Moments in Time

The United States is known as the melting pot because of all the vast amount of people from different racial groups and ethnical backgrounds. There are also different type of systems in our country – government, education, healthcare, and societal rankings of people. As more international people come from other countries and into the United States they have to adapt to the American way of living how the systems work here. One of the largest subordinate groups, Mexican Americans, is known to have different stereotypical views against them, being employed with jobs that have low pay wages that someone else may not want, the group that have big families with a lot of kids, and they are also viewed as immigrants as they assimilate into a foreign culture and lifestyle in this country.

Mexican Americans are known as immigrants because of the economical and political conditions in their county that creates a driving force that they can no longer withstand that causes them to immigrate to the United States. After the Spaniards try to conquer what is known as Mexico and the southwestern part of the U.S., Mexico won their independence as a country from Spain in 1821. Anglo-American immigrants moved to what is not as Texas once this happened and adapted to the Mexican lifestyle. Before Mexico won its independence from Spain, the Spaniards wanted to take over the country for the reasons of agricultural and mining businesses would make money (J. Feagin and C. Feagin, 173).

Mexican immigrants have always lived or came to the United States, dating back to 118,000 during the 1850s. Unlike to the English colonists moving into the land of Native American territory to take over and impose their culture onto the Native Americans, presently Mexican Americans migrated to the United States because they voluntarily wanted to move into a country because of number of different factors such as poor economic system, lack of education, jobs are scare and political conflicts. And they sought this country for better way of living and possible to have a job. To them America is the land of dreams and opportunities.

The peak immigration periods have been 1910-1930, 1942-1954, and 1965 to the present. Today, 54 percent of immigrants from Latin America live in the U.S and then there 31 percent of Mexicans-born immigrants that are included with the foreign-born population (Tomas, 93). The effect of the living conditions that push Mexican Americans from their own country such as Mexico, for example, has caused many illegal immigrants to find a way to cross the borders. These are immigrants who are undocumented. However, not immigrant come to the United States by cheating the system, you have the immigrants who are official citizens and have Green Cards.

On the opposite scale of Mexicans being known as immigrants unlike most other racial groups, some Mexicans are over here to work and send money back to their family from Mexico. For example, in 1942, the Emergency Farm Labor granted many Mexicans work permits at the employers request; however, this helped for more documented immigrants to come to the country. Today we see many Mexicans working at fast good restaurants and doing other small jobs that plays a part in lives every day that no one else may not want to do. Often times Mexicans are grateful to be able to work and make money. Congress passed an act in 1996 that restricting legal immigration and undocumented immigration called the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (J. Feagin and C. Feagin, 177). Today Mexican immigration occupies a hot topic in the U.S. legal system and in U.S. public opinion.

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Work Cite

Feagin, Joe, and Clairece Feagin. Racial and Ethnics Relations. 2nd Custom Edition. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Custom Publishing, 2008.

Tomás, Jiménez. "What Different Generations of Mexican Americans Think About Immigration from Mexico." Generations 32.4 (2009): 93-96. Web. 6 Dec 2009.

Englekirk , Allan, and Marguerite Marín. "Mexican Americans." Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America. 2nd ed. vol. 2. Detroit: Gale Group, 2000.