the american dream immigrants essay

Home — Essay Samples — Economics — American Dream — The American Dream for Immigrants

The American Dream for Immigrants

Categories: American Dream American History Immigration to America

About this sample

Words: 668 |

Updated: 8 December, 2023

Words: 668 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Video Version

American Dream Essay: Hook Examples

America: The Land of Dreams: For generations, the United States has been hailed as the land of opportunity and dreams. This essay explores the concept of the American Dream, its evolution over time, and whether it remains attainable in the modern era.
Voices of the Dreamers: Through personal narratives and stories, we’ll hear the voices of individuals who pursued the American Dream. Join us in understanding their journeys, aspirations, and the challenges they faced on the path to success.
The Illusion of the Dream: Is the American Dream a tangible reality or a fleeting illusion? This essay delves into the criticisms and controversies surrounding the concept, questioning whether it has been more myth than actuality for many.
The Pursuit of Happiness: The American Dream often intertwines with the pursuit of happiness. Explore how this ideal has shaped American society, influenced policies, and driven individuals to seek fulfillment and prosperity.
Redefining the Dream: In a changing world, the American Dream is evolving. In this essay, we’ll examine how societal shifts, economic challenges, and cultural diversity are reshaping the American Dream and its meaning for future generations.

Works Cited

American Temperament Test Society. (n.d.). American Pit Bull Terrier.
Animal Farm Foundation. (2015). Pit Bulls: A misunderstood breed.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2022). Nonfatal dog bite–related injuries treated in hospital emergency departments – United States, 2001–2021.
Cohen, J. A., & Richardson, K. L. (2002). Pit Bull panic. Fordham Urban Law Journal, 29(2), 255-297.
O’Sullivan, E. (2019). Breed-Specific Legislation and the Pit Bull Terrier: Are the laws effective? Journal of Animal and Environmental Law, 10(1), 1-31.
PetSmart Charities. (2018). 5 reasons pit bulls make great pets. Retrieved from https://petsmartcharities.org/blog/5-reasons-pit-bulls-make-great-pets
Reynolds, D. (2015). Pit bulls: myths and facts. American Kennel Club. Retrieved from https://www.akc.org/expert-advice/lifestyle/pit-bulls-myths-and-facts/
RSPCA Australia. (n.d.). Pit bulls and the law. Retrieved from https://www.rspca.org.au/campaigns/pit-bulls-and-law
Tully, L. (2016). Pit bull bans: the state of breed–specific legislation. Michigan State University College of Law Animal Legal & Historical Center.

Cite this Essay

To export a reference to this article please select a referencing style below:

Let us write you an essay from scratch

450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr Jacklynne

Verified writer

Expert in: Economics History Social Issues

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2 pages / 700 words

5 pages / 2197 words

2 pages / 968 words

5 pages / 2501 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on American Dream

The American Dream has been a core principle of American society since the country's founding. It represents the belief that anyone, regardless of their background or circumstances, can achieve success and prosperity through [...]

Nick Carraway, the narrator of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby, is a character with dreams and aspirations that drive the story forward. Throughout the novel, Nick's dream evolves and changes, reflecting the themes [...]

The American Dream is a concept deeply ingrained in the fabric of American society, representing the belief that anyone, regardless of background, can achieve success and prosperity through hard work and determination. However, [...]

Gatsby’s obsession with Daisy, the woman he loves, and his attempts to impress her highlight the theme of reaching for the unattainable. Gatsby’s story is a cautionary tale of the illusions of the American Dream and the [...]

Born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri, Langston Hughes embodied the subtle status of African-American culture during his career as a novelist, poet, and scholar. Hughes was a unique poet, in that he sought to communicate the voices [...]

The American Dream is accomplishable and alive. A lot of people have a sense of what the American Dream is that they think they can accomplish or what is reachable to them. Individuals all have special lives. One reason [...]

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

Instructions Followed To The Letter
Deadlines Met At Every Stage
Unique And Plagiarism Free

Column: We need immigrants more than ever. They keep hope in this country alive

Copy Link URL Copied!

When I think about the American dream, I think of Julio Arana.

He was my student at Cal State Fullerton a decade ago, a crackerjack of a kid from Jalisco who didn’t know what he wanted to do with life but knew the United States was the place to do it in. Today, the 36-year-old is a real estate agent who owns seven properties, from Orange County to the Coachella Valley, and flips houses like a cook handles pancakes. But Arana prides himself most on helping young couples, Latinos and not, buy their first homes.

“I couldn’t have done this in Mexico,” he told me as we stood in front of his latest purchase, a beat-up 1925 Spanish Revival in Santa Ana just down the street from another house he owns. Long-haired, tanned and tattooed, Arana wore a stylish brown hat and a T-shirt with Emiliano Zapata drawn as the grinning skull logo of punk icons the Misfits . “The one thing this country still offers is that the little guy can get it.”

Julio Arana stands outside one of his rental properties in Santa Ana.

We were at his newest acquisition because he wanted me to see something: On the side of the house, on a wall behind a trellis near the driveway, was a bas-relief stucco swastika the size of an adult head. A previous owner was a World War II veteran, but Arana had no idea why the white-power emblem was there. A historical curio? Emblematic of the previous owner’s beliefs?

It didn’t matter: It was personal to Arana.

“The first property I bought, in Desert Hot Springs, I had to evict Nazis,” he said. “This is full circle.”

Drawing on an unprecedented poll, this series tells the stories of immigrant life in America today, putting their voices in the foreground.

Just a few moments earlier, we had spoken to his neighbor, Marco Chavez. Arana told him his story — he came to this country without papers as an 8-year-old — and the 61-year-old Chavez shared a bit of his: An immigrant from Morelos who bought his home in the early 2000s. His five children are college graduates. He just finished a living trust.

“My chamacos have come out good,” Chavez told us in Spanish, holding a coffee cup in one hand and a cigarette in another as he looked at his three vintage VW buses parked on the street. “We’ve all done good.”

Julio and I were getting ready to drive 10 minutes away, to a Santa Ana duplex where he was finishing up an ADU. “For us [immigrants] ... there’s all this opportunity around us. People leave their homelands out of despair, and their hope is gone. Here, there’s hope. I see it all around me.”

When my editor first told me that a nationwide L.A. Times/KFF poll found that immigrants are more optimistic about life in the United States than native-born Americans, my initial response was: story of my life.

I was raised in a run-down granny flat in Anaheim a stone’s throw from a lumberyard, the only place my immigrant parents could afford when they married in 1978. By the time I was 10 in 1989, my mother — a tomato canner — and my truck-driving dad had saved up enough to buy a post-World War II tract home in a better part of town.

Maria de Pilar Barradas, left, gives a kiss to Alejandro Medel as 4-year-old son Angelo Medel-Barradas stands between them

World & Nation

In an increasingly pessimistic era, immigrants espouse a hallmark American trait — optimism

Immigrants to the U.S. face extensive challenges, but they still report high levels of optimism about their futures and trust in American institutions, a comprehensive survey has found.

Sept. 17, 2023

Within five years, our street went from majority white to almost exclusively Latino. Our former neighbors moved to Washington, Arizona and other states because, they told my parents, the neighborhood wasn’t “safe” anymore, and California was changing.

Thirty-five years later, my dad and youngest brother are still there, the mortgage paid off years ago . I own my own home. So does the sister that follows me.

My parents never explicitly told us about the American dream. Each grew up in wrenching poverty in Zacatecas, one of the poorest states in Mexico. They couldn’t give us much besides a roof over our heads and back-to-school clothes from Montgomery Ward, but their lives were an unspoken lesson: Life in this country is tough, but life back in the rancho was far harder. You’ve got a shot here — so make something of it, because we did.

Julio Arana works on one of his rental properties in Santa Ana.

The L.A. Times/KFF survey also revealed that Latino immigrants aren’t just optimistic, on some measures, they’re more optimistic than other immigrant groups. It’s a tendency that USC sociology professor Jody Agius Vallejo said “studies have found time and time again” — and that more than a few pundits find weird.

She has devoted her research to studying upper- and middle-class Latinos , whose stories of hope and achievement like that of my family and Julio are legion. That includes the family of her husband, immigrants from Jalostotitlán, Jalisco, who settled in Watts in the 1960s and established a pioneering Latino grocery chain .

“I do get frustrated when people are surprised that Latinos are optimistic,” Agius Vallejo said. “Why wouldn’t they [be]? We can’t discount the fact that Latinos have been subject to significant discrimination and segregation and still make something of themselves. It’s a point of pride for them.”

That’s why I roll my eyes when I hear Americans whine about how their country is ruined — and few are more histrionic than former President Trump. Just this July, he told a rapt crowd that “the American dream is being torn to shreds” and the country is “going to hell, and it’s going to hell very fast.”

Whiners: If you don’t like the U.S., leave. Leave it to immigrants.

When I think of the American dream, I think of my uncle, Ezequiel Miranda.

He, my late mother and three aunts came to the United States as children with my grandparents in the early 1960s. They picked crops near Hollister, Calif., before making their way down to Anaheim, where my grandfather, José Miranda, had picked and packed oranges in the 1920s in what was then a segregated city. My uncle dropped out of school in seventh grade, fearing what might happen after he beat up the white bully who had made his life hell for too long.

I still remember the granny flat in Anaheim that mi tío , his wife, Marbella, and five of his six children lived in when I was growing up in the 1980s. It was next to a muddy alley, in a barrio worse than ours. But my uncle, a member of Cement Masons Local 500 for more than 30 years who worked on projects including Disney California Adventure and what’s now called the Crypto.com Arena, lived the maxim he always told his children and us cousins: A trabajar . Get working.

Placido Miranda stands outside a house that he recently purchased

He bought a small house in Anaheim, traded that one for a bigger one down the street and then settled into a two-story home with a swimming pool in Placentia, where he and Marbella still live. They’re finally empty-nesters: Last week, my cousin Placido, his wife and their two teenage daughters moved into a four-bedroom home in Anaheim after selling their condo during the pandemic and staying with his parents.

At 46, he’s the last of his siblings to own a home. His house is on the type of street where neighbors mistook mi tío for the gardener.

“When we bought it, it looked like the set of Jack Tripper’s apartment,” Plas said, referring to a character in the 1970s and ’80s sitcom “Three’s Company,” as he took me on a tour of his kitchen (I call my cousin Plas, and he calls me Gus. Assimilation!). He’s a delivery driver for Frito-Lay who didn’t go beyond community college but is probably the smartest person I know. He sells movie memorabilia and sneakers on EBay as a side hustle, once offering a slew of $1 white T-shirts online for $25 apiece.

New floorboards, cabinets, fixtures, lights and walls gleamed. The granite countertops were on their way.

“My dad came in, and he began to tear things out immediately,” Plas said. “My two handles for this drawer,” he continued, sheepishly shaking his head, “took an hour and a half to install.”

Apartment complex constructed from cardboard and paper.

Ten languages, thousands of phone calls: Accurately polling immigrants posed unprecedented challenges

Carrying out the KFF/L.A. Times survey of immigrants required work far beyond the normal survey, but the result provides a unique source of information about America’s immigrant population.

We moved on to his backyard, where mi tío had trimmed hedges that the previous owner let overgrow. He’s now 70 but looks decades younger. I asked mi tío how he felt about how life turned out in the U.S.

“I go to one street, there’s one of my kids. Go to another, another,” he said in Spanish. He’s usually gregarious but now was soft-spoken. “I worked for 50 years. This is my dream.”

“The reason people don’t feel [the American dream] is attainable is because everything is just more expensive,” Plas said. “They almost resign themselves to saying, ‘I can’t buy a house.’

“But when you grow up with dirt floors and laminate roofs, that motivates you to reach for more. When we went to McDonald’s growing up, it was a special occasion. When my parents would buy ice cream, we’d all get just one spoonful and knew to appreciate it.”

“Now,” Plas concluded with his usual sly smile, “my daughters leave cereal in their bowl.”

The L.A. Times/KFF survey might not be news to you. It might even seem boring. But its findings are vital. It’s the template for how this country can move forward from the chaos and division that have afflicted us since the rise of Trump.

To adapt a phrase from Thomas Jefferson, the tree of liberty must be refreshed with immigrant hope.

The doom and gloom that too many Americans screech about on social media and in their personal lives — on both sides of the red-blue divide — is a betrayal of what brought their ancestors here, and what continues to attract people from across the world. Pessimism, not political differences, is what’s bringing down this country; the optimism of newcomers is our best shot to survive.

When I think about the American dream, I think about the bus that arrived Sept. 9 at Union Station from Brownsville, Texas . It’s the 13th such one-way trip since June arranged by the administration of Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.

He signed off on them shortly after L.A. declared itself a sanctuary city , meaning city personnel and resources can’t be used to help federal officials deport immigrants.

Abbott says he’s sending us migrants to protest the supposed lax security at the U.S.-Mexico border, but he’s really mocking the American dream . His moves are descended from Proposition 187, the 1994 California ballot initiative that sought to make life miserable for immigrants without legal status but was eventually ruled unconstitutional.

I grew up in that era, and its rank xenophobia propelled me to not just devote my life to fight back, but also to look for the good in this country instead of the bad. Because if my parents could do it, why not me?

Proposition 187 had the same effect on Angelica Salas , the longtime head of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles and the daughter of Mexican immigrants. Her group is part of a coalition of nonprofits and faith groups called L.A. Welcomes Collective , which has helped to connect the migrants Abbott has kicked out of Texas with housing and relatives in the United States.

“They are the most patriotic individuals in our country because they’re always hoping that America’s ideals and purported values will happen in their lives,” Salas said of the immigrants she works with. “If it doesn’t, then they hope it happens in the lives of their children. And if it doesn’t for them? Then their grandchildren. Their tenacity to not give up is contagious. ”

That’s the spirit Americans need anew. Immigrants now, immigrants tomorrow, immigrants forever.

California lawmakers approve bill to extend home mortgage aid to undocumented immigrants

Aug. 29, 2024

Kids of Immigrants founder Daniel Buezo’s 5 favorite Latino businesses in L.A.

Aug. 12, 2024

LA QUINTA, CA - APRIL 30, 2024: Chelsey and Spencer Marks spend time on the second floor reading area inside their home at SolTerra housing development which includes one and two-story units with three or four bedroom plans and rent rates starting at $3,800 per month on April 30, 2024 in La Quinta, California. There is a growing trend across the country and in Southern California to build new suburban subdivisions of single-family homes that are only for rent. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

New rental developments are changing the American dream of suburban homeownership

June 13, 2024

The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

Gustavo Arellano is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, covering Southern California everything and a bunch of the West and beyond. He previously worked at OC Weekly, where he was an investigative reporter for 15 years and editor for six, wrote a column called ¡Ask a Mexican! and is the author of “Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America.” He’s the child of two Mexican immigrants, one of whom came to this country in the trunk of a Chevy.

More From the Los Angeles Times

GOP targets ‘noncitizen voting.’ Experts agree it’s not a problem

Sept. 12, 2024

An Ohio city reshaped by Haitian immigrants lands in an unwelcome spotlight

Sept. 11, 2024

Ivanni Herrera looks on during an interview in a park Friday, May 18, 2024, in Aurora, Colo. (AP Photo/Jack Dempsey)

On the streets of a Colorado city, pregnant migrants struggle to survive

Simon Sutton, 14, and his stepmom Summer Stagg react during a presidential debate between Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at a watch party hosted by the Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Democratic Club at the Academy on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Juliana Yamada)

On a night of fierce exchanges, Harris sets the tone

Find anything you save across the site in your account

Waking Up from the American Dream

Image may contain Human Person Ball and Balloon

If you are an undocumented person anywhere in America, some of the things you do to make a dignified life for yourself and your loved ones are illegal. Others require a special set of skills. The elders know some great tricks—crossing deserts in the dead of night, studying the Rio Grande for weeks to find the shallowest bend of river to cross, getting a job on their first day in the country, finding apartments that don’t need a lease, learning English at public libraries, community colleges, or from “Frasier.” I would not have been able to do a single thing that the elders have done. But the elders often have only one hope for survival, which we tend not to mention. I’m talking about children. And no, it’s not an “anchor baby” thing. Our parents have kids for the same reasons as most people, but their sacrifice for us is impossible to articulate, and its weight is felt deep down, in the body. That is the pact between immigrants and their children in America: they give us a better life, and we spend the rest of that life figuring out how much of our flesh will pay off the debt.

I am a first-generation immigrant, undocumented for most of my life, then on DACA , now a permanent resident. But my real identity, the one that follows me around like a migraine, is that I am the daughter of immigrants. As such, I have some skills of my own.

You pick them up young. Something we always hear about, because Americans love this shit, is that immigrant children often translate for their parents. I began doing this as a little girl, because I lost my accent, dumb luck, and because I was adorable in the way that adults like, which is to say I had large, frightened eyes and a flamboyant vocabulary. As soon as doctors or teachers began talking, I felt my parents’ nervous energy, and I’d either answer for them or interpret their response. It was like my little Model U.N. job. I was around seven. My career as a professional daughter of immigrants had begun.

In my teens, I began to specialize. I became a performance artist. I accompanied my parents to places where I knew they would be discriminated against, and where I could insure that their rights would be granted. If a bank teller wasn’t accepting their I.D., I’d stroll in with an oversized Forever 21 blazer, red lipstick, a slicked-back bun, and fresh Stan Smiths. I brought a pleather folder and made sure my handshake broke bones. Sometimes I appealed to decency, sometimes to law, sometimes to God. Sometimes I leaned back in my chair, like a sexy gangster, and said, “So, you tell me how you want my mom to survive in this country without a bank account. You close at four, but I have all the time in the world.” Then I’d wink. It was vaudeville, but it worked.

My parents came to America in their early twenties, naïve about what awaited them. Back in Ecuador, they had encountered images of a wealthy nation—the requisite flashes of Clint Eastwood and the New York City skyline—and heard stories about migrants who had done O.K. for themselves there. But my parents were not starry-eyed people. They were just kids, lost and reckless, running away from the dead ends around them.

My father is the only son of a callous mother and an absent father. My mother, the result of her mother’s rape, grew up cared for by an aunt and uncle. When she married my father, it was for the reasons a lot of women marry: for love, and to escape. The day I was born, she once told me, was the happiest day of her life.

Soon after that, my parents, owners of a small auto-body business, found themselves in debt. When I was eighteen months old, they left me with family and settled in Brooklyn, hoping to work for a year and move back once they’d saved up some money. I haven’t asked them much about this time—I’ve never felt the urge—but I know that one year became three. I also know that they began to be lured by the prospect of better opportunities for their daughter. Teachers had remarked that I was talented. My mother, especially, felt that Ecuador was not the place for me. She knew how the country would limit the woman she imagined I would become—Hillary Clinton, perhaps, or Princess Di.

My parents sent loving letters to Ecuador. They said that they were facing a range of hardships so that I could have a better life. They said that we would reunite soon, though the date was unspecified. They said that I had to behave, not walk into traffic—I seem to have developed a habit of doing this—and work hard, so they could send me little gifts and chocolates. I was a toddler, but I understood. My parents left to give me things, and I had to do other things in order to repay them. It was simple math.

They sent for me when I was just shy of five years old. I arrived at J.F.K. airport. My father, who seemed like a total stranger, ran to me and picked me up and kissed me, and my mother looked on and wept. I recall thinking she was pretty, and being embarrassed by the attention. They had brought roses, Teddy bears, and Tweety Bird balloons.

Getting to know one another was easy enough. My father liked to read and lecture, and had a bad temper. My mother was soft-spoken around him but funny and mean—like a drag queen—with me. She liked Vogue . I was enrolled in a Catholic school and quickly learned English—through immersion, but also through “Reading Rainbow” and a Franklin talking dictionary that my father bought me. It gave me a colorful vocabulary and weirdly over-enunciated diction. If I typed the right terms, it even gave me erotica.

Meanwhile, I had confirmed that my parents were not tony expats. At home, meals could be rice and a fried egg. We sometimes hid from our landlord by crouching next to my bed and drawing the blinds. My father had started out driving a cab, but after 9/11, when the governor revoked the driver’s licenses of undocumented immigrants, he began working as a deliveryman, carrying meals to Wall Street executives, the plastic bags slicing into his fingers. Some of those executives forced him to ride on freight elevators. Others tipped him in spare change.

My mother worked in a factory. For seven days a week, sometimes in twelve-hour shifts, she sewed in a heat that caught in your throat like lint, while her bosses, also immigrants, hurled racist slurs at her. Some days I sat on the factory floor, making dolls with swatches of fabric, cosplaying childhood. I didn’t put a lot of effort into making the dolls—I sort of just screwed around, with an eye on my mom at her sewing station, stiffening whenever her supervisor came by to see how fast she was working. What could I do to protect her? Well, murder, I guess.

Our problem appeared to be poverty, which even then, before I’d seen “Rent,” seemed glamorous, or at least normal. All the protagonists in the books I read were poor. Ramona Quimby on Klickitat Street, the kids in “Five Little Peppers and How They Grew.” Every fictional child was hungry, an orphan, or tubercular. But there was something else setting us apart. At school, I looked at my nonwhite classmates and wondered how their parents could be nurses, or own houses, or leave the country on vacation. It was none of my business—everyone in New York had secrets—but I cautiously gathered intel, toothpick in mouth. I finally cracked the case when I tried to apply to an essay contest and asked my parents for my Social Security number. My father was probably reading a newspaper, and I doubt he even looked up to say, “We don’t have papers, so we don’t have a Social.”

It was not traumatic. I turned on our computer, waited for the dial-up, and searched what it meant not to have a Social Security number. “Undocumented immigrant” had not yet entered the discourse. Back then, the politically correct term, the term I saw online, was “illegal immigrant,” which grated—it was hurtful in a clinical way, like having your teeth drilled. Various angry comments sections offered another option: illegal alien . I knew it was form language, legalese meant to wound me, but it didn’t. It was punk as hell. We were hated , and maybe not entirely of this world. I had just discovered Kurt Cobain.

Obviously, I learned that my parents and I could be deported at any time. Was that scary? Sure. But a deportation still seemed like spy-movie stuff. And, luckily, I had an ally. My brother was born when I was ten years old. He was our family’s first citizen, and he was named after a captain of the New York Yankees. Before he was old enough to appreciate art, I took him to the Met. I introduced him to “S.N.L.” and “Letterman” and “Fun Home” and “Persepolis”—all the things I felt an upper-middle-class parent would do—so that he could thrive at school, get a great job, and make money. We would need to armor our parents with our success.

We moved to Queens, and I entered high school. One day, my dad heard about a new bill in Congress on Spanish radio. It was called the DREAM Act, and it proposed a path to legalization for undocumented kids who had gone to school here or served in the military. My dad guaranteed that it’d pass by the time I graduated. I never react to good news—stoicism is part of the brand—but I was optimistic. The bill was bipartisan. John McCain supported it, and I knew he had been a P.O.W., and that made me feel connected to a real American hero. Each time I saw an “R” next to a sponsor’s name my heart fluttered with joy. People who were supposed to hate me had now decided to love me.

But the bill was rejected and reintroduced, again and again, for years. It never passed. And, in a distinctly American twist, its gauzy rhetoric was all that survived. Now there was a new term on the block: “Dreamers.” Politicians began to use it to refer to the “good” children of immigrants, the ones who did well in school and stayed off the mean streets—the innocents. There are about a million undocumented children in America. The non-innocents, one presumes, are the ones in cages, covered in foil blankets, or lost, disappeared by the government.

I never called myself a Dreamer. The word was saccharine and dumb, and it yoked basic human rights to getting an A on a report card. Dreamers couldn’t flunk out of high school, or have D.U.I.s, or work at McDonald’s. Those kids lived with the pressure of needing a literal miracle in order to save their families, but the miracle didn’t happen, because the odds were against them, because the odds were against all of us. And so America decided that they didn’t deserve an I.D.

Link copied

The Dream, it turned out, needed to demonize others in order to help the chosen few. Our parents, too, would be sacrificed. The price of our innocence was the guilt of our loved ones. Jeff Sessions, while he was Attorney General, suggested that we had been trafficked against our will. People actually pitied me because my parents brought me to America. Without even consulting me.

The irony, of course, is that the Dream was our inheritance. We were Dreamers because our parents had dreams.

It’s painful to think about this. My mother, an aspiring interior designer, has gone twenty-eight years without a sick day. My dad, who loves problem-solving, has spent his life wanting a restaurant. He’s a talented cook and a brilliant manager, and he often did the work of his actual managers for them. But, without papers, he could advance only so far in a job. He needed to be paid in cash; he could never receive benefits.

He often used a soccer metaphor to describe our journey in America. Our family was a team, but I scored the goals. Everything my family did was, in some sense, a pass to me. Then the American Dream could be mine, and then we could start passing to my brother. That’s how my dad explained his limp every night, his feet blistered from speed-running deliveries. It’s why we sometimes didn’t have money for electricity or shampoo. Those were fouls. Sometimes my parents did tricky things to survive that you’ll never know about. Those were nutmegs. In 2015, when the U.S. women’s team won the World Cup, my dad went to the parade and sent me a selfie. “Girl power!” the text read.

My father is a passionate, diatribe-loving feminist, though his feminism often seems to exclude my mother. When I was in elementary school, he would take me to the local branch of the Queens Public Library and check out the memoir of Rosalía Arteaga Serrano, the only female President in Ecuador’s history. Serrano was ousted from office, seemingly because she was a woman. My father would read aloud from the book for hours, pausing to tell me that I’d need to toughen up. He would read from dictators’ speeches—not for the politics, but for the power of persuasive oratory. We went to the library nearly every weekend for thirteen years.

My mother left her factory job to give me, the anointed one, full-time academic support. She pulled all-nighters to help me make extravagant posters. She grilled me with vocabulary flash cards, struggling to pronounce the words but laughing and slapping me with pillows if I got something wrong. I aced the language portions of my PSATs and SATs, partly because of luck, and partly because of my parents’ locally controversial refusal to let me do household chores, ever, because they wanted me to be reading, always reading, instead.

If this all seems strategic, it should. The American Dream doesn’t just happen to cheery Pollyannas. It happens to iconoclasts with a plan and a certain amount of cunning. The first time I encountered the idea of the Dream, it was in English class, discussing “The Great Gatsby.” My classmates all thought that Gatsby seemed sort of sad, a pathetic figure. I adored him. He created his own persona, made a fortune in an informal economy, and lived a quiet, paranoid, reclusive life. Most of all, he longed. He stood at the edge of Long Island Sound, longing for Daisy, and I took the train uptown to Columbia University and looked out at the campus, hoping it could one day be mine. At the time, it was functionally impossible for undocumented students to enroll at Columbia. The same held for many schools. Keep dreaming, my parents said.

I did. I was valedictorian of my class, miraculously got into Harvard, and was tapped to join a secret society that once included T. S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens. I was the only Latina inducted, I think, and I was very chill when an English-Spanish dictionary appeared in our club bathroom after I started going to teas. When I graduated, in 2011, our country was deporting people at record rates. I knew that I needed to add even more of a golden flicker to my illegality, so that if I was deported, or if my parents were deported, we would not go in the middle of the night, in silence, anonymously, as Americans next door watched another episode of “The Bachelor.” So I began writing, with the explicit aim of entering the canon. I wrote a book about undocumented immigrants, approaching them not as shadowy victims or gilded heroes but as people, flawed and complex. It was reviewed well, nominated for things. A President commended it.

But it’s hard to feel anything. My parents remain poor and undocumented. I cannot protect them with prizes or grades. My father sobbed when I handed him my diploma, but it was not the piece of paper that would make it all better, no matter how heavy the stock.

By the time I was in grad school, my parents’ thirty-year marriage was over. They had spent most of those years in America, with their heads down and their bodies broken; it was hard not to see the split as inevitable. My mom called me to say she’d had enough. My brother supported her decision. I talked to each parent, and helped them mutually agree on a date. On a Tuesday night, my father moved out, leaving his old parenting books behind, while my mom and brother were at church. I asked my father to text my brother that he loved him. I think he texted him exactly that. Then I collapsed onto the floor beneath an open drawer of knives, texted my partner to come help me, and convulsed in sobs.

After that, my mom became depressed. I did hours of research and found her a highly qualified, trauma-informed psychiatrist, a Spanish speaker who charged on a sliding scale I could afford. My mom got on Lexapro, which helped. She also started a job that makes her very happy. In order to find her that job, I took a Klonopin and browsed Craigslist for hours each day, e-mailing dozens of people, being vague about legal status in a clever but truthful way. I impersonated her in phone interviews, hanging off my couch, the blood rushing to my head, struggling not to do an offensive accent.

You know how, when you get a migraine, you regret how stupid you were for taking those sweet, painless days for granted? Although my days are hard, I understand that I’m living in an era of painlessness, and that a time will come when I look back and wonder why I was such a stupid, whining fool. My mom’s job involves hard manual labor, sometimes in the snow or the rain. I got her a real winter coat, her first, from Eddie Bauer. I got her a pair of Hunter boots. These were things she needed, things I had seen on women her age on the subway, their hands bearing bags from Whole Foods. My mom’s hands are arthritic. She sends me pictures of them covered in bandages.

My brother and I now have a pact: neither of us can die, because then the other would be stuck with our parents. My brother is twenty-two, still in college, and living with my mom. He, too, has some skills. He is gentle, kind, and excellent at deëscalating conflict. He mediated my parents’ arguments for years. He has also never tried to change them, which I have, through a regimen of therapy, books, and cheesy Instagram quotes. So we’ve decided that, in the long term, since his goal is to get a job, get married, have kids, and stay in Queens, he’ll invite Mom to move in with him, to help take care of the grandkids. He’ll handle the emotional labor, since it doesn’t traumatize him. And I’ll handle the financial support, since it doesn’t traumatize me.

I love my parents. I know I love them. But what I feel for them daily is a mixture of terror, panic, obligation, sorrow, anger, pity, and a shame so hot that I need to lie face down, in my underwear, on very cold sheets. Many Americans have vulnerable parents, and strive to succeed in order to save them. I hold those people in the highest regard. But the undocumented face a unique burden, due to scorn and a lack of support from the government. Because our parents made a choice—the choice to migrate—few people pity them, or wonder whether restitution should be made for decades of exploitation. That choice, the original sin, is why our parents were thrown out of paradise. They were tempted by curiosity and hunger, by fleshly desires.

And so we return to the debt. However my parents suffer in their final years will be related to their migration—to their toil in this country, to their lack of health care and housing support, to psychic fatigue. They were able, because of that sacrifice, to give me their version of the Dream: an education, a New York accent, a life that can better itself. But that life does not fully belong to me. My version of the American Dream is seeing them age with dignity, being able to help them retire, and keeping them from being pushed onto train tracks in a random hate crime. For us, gratitude and guilt feel almost identical. Love is difficult to separate from self-erasure. All we can give one another is ourselves.

Scholars often write about the harm that’s done when children become caretakers, but they’re reluctant to do so when it comes to immigrants. For us, they say, this situation is cultural . Because we grow up in tight-knit families. Because we respect our elders. In fact, it’s just the means of living that’s available to us. It’s a survival mechanism, a mutual-aid society at the family level. There is culture, and then there is adaptation to precarity and surveillance. If we are lost in the promised land, perhaps it’s because the ground has never quite seemed solid beneath our feet.

When I was a kid, my mother found a crystal heart in my father’s taxi. The light that came through it was pretty, shimmering, like a gasoline spill on the road. She put it in her jewelry box, and sometimes we’d take out the box, spill the contents onto my pink twin bed, and admire what we both thought was a heart-shaped diamond. I grew up, I went to college. I often heard of kids who had inherited their grandmother’s heirlooms, and I sincerely believed that there were jewels in my family, too. Then, a few years ago, my partner and I visited my mom, and she spilled out her box. She gave me a few items I cherish: a nameplate bracelet in white, yellow, and rose gold, and the thick gold hoop earrings that she wore when she first moved to Brooklyn. Everything else was costume jewelry. I couldn’t find the heart.

I realized that, when my mother found the crystal, she was around the same age I am now. She had probably never held a diamond, and she probably wanted to believe that she had found one in America, a dream come true. She wanted me to believe it, and then, as we both grew up, alone, together, she stopped believing, stopped wanting to believe, and stopped me from wanting to believe. And she probably threw that shit out. I didn’t ask. Some things are none of our business. ♦

Essay on American Dream For Immigrants

Students are often asked to write an essay on American Dream For Immigrants in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on American Dream For Immigrants

The american dream: an overview.

The American Dream is a belief in the freedom that allows all citizens and most importantly, immigrants, to achieve their goals through hard work. It promises a better life with equal chances for everyone, regardless of their background.

Attraction for Immigrants

Many immigrants are drawn to America because of the American Dream. They believe it offers them a chance to make a better life for themselves and their families. They hope to find jobs, education, and opportunities they may not have in their home countries.

Challenges Faced by Immigrants

Despite the promise of the American Dream, immigrants often face many challenges. These include learning a new language, adapting to a different culture, and sometimes, dealing with discrimination. Yet, they continue to strive for a better life.

Success Stories

There are many success stories of immigrants achieving the American Dream. These stories inspire others and show that with hard work and determination, it’s possible to overcome challenges and achieve one’s goals.

250 Words Essay on American Dream For Immigrants

The american dream: a beacon for immigrants.

The American Dream is a powerful idea that has drawn many people to the United States for centuries. It’s an idea that says anyone can become successful if they work hard, regardless of where they come from. This is why so many immigrants see America as a land of opportunity.

What is the American Dream for Immigrants?

For immigrants, the American Dream often means a better life. It can mean escaping poverty or oppression in their home country. It can mean having the freedom to express themselves and their beliefs. Most importantly, it means having the chance to work hard and build a good life for themselves and their families.

Chasing the Dream

Immigrants come to America from all over the world, each with their own dreams and ambitions. Some want to start businesses, others want to pursue an education, and some just want a safe place to live. They believe that in America, they can achieve these dreams.

The Reality of the Dream

The reality of the American Dream is not always as simple as it seems. Immigrants often face challenges like language barriers, cultural differences, and discrimination. But despite these hurdles, many immigrants remain hopeful and work tirelessly to make their dreams come true.

The Dream Continues

The American Dream for immigrants is more than just an idea. It’s a promise of hope, opportunity, and freedom. It’s what makes America a melting pot of cultures and ideas. And even with the challenges they face, immigrants continue to chase this dream, adding to the rich tapestry of America’s diverse society.

500 Words Essay on American Dream For Immigrants

The idea of the american dream, immigrants and the american dream.

Immigrants are people who leave their home country to live in a new one. For many years, people from all over the world have been moving to America. They come with the hope of a better life. This is because they believe in the American Dream. They think that in America, they will have more chances to be successful and happy.

The Hardships Faced by Immigrants

Moving to a new country is not easy. Immigrants often face many problems. They might not speak English well, which can make it hard to find a job or make friends. They might also miss their families and homes. These problems can make it hard for them to reach their American Dream.

Success Stories of Immigrants

The importance of the american dream.

The American Dream is very important. It gives people hope and encourages them to work hard. Even though it can be hard to achieve, the dream of a better life is what keeps many immigrants going.

In conclusion, the American Dream is a powerful idea that attracts many immigrants to the United States. Despite the challenges they face, the hope for a better life motivates them to strive for success. The stories of immigrants who have achieved the American Dream inspire others to continue pursuing their dreams. This shows that the American Dream is not just a dream, but a reality that can be achieved with hard work and determination.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

We need your support today

Independent journalism is more important than ever. Vox is here to explain this unprecedented election cycle and help you understand the larger stakes. We will break down where the candidates stand on major issues, from economic policy to immigration, foreign policy, criminal justice, and abortion. We’ll answer your biggest questions, and we’ll explain what matters — and why. This timely and essential task, however, is expensive to produce.

We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today?

What the American dream looks like for immigrants

Upward mobility is common for the millions who come to the US. But there’s a lot more to the story.

by Anne Helen Petersen

Illustrations by Maitane Romagosa for Vox

Immigrants from all over the world climb up a set of suitcases to reach a house with an American flag

Over the past 40 years, the prospect of achieving or maintaining a foothold in the middle class has faded for millions of Americans. Blame stagnant wages, the ever-increasing cost of living , massive student debt , and the narrowing of once all-but-guaranteed routes — like, say, a good union job — to economic stability. Millennials, as a whole, are the first generation predicted to be worse off than their parents. A 2017 study found that a staggering 90 percent of children born in 1940 earned more than their parents did at age 30; for children born in 1984, that percentage has declined to just 50 percent.

But there’s a complicated, competing reality at work for recent immigrants to the United States and their children, the majority of whom are currently living some version of the American dream. Or, more precisely, the upward mobility component of that dream: the idea that hard work will lead to increased stability and class position for the next generation.

A massive study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, published in 2019, examined millions of father-son pairs of immigrants over the last century. The authors found that children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than the children of those born in the US. More significantly, they found that shifts in immigration policy and country of origin have not altered the pattern — and that it holds true whether the first generation was poor (in the bottom 25th percentile of income distribution) or relatively well-off (in the top 25th percentile).

What happens after that second generation is more complicated, but that initial immigrant upward mobility, when gains are acutely felt? It’s still there, even as the once-consistent class mobility of Americans three, four, five, or six generations removed from their ancestors’ original migration has stalled .

For those who’ve personally watched upward mobility work within their families, the promises of the American dream often feel like promises kept. Hard work and education led to significantly better outcomes for their children, with more stability for the entire family. There’s a lot more to these stories, however, particularly to the way second-generation immigrants conceive of their place on the class ladder.

Speaking with first- and second-generation immigrants from more than a dozen “sending” countries over the past month, it’s clear there’s a shared desire to have bigger, more nuanced discussions of the immigrant experience of the American dream — conversations that attend to the specific contexts that so often get swallowed within the label of “immigrant,” alternately portrayed as a problem ( overwhelming the border , sucking up governmental resources, taking American jobs ) or a model success story , with very little, if any, attention to the paths that open or close to migrants from different home countries and circumstances, from different racial and educational backgrounds, with profoundly different levels of societal and governmental support.

Between 2005 and 2050, the US is projected to add 117 million people as a result of new immigration — a stunning 82 percent of the population growth. That’s 67 million incoming immigrants, 47 million of their children, and 3 million grandchildren. These new immigrants and their descendants will shape the future of this country. They know, arguably better than those who are native born, where the roadblocks to stability are located: where the pain resides, where the trajectory loses steam, where outdated hierarchies and good old-fashioned racism work to exclude them. They see what’s lost every time the narrative of the middle class remains, implicitly or not, the narrative of the white middle class.

As a second-generation immigrant named Elle told me, immigrants are just enough removed from the American status quo that leads people to believe they have a right to a place in the middle class. They can, in her words, “see the entire landscape of potential outcomes, upturns, and downturns.” There’s invaluable perspective there. Below, Elle and six other first- and second-generation immigrants share what they’ve come to understand about the middle-class American dream.

Dharushana Muthulingam, age 38 Family moved from Sri Lanka to Los Angeles via the UK in the 1980s

My parents are originally from Sri Lanka. They moved to the UK, where I was born; then the still-ongoing civil war broke out. Most of my extended family made it to various refugee camps and then settled all over the globe.

Money was short growing up, and the shortage was a source of discord. It was explicit that financial security was the priority, and the jobs that achieved security were physician, engineer, lawyer. My parents owned several small businesses, like many immigrant parents, but when they imagined the success of their children, it was one of these “respectable” professions. It was security: mine and theirs. Like most of the world, they do not have a 401(k) — children are the retirement plan. I remember being rebuked if I said I wanted to be a rock star or mailman. I said I wanted to be a writer, and was told I could be a writer after I became a doctor.

A hand stamps an immigration form next to a graduation hat, a set of house keys, and an American passport

So I went to college. I went to medical school. I got married. I had two children. I have a mortgage. I bought a minivan. Check, check, check. I worked very, very hard. My brain and body and soul broke multiple times. American medical training is stupidly hellacious. It’s thoroughly populated by either individuals from multigenerational physician families — they navigated the culture with ease, had their rent covered — or the other strivers like me, trying to mobilize out of their class, scraping together the fees to take tests and do applications. I went to some of the best institutions in the world, where I spent a lot of time crying in the financial aid office.

In order to use education as a tool for class mobility, well, you get educated in the process. I deeply absorbed the Western liberal ideology of the educated middle class. I absorbed the particulars of the American caste system while going deeply into debt for the process, looking at my brown femme face in the mirror every day while trying to convince others to pronounce my long foreign name.

When we say “middle-class experience in the United States” usually we are talking about a very particular white middle-class experience in the United States. That is the one on TV, the one that runs the universities, the cultural experiences, and brokers the power. It is weird because growing up in California suburbs, there were actually a lot of middle-class people of color, so my lived experience is different, but I embraced the pop culture portrayal of the American suburb. It’s insidious, divisive, and warping and leads to toxic shit like the “model minority” fallacy and respectability politics that degrades your soul.

It’s important for people to know that Asian immigrants are very heterogeneous. Many of the people who got here in the ’70s and ’80s for the first nonwhite expansion of immigration to the US since the Chinese Exclusion Act were professionals: doctors, engineers, grad students. But the majority of Asian immigrants are not necessarily professionals or highly educated.

I am deep in a midlife crisis reevaluating everything I thought about my goals to get in the middle class. But you know, sometimes I am fucking proud. In the remote LA suburb where I grew up, we would get doughnuts. My dad would chitchat with the owner, who was a Laotian refugee. They would each brag about their kids. The doughnut store guy’s kid was at Yale Law or something. and this was supposed to be it. The American dream. Two guys who fled war — and my dad, who grew up as a subsistence farmer in a thatched-roof hut, whose mother could not read — these guys sent their kids to the most powerful institutions in the most powerful country. You still sometimes want nothing more than to make your parents happy, because you know on a very deep level how much they have struggled. You want to bring them all the riches and prizes of the world.

Ana Maria, age 45 Parents arrived in Los Angeles from Mexico in the early 1960s

We didn’t talk about our class position. Growing up, when my brother or I asked for toys, restaurant visits, candy, we got used to hearing “no hay dinero” — there’s no money for that.

Our parents didn’t talk to us about aspirational goals; work is just what you did to keep yourself alive. My mother’s nickname for me as a young girl was “mi trabajadora,” essentially “my hard little worker.” In my family, making it meant working in an office. When my mother described her goals for me, they amounted to going to college and getting a job in an office. To this day, though I lead product, design, and engineering teams to build software and websites used by millions around the world, I describe my job as “in an office, with computers.”

I see myself constantly fighting a battle between Enough and More.

On the side of Enough: the realization that my annual contribution to retirement accounts is seven times my family’s annual income. Haven’t I made it? And then there’s the Enough prescribed by bloggers and influencers who want us to set aside the rat race and the comparison game, accompanied by the creeping feeling that I embody too many “other” categories in the world of tech bros — too female, too brown, too Mexican, too old, too nontechnical, “too nice” — to keep advancing.

“I see myself constantly fighting a battle between Enough and More”

On the side of More: the driving need to use my gifts and brain and skills. The desire to be the role model I never had — the Latina in tech, in a large leadership role — to inspire the younger Ana Marias out there. The drumbeat in my head after years of coaching, therapy, accountability partners, and an encouraging husband is: Why not me?

And in the messy middle between Enough and More: an inkling that I might check the right boxes with all my “otherness” and that may open a door, but do I want to go through that door? The recognition that I can dream of wanting more only when I frame it as focused on other people — retirement with my husband, support for my mother, giving to causes, being in a position to lift up other Latinas — which makes me look at myself with a raised eyebrow and a “seriously?!”

Melody, age 25 Parents arrived in Columbus, Ohio, from Ghana in the 1990s

My parents were recipients of President Clinton’s visa lottery. My dad came to the United States first, at the beginning of 1997, and me and my mom arrived in May of that same year. They chose Ohio because they had a lot of friends who had also emigrated from Ghana who lived there.

Both of my parents had to start over when they came to the United States. My mom went to nursing school and became an RN. My dad worked as a forklift operator at the Limited for 10 years, and then he went back to school and got his nursing degree. Me, my brother, and my parents lived in a two-bedroom apartment in Columbus, Ohio. When I was in third grade, my parents bought a $300,000 house in a suburb with a great public school system. A lot of their friends who immigrated also ended up buying homes and moving to well-off suburbs.

I feel like my parents bought into the idea of the American dream, and perhaps still do a little bit. They were able to achieve that dream: Buy a home in a nice suburb with a good school system for their three kids, send us to college, and give us a good life.

“They were able to achieve that dream: Buy a home in a nice suburb with a good school system for their three kids, send us to college, and give us a good life”

But I do think [that] as we all get older, we realize the other factors that played a role in this success. My parents didn’t have to pay for child care; there was another Ghanaian woman who lived in our apartment complex, and she would watch me and my brother when my parents weren’t home. They had a strong support system since many of their friends immigrated to Ohio from Ghana. My parents are really religious, so the church was also a site of refuge for them. Ohio has a fairly low cost of living compared to other parts of the country, and once my mom graduated from nursing school, she got a union job, which pays very well and has amazing benefits. My father’s job at the Limited also paid a decent wage and had good benefits, including free clothes gifted by the company.

I think the African immigrant experience as a whole isn’t discussed, and when it is, there’s not a ton of discussion about the systemic factors that contribute to the success of African immigrants and their children. We don’t have the generational trauma that Black Americans carry with them, which, in my opinion, makes a huge psychological difference.

Christina Hernandez, age 29 Grandmother arrived from Cuba pregnant with Christina’s father in the early 1960s

My mom comes from a solidly middle-class white family with roots in the US going back to the late 1800s or early 1900s. My dad’s side of the family is from Cuba. My abuela [immigrated] to Miami after the Cuban revolution because she was pregnant with my father and didn’t want him to be born in a communist country. My abuelo followed about a year later as an asylum seeker. My grandparents were white, middle-class Cubans.

My parents are both educators who met as high school teachers and are now both professors. When I was a kid, we moved to New Jersey so that my dad could do his PhD; my mom made sure we chose a town that had really good public school ratings. That meant that they couldn’t afford a house, and we lived in a two-bedroom apartment. We lived in the same apartment for about seven years, and we always had enough to eat, but fun stuff was really carefully budgeted. As an 8-year-old, I was very aware of financial stresses and my parents’ deteriorating marriage.

A girl climbs a ladder, with a map of the United States dotted with houses in the background

My parents instilled the idea that working hard was the answer. My dad is a perfectionist, and so am I. After my dad got his professor job and my parents split up, my dad remarried and was able to buy a house when I was about 12 or 13. My mom didn’t buy property until I was in college, and it’s a condo rather than a house. I think I absorbed messages about how the choices we make financially and for our education and about children ... have repercussions that can last decades.

I also don’t want to make the choices my parents made. I don’t want to rush into having children — I’m now older than both of them were when I was born — and I have been very aggressive about paying off debt. I have internalized the message that middle-class status is nonexistent or extremely precarious, and as a result, I’m frugal to a fault.

I have a very strong sense of what I think is “enough,” and my impression moving through the world as an adult is that my idea of enough is a lot less than what other white people think is enough. For me, stability is having a retirement fund and health insurance, and enough savings that I can replace my laptop or buy a plane ticket without any notice when a relative is sick or dying. Middle-class life means that I do now go on vacation, but even then, my boyfriend and I would rather go backpacking in the wilderness than visit a resort.

Rajika Bhandari, age 50 Arrived in North Carolina from India for graduate school in the 1990s

When you’re an immigrant coming from another country where you may be middle class or upper-middle class and privileged in many ways, you lose that status when you move to the US. All of that social capital that you and your family may have accumulated over the years, and that opened doors for you in your home country, that was your safety net — that no longer exists. No one in your new country knows what your background is. The new culture doesn’t know what to make of you. Back in India, my family was by no means wealthy, but we had a high social status because of education, because my parents had been to some of India’s top schools and colleges. That carried with it a real weight but was not acknowledged or known in the US.

I’ve noticed this within my community, but I also think this is even more true for other immigrant groups: There’s a desire to align with the dominant group in the US, which is white Americans. For Indian Americans, this is very much about getting the right degrees, sending your kids to the right college, living in the right neighborhoods — this desire to align with a dominant group that represents that middle-class status that you’ve lost. During the Black Lives Matter protests last year was the first time I saw South Asians and Indian immigrants standing up along with their Black friends. For the first time, the blinders came off, and there was this realization that we might think that we’re upper-middle class, we’ve obtained the American dream, our kids go to Ivies, but in the eyes of the majority, we’re just another brown person.

“There’s this feeling of being straitjacketed, you can’t move, you can’t breathe, otherwise you’ll fall out of legal status”

If you talk to the average American, there isn’t a good understanding of higher education and the immigration pipeline. They will not know that international students contribute $45 billion to the US. There might be an understanding that there are these students in the US, but it’s that they’re taking away “our” seats in college and then in the workplace.

Writing my book [ America Calling: A Foreign Student in a Country of Possibility ] really came out of trying to fill this knowledge gap, especially because the legal pathway to citizenship is so poorly understood: how challenging it is, how much it controls the life of an individual who’s going through it. People think it’s not a big deal — they’re following the legal pathways, they’re living these nice lives, but what it has taken for people to get on these pathways, to get to these points, it’s staggering. There’s this feeling of being straitjacketed, you can’t move, you can’t breathe, otherwise you’ll fall out of legal status. It’s a slow-level suffocation.

Ashley Valdez Jones, age 27 Mother became a naturalized American citizen in Nogales, Arizona, when she turned 18

My father was Leave It to Beaver white Irish Catholic. His side of the family has been in the country for generations. My mom grew up in Nogales, Arizona, a town that straddles the US-Mexico border. Her family had lived in the States for years, but my grandma had all 13 of her children across the line in Nogales, Sonora, because she didn’t trust American doctors. We joke that she reverse anchor-babied. My mom became a naturalized American citizen when she turned 18.

“The message I internalized was that the only way to achieve the American dream was to become white”

According to my dad, we were “comfortable.” He didn’t talk about class explicitly but focused on middle-class accomplishments: building a home, international family trips, a boat. My mom talked about class only to explain why her side of the family had less and why so many of my cousins wore my hand-me-downs. As a child, my understanding was that all Mexican people were poorer than all white people, because that’s how things shook out in my family.

The story I got was that my mom escaped poverty, and being Mexican, by marrying a white guy. We were never close to her side of the family, and as a child, I thought it was because we weren’t like them and implicitly above them in class. The message I internalized was that the only way to achieve the American dream was to become white.

Elle, age 30 Immigrated to New York from Bangladesh via the Middle East in the mid-1990s

We started out in a tiny New York City apartment that was crawling with cockroaches, so I had the general sense that money was tight. Everyone we knew at the time was also a part of the immigrant community, also making ends meet, so I never really felt like we were under pressure to “keep up with the Joneses” in any particular way. It was never explicitly stated to us as kids, but looking back, it was obvious that my dad as the breadwinner had the goal of advancing his career in order to make the kind of money doctors can make in the US.

I had absolutely no class consciousness until we left New York City for the suburbs. That was my introduction to the hallmarks of American middle-class life: bowling alley birthday parties, sleepover invites, Lunchables and string cheese, minivans, playsets in the backyard, after-school extracurriculars, piles of presents at Christmas, summer camps, annual stays at the lake house or a beachfront property. All of this confused me since my family’s social circle still cleaved pretty strongly to immigrant communities where none of this stuff mattered, and yet I still wanted it. I got very used to hearing “no”: no to the Barbie Dreamhouse set, a definitive no to all the sleepover invites, an “absolutely not” to most processed American food. Disney was the only thing that cracked through.

The long-term indicator of middle-class comfort was getting to eat out at restaurants more regularly. That was absolutely unheard of for our family for many years, but it morphed into a treat and then to a natural cost to account for whenever we were not at home. What used to be a major restriction and stressor is now a relief and a joy. All aspirational goals and material markers of progress aside, I don’t think we ever felt like “we made it” until we became US citizens. That took almost two decades of switching visas and seeking employer sponsorship and winding our way through the immigration process that no born American has to think about.

“People realize too late what they’re giving up by moving away, or that the life they lead abroad is much harder than they anticipated”

You could definitely make the argument that we followed the American dream to a T, just by looking at the ways our spending habits changed over time. We went from a used car to a nicer car to several cars; from shittier apartments to nicer apartments to a house. Rather than buying into the American dream wholesale, however, I think we were just following the path parallel to the American dream that many South Asians who aspire to become expats have internalized: Study and/or work hard so you can get out at all costs.

That mentality is obviously not unique to immigrants alone, but it is distinct to us in that “getting out” at its core has very little to do with attaining the material markers of progress most Americans would associate with a successful middle-class life. Many of our contemporaries, both my parents’ age and my own, are happy to be “out” in any way, shape, or form. The assumption is that whatever is “out there” (Western Europe, North America, more prosperous parts of Asia, the Gulf) is automatically better than what is “in here” (your country of origin).

There is truth to this, of course, but as an idea, it can end up being as hollow as the American dream. People realize too late what they’re giving up by moving away, or that the life they lead abroad is much harder than they anticipated.

Something I have to remind myself a lot — because no discussion of the American middle class seems to say so — is that no one’s journey to the middle class is guaranteed or even at all certain. Perhaps it feels more obvious to me simply because there are members of the immigrant community who are never able to make their professional degrees count in their new homes, or people who predate our arrival in this country whose ceaseless hard work never translated into salaried or white-collar jobs that might let them rest a bit more. Today, I think the precariousness of the middle class is a pretty universal phenomenon regardless of which path one took to achieve middle-class status. That might just be the effect of trying to be middle class in America — it swallows you whole.

If you’d like to share your experience as part of the hollow middle class with The Goods, email [email protected] or fill out this form .

More in this stream

The escalating costs of being single in America

Today, Explained

Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day.

This is the title for the native ad

Immigrants and the American Dream

The American Dream Isn’t Dead, It’s Just Misunderstood

In order to fulfill your dreams, you must aspire to be what you desire. That is the American Dream, to me. And I think some people don’t understand what fulfilling that American Dream can take.

Home Building Survey Part I: State of the American Family

Across all classes and regardless of parental status, 60 to 75% of Americans say that the government should do more to support families.

New Survey Shows Biden Economic Policies Polarize Voters

The president’s policies divide Democrats and the upper class from everyone else

Join our mailing list to receive our latest research, news, and commentary.

Subscribe to receive updates, previews, and more.

Knight Foundation

Communities
Learning and Impact
Philadelphia
Community Foundations Program
Press Releases
Arts and Technology
Diverse Asset Managers
Elections and Voting
Freedom of Expression
Knight Research Network
Local Journalism
Public Spaces
Smart Cities
Technology and Democracy
Trust in News
Board of Trustees
Internship Program
Financial Information

Out of Many, One: Immigration, Identity and the American Dream

Knight Foundation asked four leading scholars and community leaders to consider this question: “What is the most important trend that will transform how Americans think about community over the next decade?” Ali Noorani, Executive Director, the National Immigration Forum , shares insights below. Click here to download and view all essays.

Unprecedented global migration, how it is perceived and how it is experienced, is the prism through which we will understand the 21st century American community. How we respond determines what kind of America future generations live in.

In just over 25 years the number of international migrants in the world increased approximately 70 percent to reach 257.7 million . In the same period, the U.S. foreign-born population more than doubled to reach 49.8 million immigrants in 2017. Along the way, America experienced the Great Recession and economic disruptions driven by technology and globalization that changed the way we work and the way we relate to one another.

Over the course of 2018, the National Immigration Forum convened 26 Living Room Conversations to better understand how Americans are grappling with these changes. What we heard, what we learned, offers a roadmap for civic leaders across the political spectrum to help communities grapple with the politics of immigration.

Over the last few years, stories of mass migration have found their way to our homes, filtered through our news feed of choice, bringing a level of urgency to the debate. For many of us, when we see the Central American child on the train or the Syrian family in the raft, we are led to believe by certain press and politicians that they will be our neighbor in a matter of weeks. As our communities diversify, through marriage or migration, our new neighbor reminds us of what we saw on our screen. Diversity brings to our communities new languages, new customs, new religions. Our divisive politics define our perception, creating unease and insularity.

The fragmentation of traditional media and the powerful influence of social media bring these changes into sharp focus. We don’t trust our institutions, so we turn to our friends and family for the information and influence that shapes our opinion. For Americans worried that their children will not be better off than they are, it feels like the movement of goods, people, commerce, and ideas presents future generations an overwhelming set of economic and social challenges.

In some cases, leaders respond with a hardened politics, the building of actual and metaphorical walls, legislation that seeks to exert greater control at the local and national level. Paralyzed by anger and fear, the politics and policies of these communities stymie growth. And that feeds into the sense of victimhood as neighboring communities that embrace the challenges and opportunities of immigration see greater economic growth.

The combination of a more diverse America and a rapidly-changing economy has exacerbated a perception that immigrants and immigration are a threat, not a benefit, to American communities.

Those policy makers looking to lead more inclusive communities, buoyed by the rule of law, thrive with growing, diverse populations. They do the hard work necessary to help communities understand the changes around and beyond them. Fears are acknowledged and addressed, not dismissed and ignored. Programs and policies are put into place to welcome immigrants and refugees into the community without displacing native born residents.

The combination of a more diverse America and a rapidly-changing economy has exacerbated a perception that immigrants and immigration are a threat, not a benefit, to American communities. In this new normal, there are two paths we can take. One leads to an expanded sense of community, positively influenced by a diversity of sights, sounds and relationships that come from global migration. The second, darker path is more insular, narrowed by fears of immigration.

These days, it feels like America has chosen the second path where leaders are quick to sow seeds of xenophobia and division. The seeds that lead to cultural, security and economic fears define the questions that polarize the nation’s immigration debate:

Culture: Are immigrants and refugees isolating or integrating? Do they live in isolated enclaves, or are they immersed in the community, learning English and becoming American?
Security: Are immigrants and refugees threats or protectors? Are they national security or public safety threats, or do they make positive contributions to communities, even serving in law enforcement and in the military?
Economy: Are immigrants and refugees takers or givers? Are they taking jobs and benefits, or are they economic contributors?

Rather than help Americans understand and facilitate the cultural and economic changes around them, supporters of immigration ignore these questions, while anti-immigrant forces weaponize them. Yet, we observed that when Living Room Conversations participants were able to voice their fears and feel heard, the discussion migrated away from division towards solutions.

Changing course requires us to understand the broader context of demographic change, the fears Americans have, and, more importantly, how to acknowledge and address those fears. Only then can America live up to the ideal of e pluribus, unum – “out of many, one.”

A Changing Nation

In a historical context, what we’re experiencing is not new. In 1890 and again in 1910, U.S foreign-born residents and citizens made up at least 14.7 percent of the nation’s population. Decades of xenophobia and political backlash followed the 1910 crest, resulting in multiple laws restricting immigration. Today, with 13.7 percent of the United States’ current population being foreign born, we are at a similar inflection point . What lies ahead depends on how Americans think about and engage with community.

Today, more than 40 million U.S. residents and citizens were born in another country. And, while immigration of generations past diversified the ethnic makeup of the nation, modern day immigration has made today’s America more racially and ethnically diverse than ever before. The Pew Research Center paints a colorful statistical portrait of America in 2016 where Mexican immigrants accounted for 26 percent of the nation’s foreign born, with the next largest origin groups are those from China (6 percent), India (6 percent), and the Philippines (4 percent). And America will only become more diverse in the years ahead, with Asians as a whole projected to become the largest immigrant group by 2055.

The diversification of America’s communities is not wholly dependent on future immigration. In fact, new U.S. Census estimates found that for the first time, in 2013 over half of babies born in the U.S. were non-white. Which means, “non-Hispanic whites will cease to be the majority group by 2044.

The challenge is that the combination of demographic and economic changes is hard to unpack for Americans who see their community and their livelihood changing at the same time.

For recent generations of Americans, a diverse America is the reality they were born into. But, for the nation’s Baby Boomers — those born between 1946 and 1964 — these were tectonic shifts that rattled their economic and social framework. In 1960, 88.6 percent of the U.S. population was white, dropping to 72.4 percent in 2010. In 1970, 4.5 percent of the nation’s population was Hispanic. Just 40 years later the Hispanic population quadrupled to 16.3 percent.

In the 1990’s, as the nation’s immigrant population began to grow, the Baby Boomer generation peaked at 78.8 million. At this point, Baby Boomers were between 25 and 45 years old, and beginning to start their families, worrying about college tuition and job prospects for their children. And along comes immigration and globalization to fundamentally reshape their socioeconomic reality.

As American Action Forum President Douglas Holtz-Eakin said in 2016 before the House Ways and Means Committee, from World War II to 2007, the economy grew fast enough that GDP per capita — a crude measure of the standard of living — doubled on average every 35 years, or one working career. Coming out of 2008’s Great Recession, projections indicated that it would double every 75 years. And, in 2016, those households that worked full-time for the full year saw zero increase in their real incomes. As Holtz-Eakin put it, “The American Dream is disappearing over the horizon.” For many Americans experiencing this new reality, particularly as their children came of working age, immigration was a source of competition, not of optimism.

It isn’t hard to see why Americans are feeling stress and anxiety about their future. Demographic, economic and cultural shifts lead them to question their sense of community and turn too quickly to blame immigrants as the source of their problems. Our politics track this anxiety as the generational and geographic divide between political parties grows. So much so that the difference in generational diversity is driving not only a competing sense of community, but divergent political priorities.

Our starting point in this case is the fact that nearly half of Americans under the age of 20 are minority, while over three-quarters of those 65 and older are non-Hispanic white. William Frey, a Brookings Institution demographer, writes, “The rapid growth of minorities from the ‘bottom up’ of the age structure is creating a racial generation gap between the old and young that reflects the nation’s changing demography.” He finds that 75 percent of the population over age 55 is white, while 54 percent of those under age 35 are white – a “gap” of 21 percent, nationally. As a result, the lived experience of Baby Boomers is fundamentally different than Millennials; a difference that lays the foundation for very different perspectives on community.

Most importantly, Frey finds, “The gap is especially high in states that that have received recent waves of new minority residents to counter more established old whiter populations: Arizona leads all states with a gap of 33 percent.” Nevada, New Mexico, Florida and California round out the top five. With the exception of New Mexico, all five states have been the epicenter of heated immigration debates as older voters pressure lawmakers to clamp down on immigration through a range of local enforcement policies.

To state the obvious, our changing nation has changed our politics. The echo chamber nature of our political debate creates bubbles where perceptions of community are narrow and divisive. Driven by primary elections, policy makers have little incentive to explain these changes to their electorate, much less reach out beyond their base. As a result, a racial and geographic divide to our politics settles in.

Luzerne County, which includes and surrounds Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, provides a 2016 election example. The county’s diversity index — which measures the variance of the racial and origin-based composition of a given population — increased by 360 percent from 2000 to 2015. It was one of the counties that saw a dramatic swing from blue to red in 2016. President Barack Obama carried Luzerne County by nearly 5 percentage points in 2012. Four years later, based on a campaign defined by racial and geographic fearmongering, President Trump carried the county by more than 19 points.

The racial gap between the parties grew in 2018. While 54 percent of whites voted for Republicans, African Americans, Latinos and Asians voted for Democrats at 90 percent, 64 percent and 69 percent, respectively. And, geographically speaking, urban and suburban voters preferred Democratic candidates, while voters in small towns and rural places favored Republicans.

Estimates indicate that by 2040, approximately 70 percent of Americans will live in the 15 largest states. Even as New York City, Los Angeles and Houston continue to see population growth, 30 percent of the country’s population — living in smaller states without major metropolitan centers — will hold disproportionate electoral power. Unless political and civic leaders have strategies to help communities understanding the changes they see (or read about), political dysfunction will lead to national tension.

Coming of age in big cities that include a greater range of economic opportunities, many (mostly liberal) Americans are insulated from the demographic and cultural changes Americans in suburban or rural communities struggle with. Diverse, urban environments have been built over generations, and the changes there have been steady and gradual. While not perfect or easy, cities allow youth and families to familiarize themselves with the idea of diversity. Over time, it becomes the norm as institutions in urban areas shape, and were shaped by, the diversity of the populations they served or engaged.

Suburban and rural parts of the country, home to an older and white population, with less access to the spoils of the technology economy, experienced these demographic changes more recently, and more dramatically. The changes that took place were proportionately larger, faster, and more acute – and accompanied changes as the global economy shifted. Demographic changes became a proxy for economic disruption.

Unless we change course, the political divide between young and old, rural and urban, will only widen as migration pressures are exacerbated by continuing economic shifts. Needless to say, the need for a different understanding of the American community has a certain level of urgency.

With or without immigration, the American community is becoming more diverse. As Richard Longworth of the Chicago Council for Global Affairs put it, “You can’t build a wall against hormones.” Which means we are not going to return to the Baby Boomer definition of America.

So charting a viable path toward compromise and common purpose requires us to meet people where they are, understanding the origins of their hopes and fears and reactions to their fast-changing communities. Our current politics and politicians limit the opportunities to do this kind of work. Ultimately, we must work together to hold elected officials from both parties accountable for divisive rhetoric.

Understanding the Fears

Deepened understanding of these fears and anxieties starts with careful listening. The National Immigration Forum works to engage conservative and moderate faith, law enforcement and business leaders living in the Southeast, South Central, Midwest and Mountain West, regions that have experienced some of the fastest growth in the foreign-born population and are struggling with the political and cultural changes that come with it.

In the sprint of 2018, Forum staff traveled to dozens of rural and suburban communities in conservative regions of the country to convene “Living Room Conversations.” We tapped into our networks of faith, law enforcement and business leaders to recruit 10-15 participants per conversation in order to better understand how conservative leaning rural and suburban communities perceived a changing America. A discussion guide designed by a team of researchers helped us lead robust and open conversations that included themes of identity, community and polarization, and perceptions about immigrants.

We launched this learning campaign to test our hypothesis that Americans grapple with three specific fears that lead to critical questions of our changing sense of community:

To complement our findings, we partnered with More in Common, an international initiative to build stronger and more resilient communities and societies, which had just completed an exhaustive quantitative survey of the American public. More in Common’s report, “Hidden Tribes : A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape,” provides greater texture to these issues. Rather than a typical conservative versus liberal categorization of the public, their research led to a segmentation of the American public into seven tribes. Four of the tribes, they concluded, are a part of the “Exhausted Majority.”

More in Common’s findings aligned with the results of our Living Room Conversations, “Unsettling changes in our economy and society have left many Americans feeling like strangers in their own land.” They defined the Exhausted Majority as being:

Fed up with the polarization plaguing American government and society
Feeling forgotten in the public discourse, overlooked because their voices are seldom heard
Flexible in their views, willing to endorse different policies according to the precise situation rather than sticking ideologically to a single set of beliefs
Believe we can find common ground

Just because the Exhausted Majority is, well, exhausted, it doesn’t mean they agree on the issues. Their views on issues range across the spectrum but they are turned off by polarization, feel disregarded in the public discourse, and are flexible in their views. So, while there are certainly a large number of Americans trying to find consensus on our nation’s changing communities, finding that consensus requires careful listening.

As the authors wrote, “It would be a mistake to think of the Exhausted Majority merely as a group of political centrists, at least in the way that term is traditionally understood. They do not simply represent a midpoint between the warring tribes of the left and right. They are frustrated with the status quo and the conduct of American politics and public debate.”

This mirrors what we saw in our 26 Living Room Conversations across the country in 2018. Participants wanted leaders to hear their concerns. They sought information they can trust. And there was an unambiguous desire to rise above polarization and divisiveness in order to build coalitions and advance overdue policy reforms.

Before specific fears or anxieties came to the fore, questions of identity undergirded the conversation.

Francis Fukuyama wrote that the nation’s identity crisis is exacerbated by the perception of invisibility. “The resentful citizens fearing the loss of their middle-class status point an accusatory finger upward to the elite, who they believe do not see them, but also downward to the poor, who they feel are unfairly favored.” Therefore, “Economic distress is often perceived by individuals more as a loss of identity than as a loss of resources.

The perception that one’s job is going to be taken by the Mexican next door, or the Mexican in Mexico, creates a deep distrust of demographic change and the elites who seem so comfortable with it. Again, perception melds into reality and our political leaders are ill equipped to navigate the changes – or, more often, exploit the changes to divide rather than unite the electorate.

Fukuyama goes on, “The rightward drift also reflects the failure of contemporary left-leaning parties to speak to people whose relative status has fallen as a result of globalization and technological change.” The nation’s changes are much bigger than demography.

The authors of a new book, Identity Crisis, define “racialized economics” as “the belief that undeserving groups are getting ahead while your group is left behind.” As Washington Post columnist Dan Balz explained, “Issues of identity — race, religion, gender and ethnicity — and not economics were the driving forces that determined how people voted, particularly white voters.” We know from recent data that 69 percent of Americans — including 56 percent of Republicans — believe immigrants are “an important part of American identity.” But what shines through in our work, whether it was the Living Room Conversations or our broader approach, is that the when you localize the concept of “identity,” the term speaks as much to people’s hopes as to their fears.

“You’re a little bit of everything, and that’s really what America is … and that is the beauty and some of the angst in America … that you don’t want to give up your heritage.”

In Corpus Christi, Texas, we heard about the loss of American identity, while in Memphis, Tennessee, we heard that the church can be a powerful entity that organizes efforts to build transformative and inclusive national identities. In Gainesville, Florida, a man told us that “we are tribal and can’t handle difference,” whereas up the road in Tallahassee, we heard, “One of America’s proudest and most beautiful things is that it is a melting pot of cultures.” In Bentonville, Arkansas, a participant remarked, “You’re a little bit of everything, and that’s really what America is … and that is the beauty and some of the angst in America … that you don’t want to give up your heritage.”

Identity also speaks to a person’s community; which, at times, is different from the idea of an American identity. Numerous participants told us their identities were tied to their local communities, their neighborhoods, their sense of place. In Texas, unsurprisingly, there was a strong affinity with the idea of being “a Texan.” And Bentonville had a deep sense of civic pride when participants talked about the community’s growing diversity. Overlooking people’s economic concerns would be an error, but so would underestimating the power of identity as it underlies broader fears and anxieties people have.

With change taking hold all around them, we watched law enforcement officers, small business owners, and pastors — in real time — soul-searching, exploring what these changes mean to their own identities. Those who were hopeful saw their identities connected to larger themes of values and ideals. Those who were fearful found themselves in the midst of “an identity crisis.” But if they felt heard, if their opinion mattered, the tension melted out of the room.

So, why does the imperative to help America reimagine a sense of community in this global environment feel so challenging?

We need to move past binary arguments that attempt to delineate between race and class concerns. As our work has demonstrated, Americans experience immigration in a much more complicated way; our explanation of immigration, and engagement of the public, has to be just as complex.

Culture: Are immigrants integrating or isolating?

While cultural concerns are linked to identity, participants spoke to them in the context of a changing country, not always how they identified within those changes. For some participants, issues of race and ethnicity were central. For others, language determined whether an immigrant was integrating into American culture. Diversity and inclusion were also a consistent theme; as one participant in Fresno, California, said, “We don’t celebrate diversity … and too often it’s been us and them.”

A participant in El Paso, Texas, captured the tension between cultural integration: “It’s just easy to be American, and that is what this country is about, that we assimilate and unite as Americans … and I see that as a problem with some immigrants that want to isolate themselves and try to continue their own cultural behaviors — styles and behaviors … while they want to take advantage of the privileges of America … ”

In Appleton, Wisconsin, we heard that immigration “grows our culture, makes us more educated, [and] better people.” In Lubbock, Texas, a participant remarked, “I think [immigrants] bring a lot to our community by way of service and family values.” But in Las Vegas, Nevada, we heard that although immigrants are viewed as patriotic and hardworking, there were anxieties around a loss of cultural and language unity.

The conversations echoed More in Common’s findings: that freedom, equality and the American Dream are beliefs that make someone American, and that the ability to speak English can be valued as an important marker of American identity.

Security: Are immigrants threats or protectors?

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, security and terrorism concerns have loomed large in the nation’s immigration debate. More recently, the administration’s enforcement actions at the border and in the interior, along with progressive efforts to “Abolish ICE” and create “sanctuary cities,” have further polarized the debate. As the Trump administration falsely conflates immigration, terrorism and crime in order to achieve political goals, voters are left looking for information they can trust.

Our conversations indicated that personal relationships mitigated fears that center on security. People were willing to extend the benefit of the doubt to the “good” immigrants they knew. But many participants indicated that portrayals of immigrants as security threats are pervasive throughout the media. Therefore, even if people believe that such portrayals are misleading, what they read in the newspaper or saw on the television influenced their opinions.

Some 65 percent of Americans, including 42 percent of Republicans, do not believe that undocumented immigrants are more likely to commit serious crimes, according to Pew Research. This maps to reports that show, “immigrants are much less likely to commit crimes than the native-born.”

In the border town of El Paso, we observed a tension between some Americans wrestling with a desire to be compassionate as they fear threats posed by unauthorized immigration. The conversation in Mesa, Arizona, which included a handful of local law enforcement officers, revealed that although issues of legality and criminality continue to plague local residents’ perceptions and attitudes, participants generally agreed that immigrants do not pose an increased security threat. In Parker, Colorado, the sense among participants was that the broader community did believe immigrants posed a security threat.

Security fears are difficult to overcome. Even if someone feels immigrants are not a threat, one tragic incident, one hyperbolic headline, can plant a seed of doubt. All of which underscores the importance of local law enforcement in the conversation about the changing American community.

We often hear that immigrants have a bootstraps mentality — they work as hard as they can to build a better life. Data suggest that these participants are echoing national sentiment. A 2017 Gallup Poll found that 45 percent of Americans believe immigrants make the economy better overall, compared with 30 percent who believe immigrants make the economy worse overall. It’s a sentiment that lines up with the contributions immigrants make to the U.S. economy: According to New American Economy, immigrants paid $105 billion in state and local taxes, and around $224 billion in federal taxes, in 2014.

Participants in southern border communities, where the economy is closely tied to Mexico and to immigration, recognized the economic benefit of immigration. In San Marcos, California, participants saw that the economy is dependent on the ability of businesses to buy and sell in both the U.S. and Mexico. There was general agreement among participants in Corpus Christi that immigrants were an economic benefit. On the other hand, thousands of miles from the border in Spartanburg, South Carolina, participants remarked that some in the community invoked the economy as a reason to close borders and deport people here without authorization.

Fears related to the economy can be persistent. We can address questions of culture and security only to have questions about jobs and trade linger. Business leaders, at the national or local level, can help Americans understand a changing community when they partner with other civic leadership. Speaking to American competitiveness and growth in a fashion that serves all workers, American and immigrant, helps people understand the value of immigration to the nation. When the message is immigrant-centric, people feel left out of the conversation, believing elites are looking for cheaper workers.

Changing Hearts and Minds

More in Common concluded, “To bring Americans back together, we need to focus first on those things that we share, and this starts with our identity as Americans.” Questions of race, religion, and patriotism led to competing frames that pushed people apart. But, “One belief that brings Americans together is a sense that the country is special.”

We observed that when Living Room Conversations participants with different religious or political beliefs felt that their individual concerns were being heard, the tension in their voices dissipated, and their faces brightened. The discussions turned towards solutions, not divisions. In our conversations, we saw the same theme More in Common found in their data: a need for new approaches and a different conversation on immigration that helps people come together.

Taken together, the Living Room Conversations left us with a powerful realization: American identity is being reshaped as perceptions related to culture, security and the economy are shifting. Quickly changing demographics are not solely responsible; the industries of the past are giving way to the industries of the future, and the transition from a post-industrial to a knowledge-based economy is disruptive. New technologies, social norms and conventions are accentuating the way many Americans view issues such as immigration. When it comes to identity in the context of culture, security, and the economy, there is both optimism and concern.

“It’s very easy to hate from a distance,” one participant in Spartanburg said. But as people get to know the immigrant family next door, at their child’s Little League games, or one pew over at church, they come to understand them, appreciate them, love them and value their individual contributions to the larger American story. The challenge in front of us is whether we can bridge the personal relationships with a broader perception of immigrants.

Which leads to the foundational question: What actually changes people’s hearts and minds? It is easy to assume, and a lot of social change campaigns do, that if you can change someone’s attitude or emotion towards something, you can change behavior. But that isn’t really true, or, at least it’s not the whole picture.

From the Theory of Planned Behavior we learn that campaigns that focus solely on creating an emotional reaction, shifting an attitude or even creating empathy, don’t tend to have sustained and lasting effects on behavior. In other words, the emotionally gripping story of a mother seeking asylum or a successful immigrant business owner offers a fleeting sense of what is possible. And in this media environment, that moment is quickly replaced by the next headline.

Taking a step back to offer an audience an emotion, attitude or empathetic moment connected to an underlying belief or value, allows for a conversation about change that can be sustained. And when that value or belief is connected to a person’s self-perception and connected to the norms of their community, there is potential for behavioral change.

The new normal is a fast changing, fast moving world that impacts the way Americans see themselves and each other. And, at least for the foreseeable future, the fears of migration and immigration will continue to be exploited for political gain.

Few politicians can step into this fray unless they are willing to cross partisan lines. Which is hard to imagine these days.

But local leadership — the pastor, the police chief, the local business owner – have the potential to bridge the divide. These are the trusted messengers who can operate within the networks of friends and family that are some of the most trusted places in society.

They are the local leadership with the trust and the credibility to help Americans understand the shifting nature of community in the context of global migration. They are trusted leadership who can meet people where they are, but not leave them there.

About the Author

Ali Noorani

Ali Noorani is the Executive Director of the National Immigration Forum, a non-partisan advocacy organization working with faith, law enforcement and business leaders to promote the value of immigrants and immigration. Growing up in California as the son of Pakistani immigrants, Noorani quickly learned how to forge alliances among people of wide-ranging backgrounds, a skill that has served him extraordinarily well as one of the nation’s most innovative coalition builders. Noorani is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, holds a Master’s in Public Health from Boston University and is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. Noorani is a regular contributor to Boston Public Radio, the author of “There Goes the Neighborhood: How Communities Overcome Prejudice and Meet the Challenge of American Immigration,” (Prometheus, April 2017) and host of “Only in America” podcast. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Click here to download essay and view full footnote references . The author’s views expressed in this essay are his own.

you may also be interested in…

Sign up for our newsletter

Submit your email. Receive updates and the @knightfdn newsletter.

American Dream

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

Corporate Finance Institute - American Dream
Brookings - Is the American dream really dead?
Humanities LibreTexts - The American Dream

Recent News

American Dream , ideal that the United States is a land of opportunity that allows the possibility of upward mobility , freedom , and equality for people of all classes who work hard and have the will to succeed.

The roots of the American Dream lie in the goals and aspirations of the first European settlers and colonizers . Most of these people came to the North American continent to escape tyranny , religious and political persecution, or poverty . In 1776 their reasons for coming were captured by the Founders in the Declaration of Independence : “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These lines have often been cited by groups seeking equal standing in American society.

While the idea of the American Dream may have originated well before 1776, the phrase itself was coined by American businessman and historian James Truslow Adams in his 1931 book The Epic of America . That work defines the past and future of the American Dream, which, according to Adams, is:

“not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

To Adams, the American Dream is about aspiring to be one’s best self and to rise above the station one was born into. It is not about simply acquiring wealth and material possessions.

Despite Adams’s optimism about the United States as a land of opportunity, his book warns of flaws in the American way of life. It calls out the dangers of unbridled capitalism and mass consumption . The worker, he wrote, gets “into a treadmill in which he earns, not that he may enjoy, but that he may spend, in order that the owners of the factories may grow richer.” Adams’s book also cites dangers to “the intellectual worker” who must adjust his or her work “to the needs of business or mass consumption.” The result of this accommodation, according to Adams, “is to lower the quality of…thought,” as represented in newspapers and journals, “to that of the least common denominator of the minds of the millions of consumers.” In addition, Adams’s book calls out the devotion to accumulation of wealth without regard for the good of society:

“A system that steadily increases the gulf between the ordinary man and the super-rich, that permits the resources of society to be gathered into personal fortunes that afford their owners millions of income a year, with only the chance that here and there a few may be moved to confer some of their surplus upon the public in ways chosen wholly by themselves, is assuredly a wasteful and unjust system. It is, perhaps, as inimical as anything could be to the American dream.”

What Adams foresaw appears to have become a reality in 21st-century America: consumerism and materialism abound, threatening the environment and the political structure. Intellectualism has become tribalized. The gulf between rich and poor continues to increase. In addition, it is becoming more and more difficult to attain the American Dream for many people, including religious and ethnic minorities , women, and the poor. Hard work alone is often not enough for families or their children to get ahead, especially if they are low-wage earners. Black and Hispanic women are least likely to move upward. In fact, roughly one in six Black Americans do not believe in the American Dream at all. Certain areas of the country, in particular the Southeast and the Midwestern Rust Belt , have trended much lower in economic mobility than other areas. According to one study, 92 percent of children born in 1940 earned more money than their parents. However, only 50 percent of children born in the 1980s have done so. Sentiment among Millennials , Generation Z , and Generation X , as captured in a 2020 opinion poll , reflected these trends, indicating that 46 percent, 52 percent, and 53 percent of each group, respectively, felt that the American Dream is attainable. On the basis of these trends, policy groups are working to improve the probability of upward mobility in the United States.

While the American Dream may be increasingly difficult to attain in the United States, the idea has arguably been exported successfully. Around the world, people are fulfilling their own version of the American Dream. Many countries are working toward more-just economic, educational, and legal systems to support equality and upward mobility .

Round House Theatre’s ‘Sojourners’ argues immigration is vital to the American Dream

Jason Fraley | [email protected]

September 11, 2024, 3:16 PM

Share This:
share on facebook
share on threads
share on linkedin
share on email

Immigration is front and center in the heartfelt new dramatic play “Sojourners,” which opens Wednesday night at the prolific Round House Theatre in Bethesda, Maryland, running now through Oct. 6.

“It’s a timely topic,” director Valerie Curtis-Newton told WTOP. “There’s a lot of conversation about immigration that doesn’t take into account how many folks really love where they came from. They come here for education, to move ahead economically, many go back or send money back, and they contribute to our society. It’s not a one-way transaction. It’s a give and take that makes America stronger to have new ideas and different perspectives woven into the fabric of our country.”

The story follows a pregnant woman named Abasiama and her husband Ukpong, a pair of Nigerian immigrants studying and living in Houston in 1978. Ukpong is excited by the promises of America and grows to love their new home, while Abasiama becomes homesick and increasingly frustrated by Ukpong’s frequent absences.

More Entertainment News

Grammy-winner Debby Boone to perform at Rams Head in Annapolis on Sept. 21

“They had an arranged marriage and they come to the U.S.,” Curtis-Newton said. “One of them is in love with the country and the other one still hungers for home, so the idea of how they work together to settle that tension in their relationship and what the experiences are for each of them is the heart of what the play is about. … A sojourn is a temporary stay. … That’s one of the tensions: whether to go home or to not go home.”

Similar to August Wilson’s “Pittsburgh Cycle” of 10 plays, “Soujourners” is the first in an epic nine-part “Ufot Cycle” depicting the Nigerian-American experience . It’s written by playwright Mfoniso Udofia, who grew up in Massachusetts with parents who immigrated from Nigeria. You might recognize her writing from “Little America” (Apple), “A League of Their Own” (Prime), “Let the Right One In” (Showtime) and “13 Reasons Why” (Netflix).

“This play ‘Sojourners’ is actually the first in the cycle, it’s the origin story. all of the foundational characters are present in this play, so we see them arrive here and wrestle with what it is to be an immigrant,” Curtis-Newton said. “I think Episode 3 of ‘Little America’ actually is the story of a Nigerian immigrant who came here to go to college, so there are a lot of themes and ideas in that show that are present in our play.”

Find ticket information here.

Listen to our full conversation here.

Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here .

Hailed by The Washington Post for “his savantlike ability to name every Best Picture winner in history," Jason Fraley began at WTOP as Morning Drive Writer in 2008, film critic in 2011 and Entertainment Editor in 2014, providing daily arts coverage on-air and online.

202-895-5115

Related News

Taylor Swift wins top honor at the MTV Video Music Awards, thanks boyfriend Travis Kelce and urges fans to vote

Frankie Beverly, the Maze singer who inspired generations of fans with lasting anthems, dies at 77

Music Review: Nilüfer Yanya returns with the vibrant, spare and breathtaking ‘My Method Actor’

Recommended.

Pedestrian bridge project near Battlefield High School may be in jeopardy

Jon Bon Jovi helps talk woman down from ledge on Nashville bridge

Arlington reports success in recruiting substitute teachers using updated approach

Related categories:.

A photo illustration shows a two-storey house inside of a bubble that is popping. It is against a blue background.

The American Dream Without a House? Believe It

As housing costs soar, younger adults are trying to reimagine prosperity — without the white picket fence.

Credit... Photo illustration by Pablo Delcan

Supported by

Share full article

By Anna Kodé

Published Sept. 7, 2024 Updated Sept. 8, 2024

“American Dream Properties” is the name of a McMansion developer in New Jersey. About a decade ago, Arlington, Texas, rebranded itself as “The American Dream City,” promising “diverse neighborhoods where the housing dollar stretches further than most cities.” At a campaign rally in York County, Pa., last month, Donald J. Trump said, “We’re going to bring back a thing called the American dream.”

The American dream symbolizes many abstract ideals: hard work, assimilation, equal opportunity. But for generations it has meant one particular path in life: Get a job, save up for a down payment, and achieve the fairy-tale ending of domestic bliss and monthly mortgage payments.

Now, though, with soaring housing costs — along with student loan debt and inflation — homeownership is becoming increasingly inaccessible for young Americans. As of June, according to Redfin, nearly one in 10 homes in the country were worth $1 million or more — a share that more than doubled since June 2019. And as prices rise, people are becoming first-time homeowners later in life. In a 2023 report from the National Association of Realtors, the median age for a first-time home buyer was 35. In 1981, it was 29.

Even before the current housing crisis, people have been arguing that the American dream was disappearing, deteriorating, dying or dead. But perhaps it is simply changing.

Over the past month, I’ve been speaking with millennials and zoomers across the country to learn how they think about the American dream. My survey was nonscientific, but it dovetailed with recent polling: Many of the people I spoke with expressed how today’s exorbitantly high prices have made homeownership feel unattainable, and that in such an uncertain world — plagued by pandemics, political turmoil, war, climate change and other disasters — it felt foolish to pinch pennies for the goal of one day buying property. Instead, many young people are placing more value on community and family, growing their wealth in other ways, or spending more on everyday pleasures.

When the concept of the American dream first emerged, it was meant to be an ideal for people to mold into whatever fit their lives. Over time, it became a more rigid model, cementing homeownership at its core. Now, young Americans have been forced into a turning point for the American dream, one that might not have a house in it at all.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber? Log in .

Want all of The Times? Subscribe .

Winter 2021

The State of the American Dream

The American Dream is Also About Generosity and Respect

The American dream is centered around the idea that if you work hard, you can “make it” in the United States. But hard work alone isn’t always enough — sometimes you just need the help of kind strangers.

In The Epic of America , James Truslow Adams defined the American dream as “a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement.”

I have studied political systems, but more uniquely, I have lived in both North Korea and the United States, so the differences between having freedom and opportunity, and not, are clear to me.

I believe that democracy and a market-based economy are the best means of creating the kind of land Adams described, one in which there is equal opportunity and a fair distribution of wealth. Liberal democracy ensures equal opportunity to participate in a larger society by rewarding people with talents, skills, and competence, not based on perceived loyalty toward those in power. Similarly, a market-based economy warrants fairer access to wealth based on merit, not based on one’s connection to power.

Let me clear, though: I did not achieve the American dream solely upon my merits. The American dream I have experienced was not just about meritocracy but also about the generosity and grace of strangers.

I did not achieve the American dream solely upon my merits. The American dream I have experienced was not just about meritocracy but also about the generosity and grace of strangers.

The American dream also means different things for different people. For some people, it is about getting a high-paying salary, having a great family, and becoming a lawyer or doctor.

For me, I dreamed of going to a college in the United States. My father always encouraged me to get a good education, although I never was a good student. In fact, I failed many classes. But since he literally sacrificed his life for my family by giving us what little food he had, I decided to honor his death by pursuing a college degree once I got to America.

Escaping North Korea

Hannah Song, CEO of Liberty in North Korea, joined Joseph Kim on The Strategerist podcast, where they discussed the situation in North Korea and how Joseph was able to escape — with LiNK’s help.

Achieving that dream was not easy, as I came to the United States from a humble background in North Korea, where I was left homeless and orphaned. Nor did I reach my dream because of my effort and ability alone.

I came to America thanks to the work of an organization called Liberty in North Korea (LINK), which helps to ensure refugees safe and free passage out of China to South Korea and the United States.

Once here, I grew up in a foster family, where I had the opportunity to finish high school and pursue higher education. Along the way, I also had friends, mentors, and family who helped me rise when I fell.

I went to a four-year college with a generous scholarship. And it was possible because of generous people who helped me with my college application, revising essays, and writing recommendation letters.

I recently reconnected via email with a person who wrote my recommendation letter. He wrote back and said, “It was a pleasure to connect you to Bard College and I am so happy that they offered you a full scholarship. My family was poor, and I could not have had the education I did without full scholarships, so I know what a difference it can make.”

This person grew up in South Carolina with no heritage or cultural connection to Korea. All he knew was that I, too, could benefit from scholarships and the opportunity to pursue higher education.,

Of course, others are not as fortunate as I have been. For some people, the American dream remains an illusion. In its “Economic Mobility: Is the American Dream Alive and Well?” report, The Pew Charitable Trusts Initiative describes how access to equal opportunity is constrained by economic mobility, which is defined by “personal or family incomes.”

In other words, the gap between the rich and poor too often shapes whether people actually can participate in the dream that Adams described nearly a century ago. Depending upon one’s economic circumstances, an individual’s hard work, effort, and merit may not always lead to success.

To me, the American dream is more than an economic dream, though . Generosity, respect, and recognition of others are part of this dream, too. And rich or poor, educated or not educated, each one of us has the capacity and the responsibility to protect this dream for the good of others.

Rich or poor, educated or not educated, each one of us has the capacity and the responsibility to protect this dream for the good of others.

Previous Article The Values of Hard Work and Servant Leadership A Conversation with USAF Maj. Gen. Alfred Flowers (Ret.)
Next Article Surviving or Thriving? What It Takes for Immigrants to Succeed An Essay by Farhat Popal, Immigrant Affairs Manager for the City of San Diego

Trump pushes baseless claim about immigrants 'eating the pets'

Former President Donald Trump, during Tuesday’s presidential debate , repeated a baseless and sensationalist claim about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating dogs and other pets.

"They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats," Trump said during an answer to a question about immigration. "They're eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what's happening in our country, and it's a shame."

Trump's answer was among the most extraordinary of the first 30 minutes of the debate: a former U.S. president spreading an internet rumor — one labeled by some of his critics as racist — in front of an audience of millions of Americans. The comment illustrated the rapid spread of misinformation in today's media ecosystem.

David Muir, the ABC News anchor co-moderating the debate, immediately fact-checked Trump's claims, saying that the city manager in Springfield, Ohio, told the network there had been no credible reports of pets being harmed, injured or abused by people in the city's immigrant community.

Baseless rumors have spread on social media for days claiming that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are abducting and eating pets. Most of the rumors involve Springfield, which has a large number of Haitian immigrants, but police there released a statement Monday knocking down the stories and saying they hadn’t seen any documented examples.

“There have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community,” the police said in a statement.

Republicans including Ohio Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, have pointed to the claims as evidence that immigrants are causing chaos. Vance, though, hedged in a statement on X earlier Tuesday, saying, “It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.”

The claims about pets were based in part on vague social media posts, including one fourth-hand story posted in a Facebook group devoted to local crime, as well as statements at public meetings , where residents spoke about violence against animals without providing evidence.

Springfield Mayor Rob Rue repeated Tuesday that the city had no documented cases of immigrants eating pets.

“Rumors like these are taking away from the real issues such as housing concerns, resources needed for our schools and our overwhelmed health care system,” he said at a meeting of the city commission.

Rue said that one alleged case of someone attacking a cat — falsely attributed to a Haitian immigrant in Springfield — actually occurred 160 miles away in Canton, Ohio. And the defendant there charged with animal cruelty has no known connection to Haiti, according to T he Canton Repository newspaper.

The topic of immigration took center stage at Tuesday’s city commission meeting in Springfield. At the meeting, resident Nathan Clark, whose 11-year-old son was killed last year when a minivan driven by a Haitian immigrant struck his school bus, denounced Republican politicians who he said were using his deceased son Aiden as “a political tool” to fuel anti-immigrant hatred.

Immigration is a potent subject in the presidential face. In an NBC News poll in April, 22% of voters put immigration and the border as the most important issue facing the country, second only to inflation and the cost of living at 23%.

John Kirby, the White House’s national security spokesperson, denounced the claims about Haitians in Ohio as a dangerous conspiracy theory that could inspire anti-immigrant violence.

“There will be people that believe it no matter how ludicrous and stupid it is, and they might act on that kind of information and act on it in a way where somebody could get hurt,” Kirby told reporters Tuesday.

Trump's comments about pets was one of a variety of claims and allegations that drew from rumors and conspiracy theories.

In an exchange about immigration, Trump referenced false rumors about a Venezuelan gang taking over an apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado — claims that have been debunked by local officials while spreading widely on right-wing media channels.

Then, in a series of statements before the second commercial break, Trump alluded to conspiracy theories about the influence of foreign money on the Biden administration.

“You know, Biden doesn’t go after people because, supposedly, China paid millions of dollars,” he said. “He’s afraid to do it — between him and his son, they get all this money from Ukraine. They get all this money from all of these different countries. And then you wonder why is he so loyal to this one, that one, Ukraine, China? Why did he get $3.5 million from the mayor of Moscow’s wife? Why did she pay him $3.5 million? This is a crooked administration, and they’re selling our country down the tubes.”

But none of those claims appear to be grounded in fact. The most concrete point appears to be a debunked claim that Hunter Biden received $3.5 million from the wife of the former mayor of Moscow. The claim was included in a Republican report but without any evidence.

Daniel Arkin is a national reporter at NBC News.

David Ingram is a tech reporter for NBC News.

IMAGES

Changing the American Dream of Immigrants and African Americans
The American Dream Essay (Example Completed in 2022)
📗 The American Dream Essay Example
⇉Immigrants and American Dream Essay Example
Immigrants and their Ideas of the American Dream
The american dream

COMMENTS

The 'American Dream' from immigrants' perspectives
The 'American Dream' from immigrants' perspectives. Jan. 28, 2022 at 10:35 am Updated Jan. 28, 2022 at 11:35 am. By. Russ Perman. Special to The Times. On the popular television series ...
The American Dream for Immigrants: [Essay Example], 668 words
The struggles of moving from a place you are so used to, to being received into a place that will "give" you a better future is something so different. Freelance writer James Truslow Adams popularized the phrase 'American Dream' in his 1931 book Epic of America. This man popularized the phrase and people lived up to it.
The State of the American Dream
The Resilience of Immigrants is Rebuilding America An Essay by Rebecca Shi, Executive Director of the American Business Immigration Coalition; Unfinished Dreams: A Family's Hardships in America An Essay by Julissa Arce, Author of My (Underground) American Dream and Co-founder of the Ascend Educational Fund
My immigrant family achieved the American dream. Then I started ...
1) The American dream isn't the result of hard work. It's the result of hard work, luck, and opportunity. Looking back, I can't discount the sacrifices my family made to get where we are ...
Column: We need immigrants more than ever. They keep hope in this
Immigrants to the U.S. face extensive challenges, but they still report high levels of optimism about their futures and trust in American institutions, a comprehensive survey has found. Sept. 17, 2023
Waking Up from the American Dream
The Dream, it turned out, needed to demonize others in order to help the chosen few. Our parents, too, would be sacrificed. The price of our innocence was the guilt of our loved ones. Jeff ...
A Brief History of the American Dream
The State of the American Dream Editor's Note by Brittney Bain, Editor of The Catalyst; Keeping the American Dream Alive A Conversation with former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan; Transforming Lives and Creating Opportunity for At-Risk Youth A Conversation with Chad Houser, Founder, CEO, and Executive Chef at Café Momentum; Grit and Community are Key to Reaching Full Potential An Essay by ...
PDF THE AMERICAN DREAM: FROM A LATINO PERSPECTIVE
the phrase 'American Dream' that will evidence the realities of the struggles for those who aim to achieve the American dream, specifically, Latino immigrants in the U.S. According to a study conducted by Pew Research, Latinos are more likely than the general U.S. public to believe in the American Dream and to agree that with hard work,
Essay on American Dream For Immigrants
500 Words Essay on American Dream For Immigrants The Idea of the American Dream. The American Dream is a famous idea in the United States. It is the belief that anyone, no matter where they come from, can be successful in America. This dream often includes having a good job, a happy family, and a nice house. Many people from other countries ...
The immigrant American dream is alive and well
Between 2005 and 2050, the US is projected to add 117 million people as a result of new immigration — a stunning 82 percent of the population growth. That's 67 million incoming immigrants, 47 ...
The American Dream for Immigrants Essay
The American Dream for Immigrants Essay. The American Dream is that dream of a nation in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with options for each according to capacity or accomplishments. It is a dream of social stability in which each man and each woman shall be able to achieve to the fullest distinction of which ...
Immigrants and the American Dream
The American Dream is best captured in how people talk about the future, especially for their kids. While most working class Americans see their children's future as dimmer than their own, working class immigrants see it as brighter. The best example came from Battle Creek, Michigan, where I met a retired couple who had both worked for ...
Out of Many, One: Immigration, Identity and the American Dream
In just over 25 years the number of international migrants in the world increased approximately 70 percent to reach 257.7 million. In the same period, the U.S. foreign-born population more than doubled to reach 49.8 million immigrants in 2017. Along the way, America experienced the Great Recession and economic disruptions driven by technology ...
Immigration and the American Dream, Part 1
Immigration and upward mobility co-exist in the American imagination. With little more than their wits and their ambition, new Americans from Andrew Carnegie to Arnold Schwarzenegger have flocked ...
American Dream
The American Dream is the national ethos of the United States, ... Sometimes the American Dream is identified with success in sports or how working class immigrants seek to join the American way of life. [93] ... (Temple University Press; 2011); 168 pages; essays by sociologists and other scholars how on the American Dream relates to politics ...
American Dream
American Dream, ideal that the United States is a land of opportunity that allows the possibility of upward mobility, freedom, and equality for people of all classes who work hard and have the will to succeed.. The roots of the American Dream lie in the goals and aspirations of the first European settlers and colonizers.Most of these people came to the North American continent to escape ...
The Immigrant Dream
Summary. Immigration has been an integral part of american history since its conception. Although immigration has taken many forms immigrants have always had the same goal, to seize opportunities in order to lead a better life and fulfill their american dream. Immigration in the US started in the 1790's shortly after america gained independence.
Immigrants, the 'American Dream'
For many immigrants, the American Dream represents hope for the disen-. franchised, hope to own economic tangibles such as homes, hope for education, for freedom of ex- pression. Indeed, for them, America is a land of plenty, of 'free' enterprise, of modernization, the place where the local and the global make a fusion.
The State of the American Dream
A Brief History of the American Dream An Essay by Sarah Churchwell, Professor at the University of London, and Author, ... And Americans agree — American support for immigration has soared to historic highs. For the first time since such polls were conducted in 1965, Americans want more, not less, immigration. ...
Immigrants and the American dream essay
Essay #2 - The American dream for immigrants The rapid growth of immigration was one thing that made twentieth-century society a unique place in the early Progressive era. Because America offered religious freedom, freedom of oppressive rule, and overall a better lifestyle than the previous, there was a lot of demand for immigrants to move to ...
Why So Many Children of Immigrants Rise to the Top
The economists found that on average, the children of immigrants were exceptionally good at moving up the economic ladder. These figures represent people born between 1978 and 1983 who grew up ...
A test of American values: Refugee policy in the United States
Recent polling found that about 72 percent of Americans believe that taking in civilian refugees from countries experiencing violence and war should be an important goal for U.S. immigration ...
Migrant farm worker deaths show cost of the 'American Dream'
On multiple occasions, Donald Trump has referred to illegal immigration as an "invasion" and called those who cross "animals", "drug dealers", and "rapists". "It makes me feel sad.
Round House Theatre's 'Sojourners' argues immigration is ...
Immigration is front and center in the heartfelt new dramatic play "Sojourners," which opens Wednesday night at the prolific Round House Theatre in Bethesda, Maryland, running now through Oct. 6.
The American Dream Without a House? Believe It
At a campaign rally in York County, Pa., last month, Donald J. Trump said, "We're going to bring back a thing called the American dream." The American dream symbolizes many abstract ideals ...
The State of the American Dream
The Resilience of Immigrants is Rebuilding America An Essay by Rebecca Shi, Executive Director of the American Business Immigration Coalition Unfinished Dreams: A Family's Hardships in America An Essay by Julissa Arce, Author of My (Underground) American Dream and Co-founder of the Ascend Educational Fund
Trump pushes baseless claim about immigrants 'eating the pets'
Former President Donald Trump, during Tuesday's presidential debate, repeated a baseless and sensationalist claim about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating dogs and other pets. "They're eating the ...
Fact-checking the ABC presidential debate
Trump on the number of undocumented immigrants under Biden Former President Donald Trump claimed during Tuesday night's debate that "21 million people" are crossing the border monthly into ...