...Undocumented Student Many people come to the United States seeking a better future and trying to pursue their dreams. During that time many become strong while others become weak. Some fulfill their dreams and many others don't. Being an immigrant is tough, but being an undocumented immigrant can be worse. After arriving in the United States at the age of ten with my mother and 3 siblings it didn't take me long to figure that out. The experience, in many ways, has shaped who I am today. The absence of a paternal figure and the lack of help changed my personality almost completely. Like every child, playing around and being happy was at the top of my "to do" list. At ten my mother brought me to the United States hidden in the trunk of a car. The illegal procedure cost thousands of dollars in which my mother had saved since the day I was born. In the process I lost my family, my happy and almost perfect life and my friends back in my country. When I left the Dominican Republic I lost the only paternal figure I had, my grandfather. Once I lost him I became little aggressive because I didn’t feel the protection that he always provided to me. (A basic feature of the Hispanic American family is the extended family, which plays a major role in each family member’s life. Pg. 170) The change of countries was a big emotional shock that changed my personality almost 100%. While in the Dominican Republic I was a straight “A” student; in the United States it Vela 2 took...
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...who are involved. It creates hurt and a struggle for on the parents, especially for the mother (Gonchar and Schulten). Also for the parent(s) of the teenager this creates struggles for them because more often than not, they end up with the load of caring and looking after the child while the teenage parents are at school or out doing other things that teenagers do. Raising a child as a teenager is not easy. Teen parents are more likely to struggle to deal with parenthood, and the child is more likely to grow up with numerous issues. Every year about 750,000 teenage girls will get pregnant unexpectedly (Gonchar and Schulten). Then society is faced with the question of “Do Television Shows like 16 and Pregnant Promote or Discourage Teenage Pregnancy?” which has caused controversial discussions since the release of the show. There is no way to put the blame of an excess in teenage pregnancy on the creation of television shows such as this. Television media shows do not promote teenage pregnancy because we all know that getting pregnant is a result of one’s personal choices and decisions. Since as early as the 1990s, teenage pregnancy has posed a big problem for the United States society. The United States has the highest rate of teenage parents in the industrialized world. The debate and issue over teenage pregnancy came long before shows such as Teen Moms and 16 and Pregnant came along. Statistics show that 46% of high school students have admitted to have participated in sexual...
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...the new society. The structure of the short story, “Where the Gods fly”, is quite significant. The story begins in medias res “I kneel here before the gods and the thought of what I am about to do stings in my eyes like incense”. This beginning is in fact the ending of the story, as the decision, that the mother makes, is going to be irreversible. The rest of the story until the end focusses on how the mother came to this crucial decision. Throughout the story, the narrator goes into details about the struggle Perl’s family faced when they immigrated to the United States of America. The narrator uses Pearl’s life as a timeline. Basically, the short story starts in the present tense in the first couple of lines. (ll. 1-8). After which, the text changes into the past tense, as we are introduced to the struggle the family stumbles upon every day. “Pearl was too young, or so I argued[…]” (l. 9). At the end of the story, we are back in present tense: “The monks are ringing the gong”(l.153), where she prays to Buddha about letting her daughter understand why she will take her greatest passion away. Finally, at the very end, the story turns into the future tense, when the mother decides how Pearl´s future is to come. You could argue that the structure of the short story is a bit complicated compared to other traditional short stories. However, in this context, it...
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...world and is more acceptable than it ever has been. In the United States, which now has its first biracial president-Barack Hussein Obama II. Absolute numbers tell us the fact that interracial marriage between black and white has increased -- the U.S. Census reported that there were 51,000 Black/White marital couples in 1960, which was legal in whatever many states. By 2002, it rose to 395,000 Black/White marriages (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2004). By 2010, it grew more to 540,000 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2012. However, before the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, this would have been unimaginable. It was illegal for people with different race to marry before the Civil Rights Movement, which we called “anti-miscegenation laws”. This paper will examine how the Civil Rights Movement helped make marriages between blacks and whites and mixed-race families acceptable to society and more common. In this paper, I am going to provide the background about the Civil Rights Movement. Such as ways this movement affected Black/White marriage, and the Loving vs. Virginia (the Supreme Court Case). Then, I will introduce some family stories in biracial families during 1960s and a number of findings about Black/White marriage. At last, I will present the difference between 1960s and nowadays and express the current situation of Black/White marriage. THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT The Civil Rights Movement in the United States includes noted legislation and organized efforts to abolish...
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...years, and then explains the purpose of the statue now. Rationale: The New York State Social Studies Framework specifically mentions how the Statue of Liberty greeted immigrants arriving in New York City as they entered New York Harbor, and because of this, it is imperative that my student understands the importance and significance of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island....
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...Family as a Social Institution SOC101 By Joshua Simpson If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother, and the teacher. (Abdul Kalam) For this paper I will be explaining how the American family is a social institution and the struggles that come along with it. I will be focusing on the American family and its traditions and also how divorce impacts the family and community. The American family can limit social contact but I can also flourish through the family. The modern American family as a social institution can be taken in many different ways. In some the typical American family known as nuclear (mother, father, and kids) is declining. The other type of family is extended or encompassing other relatives. These families are also called traditional families because these families are what Americans have come accustomed to. Thus because families are growing and allowing extended family in. another reason why they are declining because families are becoming one parent and the children or spit parents and the children live with extended family. Many people do not agree with this conclusion because there have not been any studies to show this but from observation and a look around your own community I sure you can find one of these untraditional families. There are many factors that contribute to families breaking up and becoming...
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...Malaia Simms 2/14/14 Pd. 9 Mrs. Hatlen Dear The Federal Government of Untied States of America, My Name is Betty Johnson and I am 30 years old. I am writing to you because I am very concerned with the future of the citizens in this country. Throughout my life poverty has been Americas "Darkest Secret". I never Really hear news Reports on the growing percentage of Americans living in poverty, or the ways the government is trying to fix this issue. I grew up in Detroit, Michigan where more than a third of residents live below the poverty line (Sasha Abramsky, "America's Shameful Poverty Stats"). Throughout my childhood I have watched many friends' families struggle financially. Sometimes my friends would go without eating for a couple of days simply because they could not afford it. I would offer them food but they would kindly decline because they were so embarrassed because of their situation. They would wear clothes that wouldn't fit them because they couldn't afford to buy new clothes. They would miss school to watch their little siblings because their mom was a single parent and had to work all day everyday just so she could feed them. They didn't even apply to college because they knew they had to immediately pick up a crapy job so they could help their mom pay the bills. The list goes on. All of this is happening under your supervision and it doesn't seem like much is affectively fixing this issue. America's lowest percentage of citizens...
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...The bursting of bombs left her deaf. She has officially lost all hope. She is my mother. Was it Iraq during the 1980’s or was it America during the 1800’s? Beaten, enslaved, imprisoned, threatened, and taken as hostage were just of the few things that happened to my father, leaving my mother, Amy all alone at the time of escape. This, however, was all as a result of my parent’s rebellion of Saddam’s Baath’ist party, Saddam being the dictator of Iraq until 2003. My mother 8 months pregnant with me and eldest sisters and brothers had to get on a boat and travel from the Deep South side of Iraq across to the north, making sure that Saddam Hussein was unable to capture them. They were later brought to Rafha, a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia, which provided them with a home made out of clay and straw and a meal a day. It was if my mother and sister—my mother especially—were slaves in Colonial America, escaping by boat instead of an underground railroad. With all the trauma my family had to go through, the last thing my mother had to hear was a phone call from her older brother in America that her mother was suffering with stage 4 cancer and was given her last weeks of living. Fast forwarding twenty years later my mother still considers herself “born a slave,” even though she now lives here in the United States. Born to a family that came to America not long ago was, and continues to be, a struggle for my siblings and me in terms of finance and education. My...
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...Amanda Jennings Mrs. Boyce English 12 Teen pregnancy is a widely debated topic in todays society. Approximately 900,000 teenagers become pregnant in the united states each year before the age of twenty years old (Frick 21). The pregnancy rate for the united states alone for girls aged fifteen through nineteen stands at a eighty four pregnancies per 1000 girls (19). Countries like the United states, Romania, Belarus, and Bulgaria have the highest rates of pregnancy above seventy pregnancies per 1000 young women (19). Teen prenancy is one of the most controversial social topics of our time. Teen pregnancy has continuosly became a problem through the years. In 1950, the right thing to do if pregnancy occurred, was to get married. In 1955, only six percent of caucasian teenage girls were pregnant outside of marriage; today it stands at forty two percent ("The Elkhart Project").The teen birth rate was fifty percent higher in 1957 than it is now ("The Elkhart Project"). In 1992, the federal goverment spent more than thirty four billion dollars on welfare for families begun by teens ("The Elkhart Project"). Overly accepting attitudes from parents pose a problem in today's outlooks on pregnancy from teenagers. According to several studies, younger siblings of teen parents are two to six times more likely to become pregnant ( Frick 77 ). People say teen pregnancy is happening because eighty three percent of the television programs...
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...the assimilation. The author, David Jacobson, of the essay “Reflections: Growing-Up Grown” expresses how grateful he was for his non-English speaking mother sacrificing her own selfhood by working as a exotic dancer to support him to go to college. His mother was a non-English speaking Latina, therefore, he had to be translator for her all the time. His mother decided to move out of West New York due to the search for “Americanism” even though there were a lot of Hispanics in W.N.Y. to help her feel home, and even though she had already felt “at odds” enough to stay in this country, thus, they had to work against their interests and communities. Jacobson was very independent and he had to be so that he applied college all by himself and all the instructions he had from his mother was “good men go to college”(Jacobsen 44). Despite his family’s poor financial situation, his mother still sent him to college. In fact, the author is quite emotionally close with his mother even though he seems like an independent male character. He regretted that he did not make effort to teach his mother to speak English, which made his mother stay in a situation that she had to behave against her heritage to work as a low social level dancer without speaking English for survival. In the last paragraph of the essay, he demonstrates the face of his mother, full of joy, on the day of his graduation. Parents always sacrifice themselves, deprive of their own living rights, and work against who they originally...
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...becoming a controversial topic in the United States education programs, you cannot help but wonder; if this is truly helping prevent teen pregnancy. Over the last decade, teen pregnancy has increased in the United States, and has affected society socially, educational and economically. What programs have been put in place to decrease these statistics? How is this effecting the United States overall? In this paper I will discuss how it not only affects society, but also the teen parent, child, and society. Every year in the United States more than one million teens become pregnant in the United States. Of these one million pregnancies more than 500,000 babies are born to teen parents. This means that everyday at least 3,000 teens become pregnant. Nevada is ranked number one for pregnancies among ages 15-19. The rates of live births in Nevada for women ages 15-19, ranks Nevada at number 8 (Guttmacher Institute, U.S. Teenage Pregnancy Statistics National and State Trends and Trends by Race and Ethnicity, September 2006). With these shocking statistics you cannot help but wonder, what are we as a society doing to help prevent this major issue? Schools have placed sex education classes as an elective class that students are allowed to take to inform themselves on prevention and safe sex. Teenage pregnancy is a pregnancy of a female that is under the age of 20 when the pregnancy ends. Generally a teen pregnancy is unplanned, nor is the mother married. Various studies have...
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...years have passed since the beginning of colonization, and for over three hundred years United States southern territories from Florida to California belong to the Spanish speaking population until 1848 when the war between the United States and Mexico concluded and the Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty was written. After the war, the US government had guaranteed that the former Mexicans would have all the rights of the American citizens, maintaining their properties and religion (Crawford 1992). The Mexican population was even able to keep their language, but not for a long time. In 1855, the English language was declared the official language of the country, and was the only language to be use for academic instructions and publications...
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...Abstract In the 1960’s, “The Cleavers” of” Leave it To Beaver” were a representation of how the family structure was throughout society. Made up of father who worked, a mother who stayed at home to raise the children and family dinners every night. Today in 2012, the family dynamic has changed dramatically. There are several factors that can be attributed to these changes and these changes could continue to change society for future generations. However, perhaps from researching the past and how we got here, we can find ways to strengthen families in the future. Family Changes Since 1960 the family dynamic has changed. Over these mere 52 years families have gone from having both parents in the home, usually with a father who works and a mother who stayed at home to raise the children. Today, many families are broken; children are shuffled between the mother’s home and the father’s home every other weekend. With this broken foundation the family structure itself is becoming weaker, thus creating a difference in society today compared to when our parents and grandparents were being raised. As previously mentioned, the Cleavers made up the traditional family in the 1960’s. This dynamic accounts for less that 15% of families today in the United States (Mintz, N.D). Another drastic change we have seen since 1960 is the divorce rate that has doubled since 1966. Another difference that has grown dramatically since as early as 1970 is the number of homes where couples...
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...search to fulfill their dream of a better lifestyle travel to America determined to conquer any obstacle they experience when crossing the border that separates them from the dream land. However, immigrants encounter very dangerous situations throughout their journey just like the boy from Enrique’s journey by Sonia Nazario. Immigration continues to be an ongoing issue for a better life and the reuniting of families. The Decision Immigration has been an issue for many years and it still exist till this day, Sonia Nazario who is a journalist for the Los Angeles Times decided to write about a young boy who is left by his mother at the age of 5 years old. The young boys name is Enrique and his mother’s name is Lourdes. Lourdes is a single parent who lives in Honduras with her son Enrique and her daughter, Belky. Poverty is a major issue in Honduras and Lourdes struggles to make a living to support herself and her children. Lourdes not only needs to worry about providing enough money for food but also for her children’s education as well as providing clothes. “She fills a wooden box with gum and crackers and cigarettes, and she finds a spot where she can squat on a dusty sidewalk next to the downtown Pizza Hut and sell the items to passersby. The sidewalk is Enrique's playground.” (Nazario, 2006). It’s easy for the reader to...
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...The United States a Welfare State The purpose of a government is to set boundaries or laws for a society, as well as to offer welfare. Welfare is defined as health and happiness, but also the opportunity to achieve those wants and needs. The United States is a country that is known to be a place where one can strive to become or undertake whatever dream one may have, although it may become difficult depending on one’s economic status. The United States does offer welfare such as, social security, food stamps, medicaid, and others. However, if one were to compare the U.S. with Denmark, a famous welfare state, the two don’t measure up. Although the United States does offer welfare subsides, it does restrict lower income citizens from obtaining...
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