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Week 5

What drives one away from their home? What social, economical, or political circumstances drive people to leave everything behind and seek a fresh start somewhere else? Let's talk about that.

I have always been aware of immigration, but it was not until I divulged into more extensive research about it (including the documentary) that I realized it was not just an "American" issue. It's global. People are fleeing their home nations because of corrupt governments, extreme poverty, or to seek a new, higher standard of living. The United States has the highest percentage of immigrants entering the country, but there are also many immigrants from Russia, India, China, and the middle East. Immigrants often choose to face the hardship of moving out of desperation. The situation in their homeland has gotten unbearable and they hope it will be better when they cross the border. Many of these immigrants are caught by border patrol and sent back or arrested. Unfortunately for many of those that do make it, they may not find an increase in their standard of living at all.


The film, Which Way Home, shows the reality of immigration, specifically for Central Americans attempting to cross into the United States. Young children leave their families in hopes to make a life in America and help their family out by finding a decent-paying job. The path is extremely dangerous, full of rapists, selfish smugglers, muggers, and many people that would take advantage of young children or women. During the documentary, the question of "Why didn't the camera crew help them out?" kept running through my head. They had to capture what it was truly like for the sake of the documentary and I bet it takes a heavy mental toll on the crew, surrounded by the situations the travelers are, and unable to help. However, causing the audience to think critically about immigration through the documentary indicates "success" on the director's ability to effectively deliver their message.

I decided to step away from domestic immigration for a bit and read an article about Russian migration. According to the article, people are emigrating from Russia at a much higher rate than people are coming in. Russia has a very stringent immigration policy and even remove foreigners for something such as "multiple traffic violations" as well as the requirements to fluently speak the Russian language and know Russian culture and laws (similar to the US, but stricter). However, the chart shows that Russia has a very close 1:1 ratio of immigrants to emigrants. This could be due to many Ukrainians (who are already assimilated into Russian culture) go to Russia and many Russians go into Ukraine, which is not a very diversifying migration border.

Immigration has received a lot of attention in the news the past few years and I think it will be interesting to see how Congress and the citizens react to the upcoming legislatures on immigration.



Sources
http://peoplemov.in/#!
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/sep/13/migration-improve-life-people-poor-countries
https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/insights/27852/russia-needs-immigrants-but-lacks-a-coherent-immigration-policy

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