. Once again, skin color does not show the potential inside of a person nor the personality; it does not make someone a loud person for being black or make someone an arrogant person for being white, and it definitely does not make someone a nerd for being Asian.
Besides the problems of discrimination, there lie disadvantages and drawbacks immigrants face in their daily life. One of the most crucial issues is that unlike the locals, immigrants, unfortunately, have limited access to health care system. Without having a good health, you cannot do anything. As indicated by Straiton (2018), their health care limits consisting of the cost (hospital bill), time dedicated by doctors (less attentive care and treatment) among others factors. So as we can see, not only immigrants have to pay an extra amount of money, they also receive less of a treatment - the same statement has also been made by Suurmond (2011). Plus, in Québec and a few other provinces, non-immigrants are automatically provided with a medical card; they have free access to health services while immigrants only have a health insurance card, which we also need to pay for, and can only work in case of an emergency. Another thing about in cases of emergency that could really be a severe effect on immigrants is that even for an emergency, there are still restrictions depending on the immigrant status, which was clearly addressed on the Government Of Canada site (2017).
When it comes to health, there should be no hesitation in the efforts of saving a life, no matter who the patient is. Even when criminals get sick and they are considered patients, and it is the doctor’s job to help them, even if they are bad people. The most significant term in this situation is “emergency”, if it is indeed an emergency, there should be nothing stopping anyone to receive the best self-care, including immigrants. A minute of checking the status of an immigrant could potentially result in their death. Is an immigrant status really worth taking away a life? Health is not the only concerns, but also finance. Immigrant face distinctive struggles and difficulties in finance and economics, such as finding jobs. Like anywhere else, companies tend to hire employees where they know for sure, their employees understand the economy or the environment of their own country. They assume the fact that because immigrants come from other countries, therefore do not understand how the economy/business works or operates of the country they are currently moved to. That same concept was also pointed out by Oreopoulos (2008, 2009), comparing the statistic of callbacks rate in a job interview between non-immigrants and immigrants in Canada, that is the companies give priority in job options to the locals rather than immigrants due to the difference in nationality. Workplaces commonly think of expanding their economy, that is decreasing the unemployment rate of their OWN population, meaning the people who were born and raised in the particular country.
On top of that, there is also another element which is one of the biggest barriers of immigrants - Language barriers. Language barriers do not just affect only one aspect but it also affects many spread-out aspects of an immigrant’s everyday life. Without speaking or understanding the language meaning there is no way to interact or cooperate in the workplace or even to ask for help. Now you may think, “If they cannot speak the language, why do they even bother coming here?” They migrate for many different reasons, it could be political issues back at their home country or they decided to take a risk and explore and involve themselves to new surroundings. A number of immigrants when they migrate, they do not know the language, however, this is not ever a reason to underestimate and judge or making fun of them. Not knowing the language does not make them ignorant, it is honestly because they have not had the chance to interact and encounter or being exposed to it, give them time, and they might one day surprise you.
The worst incident I happened to see multiple times outside on the street of cities in Quebec province, Canada - a very diverse country, unfortunately, there still exists a type of persons who speak French and say extremely negative comments right in front of them (majority Asians) because they think Asians do not understand it. Yes, there are immigrants who are new to the language, but that does not mean EVERY immigrant are. It can get very frustrating to sit in class or at a presentation at school, the presenter would ask if anyone does not understand the language and he/she usually points out Asians and ask “How about you, do you understand?”. Not only that person just cause the “victims” with all the attention and eyes looking at them, but it also causes an annoyance growing inside that person. Not to mention that even when they can speak the language, they would still be judged by their accents. Hernandez (1993) found that by being overwhelmingly judged, some immigrants seek speech therapists so they can try reducing or get rid of their accent, which is really unfortunate because then they would have to change what has always been a part of how they speak, how they pronounce words. A different investigation performed by Lev-Ari (2016) indicated a fact that human beings generally believe less in something that is said with an accent. Think about how bizarre that is, that the same information can be different because of a distinction in the way it sounds.
Overall, immigrants go through quite a lot of struggles and are also taken into account that they sometimes do not have their family around with them to share some of the burdens which are the main causes of having psychological issues. Moreover, as mentioned above, having limited access to financial services and healthcare services can critically affect them. Now that most of the perspectives and a kind of different lives of immigrants are presented, it is now our turn to do our part. We have a choice between accepting and helping immigrants out, guide and introduce them to our culture or we can keep oppressing them. Let’s make sure we make the right choice; because immigrants are the same as any human beings who just want a better decent life.
