Immigration laws affect US citizen children through Free Essay Example

Immigration laws affect U.S. citizen children through multigenerational punishment. The author, Laura E. Enriquez, examined the complex relationship U.S. citizen children of undocumented 1.5-generational young adults have with immigration laws. In the article “Multigenerational Punishment: Shared Experiences of Undocumented Immigration Status Within Mixed-Status Families” Enriquez (2015) states that U.S. citizen children of 1.5-generational parents’ experience multigenerational violence. Enriquez argues that immigration laws create multigenerational punishment because the legal ramifications intended for undocumented immigrants affect the lives of U.S. citizens. For the study, Enriquez interviewed undocumented 1.5-generational young adults who had U.S. citizen children. The term 1.5-generation refers to a person who immigrated to a new country as a preteen or during their early teenage years. Enriquez conducted 32 interviews with undocumented 1.5-generational young adults. 21 of the interviewees were mothers, 8 were fathers, one couple were expecting a child and one woman who had been pregnant and decided not to have the baby. All the interviewees’ children were U.S. citizens between infancy and 15. Enriquez supports her claim by examining the effect immigration laws have on undocumented 1.5-generational young adults and their U.S. citizen through deportation fears, driving, travel and legal employment. Many of the parents interviewed said that they had discussed deportation with their children. This exchange leads to multigenerational violence because their children then feared being deported. Most interviewee’s feared being pulled over without a license, so they used risk management strategies to prevent getting pulled over. Many of their U.S. citizen children became hyper-vigilant when in the car with their parents; and adopted their parent’s risk management strategies.

U.S. citizen children share their parent’s inability to travel and their limited economic circumstances. According to Enriquez (2015), legal violence crosses generations to U.S. citizen children because they experience faux undocumented status and limited opportunities for growth due to being dependent on their parents. U.S. citizen children experience economic instability because their undocumented parent has limited job opportunities.

It impressed me that Enriquez’s interview subjects had a widely diverse educational background. Throughout the article, Enriquez cited other studies to explain multigenerational punishment and the effect it had on transnational families and first-generation parents and their children. I liked how she brought in additional information that strengthened her conclusion. I wish the article discussed Enriquez’s interview questions along with the responses. Enriquez’s study is one of the first that focuses on multigenerational punishment regarding 1.5-generational parents and their U.S. citizen children. I think it’s important to prove that the questions asked were not leading questions.

I found this article worth reading. Enriquez’s study is the first of its kind; other studies focus on transnational families or first-generation families and their children. Enriquez takes an in-depth look at how America’s immigration policy affects U.S. citizen children. In today’s political climate, many children are experiencing multigenerational punishment. I think it’s important to acknowledge that immigration laws not only affect immigrants but also their U.S. born children.

“Clashing Dreams: Highly Educated Overseas Brides and Low-Wage U.S. Husbands” by Hung Cam Thai discusses why highly educated Vietnam women are marrying low-wage earning Viet Kieu husbands. In this study, Thai interviews with Minh and Thanh. Thanh is a highly educated woman in Vietnam while Minh is a low-wage earner in the U.S. making them unmarriageable by Vietnamese standards. Thai states that women like Thanh, who are older and highly educated view eligible men in Vietnam to be disrespectful to women and underachieving. Viet Kieu men, in their eyes, are more respectful and will offer an equal partnership marriage because they live in westernized countries. Minh is an unmarriageable to Viet Kieu women because he is a low wage earner. Viet Kieu men adhere to the traditional Vietnamese culture and demand respect and difference from their wives. Viet Kieu women do not respect their husbands unless they make a lot of money which is why Viet Kieu men do not marry Viet Kieu women. Viet Kieu men like Minh are looking at women from Vietnam to get the respect they desire. Thai concludes that the high trend of transpacific marriages is because of Vietnamese culture ostracizing educated women in Vietnam and low-wage Vietnamese men in the United States. These highly educated women in Vietnam hoping to escape strict traditional gender roles by marrying a low wage-earning husband won’t find the equal partnership they are looking for. Instead, they will face the same expectation from these traditional Viet Kieu men.

I like that Thai tried to stay as neutral as possible. He refrains from putting his own inherent biases into the article. I appreciated that Thai explained how the double marriage squeeze and globalization play a part in transpacific marriages. I enjoyed reading the first-hand accounts from Minh and Thanh. I appreciate that it adds a personal touch to the article. I dislike how Thai only interviewed one couple because their experience can’t be generalized. Thai’s reliance on Minh and Thanh’s accounts weakens his argument.

I found “Clashing Dreams” to be worth reading. Thai provides a look inside Vietnam culture and how it influenced transpacific marriages. The article highlights how culture still controls these highly educated women regardless of where they are. These highly educated women married low wage-earning husbands to escape the strict gender roles in Vietnam only to be trapped. Women like, Thanh, hoped to be equal in the marriage but their new U.S. husbands still keep to the traditional Vietnam culture. Thai’s article shows the complicated relationship between women’s equality and culture. Vietnamese women will continue to experience rigid gender roles unless the Vietnamese culture changes.

Katherin M. Flower Kim examines the social construct of desirable and undesirable children in her article, “Out of Sorts: Adoption and (Un) Desirable Children”(2007). Kim interviewed 73 adoptive parents from 1997 to 1997 who adopted children from Korea in the 80s and 90s. Throughout this study, Kim was investigating the sorting and ranking of children throughout the adoption process. In the interviews, Kim, asked specific questions like “when thinking about adopting a child, what was important to you?” (Kim, 2007 p.348). All the parent’s responses expressed a healthy child. Most parents began exploring domestic adoptions for a healthy child. Kim states “domestic adoptions” acts as a code word for white babies. When Kim asked Amy, an adoptive mother, if she and her husband looked at children that weren’t white or healthy infants, Amy responded by saying she didn’t think to look at any other nationality. Here “nationality” was used to sort out the “undesirable” children. Half of the adoptive parents never considered adopting a child that was not white Kim also states the “American” was also a code word that means white child. According to Kim (2007), many parents who wanted to adopt would not consider children who were not white because they assumed that they would be “adopting” their cultural practices regardless of how they might socialize the child. Participants such as Molly used negative stereotypes to weed out undesirable children. Some parents only considered adopting a nonwhite child such as an African American child if that was their only option. Some parents didn’t mind adopting a black child but didn’t because their extended family thought of it as unacceptable. When parents looked at intercountry adoption they looked to Korea. Parents viewed children from Korea as desirable because they thought Asian culture was good and Koreans were beautiful. Parents also felt that Korean children wouldn’t look too different from themselves. Kim discovered that racial matching played a large part in deciding to adopt Korean children. Adoptive parents felt connected with their adoptive children based on how similar they looked. Parents also avoided engaging in racial and social dynamics that they deemed negative when adopting children from Korea. While interviewing these parents Kim discovered that parents have social constructs of desirable and undesirable children which are based on a society’s larger norm surrounding race and gender. Kim noticed that adoptive parents desired a child that looked similar to them, or would not a child who would act like they were from “the hood.” Parents used coded language, a healthy baby, really meant white baby or Asian baby classified as “honorary whites.” Stereotypes that Asian babies are better suited for white-middle class culture than a black or Latino baby would be.

It disappointed me that all but one of the adoptive parents used in the study were white which makes the study non-generalizable to anyone who isn’t white. Kim should have not only interviewed white adoptive parents but adoptive parents are of another race. I appreciate how the study had a large sample of 73 adoptive parents. In most qualitative studies the sample normally small. I appreciated that Kim’s questions were open-ended. The open-ended questions reduced unintentional leading or influencing the responses. Open-ended questions also allowed the participants to share their thoughts and experiences without censoring themselves.

Kim’s article, “Out of Sorts: Adoption and (Un) Desirable Children” is worth the read because of how relevant adoption is in our society. Kim’s discussion on racial desirability creating undesirability is worth reading about. Kim’s article emphasizes that an individual’s choices and preferences are linked and shaped by social, cultural and historical contexts. I found it interesting how the adoptive parents’ preferences are based on historical contexts and preconceived bias. The article also explains how adoptive parent’s preferences continue to promote racial inequality. Others should read Kim’s study because she discusses how an individual’s choices and preferences are linked to social, cultural and historical contexts which continue to promote racial inequality.

Rhacel Salazor Parre?as article “Mothering From a Distance: Emotions, Gender, and Intergenerational Relations in Filipino Transnational Families” (2001) examines the emotional impact of transnational mothering. Parre?as conducted 72 open-ended interviews with female Filipino domestic workers in Rome and Los Angeles, the two main destinations for Filipino migrants. Parre?as tape-recorded and transcribed her interviews conducted in Tagalog or Taglish into English. Parre?as collected interview in Rome in 1995 and 1996 and then interviews in Los Angeles between April and September 1996. Key differences between the two groups were regional origin and median age. Some similarities between them are that most are legal residents of their host societies and more than half of the interviewees are married women with children. While interviewing these women Parre?as found that mothers negotiate emotional strain in three ways: the commodification of love, repressing emotional strains, and rationalizing the distance by using regulation communication to ease distance. Transnational mothers often try to make up for the lack of maternal love by giving their children material things. One mother said, “because I am lacking in giving them maternal love, I fill that gap with many material things” (Parre?as, 2001, p. 259). Parre?as found that transnational mothers often downplayed emotional strains or even deny emotional strains. To maintain their mothering role, the women interviewed often used phone calls and letters to overcome the geographical distance. These mothers believe constant communication makes it seem like they are right there with their children. Parre?as states that children like their mothers suffer from the emotional strain of geographical distance. Parre?as found that children disagree with their mothers that commodities are sufficient markers of love. They do not believe that their mothers recognize the sacrifices that children have made to the successful maintenance of the family. The children appreciated the efforts made by migrant mothers, but they still question the extent of their efforts.

I like how Parre?as participants were from various churches, parks, and plazas. By getting participants from various locations, she diversified the study. I appreciated that Parre?as acknowledged the emotional insecurity experienced by families with transnational mothers is partially because of traditional gender ideologies. In Filipino families the emotional care is the mother’s responsibility; when there is a transnational mother there’s an increased emotional insecurity because the responsibility still falls on her. I don’t like that the interviews were originally conducted in Tagalog or Taglish and then transcribed into English. When transcribing colloquialisms and alternative means belonging to certain sayings can get lost in translation. There is also a chance that parts of interviews could have been translated incorrectly which puts the validity of the interview responses into question.

I found Parre?as article worth reading because gender roles is an interesting topic. Parre?as examines the emotional strain transnational mother’s experience and the emotional insecurity it causes their children. Parre?as acknowledges that the geographical distance between parent and family impacts emotional security, but the continuation of traditional gender roles makes the emotional strain even worse. Traditional gender ideologies make the responsibility of emotional care and security the responsibility of the mother even if the mother is a thousand miles away. Parre?as article is worth reading for anyone who wants to explore the impact of traditional ideologies has on families.

Susannah M. Brown and Jeremy Porter study the effects of religion on remarriage for American women. In their study, “The Effects of Religion on Remarriage among American Women: Evidence from the National Survey of Family Growth” (2013), Brown and Porter wanted to find out if religion influences the propensity of remarriage; if so are there denominational variations as previously reported concerning first marriages. They took data for the study from two waves of the National Survey of Family Growth. The first wave was from a 1995 survey from the Inter-Consortium for Political and Social Resource and the second wave in 2002 was from the National Center for Health Statistics. Both surveys were nationally represented. The 1995 survey only interviewed women (10,847) while the 2002 survey interviewed both women (7643) and men (4928). Brown and Porter omitted men from this study because of the small sample size. This study had a dependent variable of the propensity of remarriage “operationalized as those who have remarried versus those who have not remarried following divorce” (Brown and Porter, 2013, p. 465). In the two surveys, there were two denominational affiliation variables. The study only used current denominational affiliation; which they broke down into six groups: catholic, conservative protestant, mainline protestant, other protestant, other faith traditions, and not affiliated. Respondents’ religious salience and worship service attendance were also included in the study. The study measures religious salience by the question “how important is religion in your daily life.” The question, how often do you attend religious services, measured worship service. The first question responses ranged from 1 (not important) to 3 (very important and the second question ranged from 1 (never) to 5 (more than once a week). Brown and Porter put several controls put in place. Exact age at first marriage served as the measure of age at first marriage. Exact age at divorce served as the measure for age of divorce. Respondents’ sex, race, resident children, employment status, total family income, and educational attainment were statistically controlled. Respondents’ race and ethnicity were combined and coded into African American, Hispanic and other racial or ethnic groups with white as the reference category. Metro and non-metro variable was dummy coded to gauge a marriage market difference due to geographical variations. A coded variable showing the data source was included to control differential remarriage ranges across the two periods. They put two additional controls on gender ideology and cohabitation status. They created an index variable for gender ideology by combining two questionnaire items that were standardized before being combined. The cohabitation variable comes from several surveys asking respondents premarital and post-divorce cohabitation status. This study uses a two-phase analysis approach. The study discovered that denominations that place a greater emphasis on marriage state are likely to exhibit higher rates of remarriage. Also found that American women who feel that religion is important in their lives and attend religious services frequently are more likely to get remarried. The study uncovered that the effects of religious salience and worship service attendance played a large role in the propensity to get remarried. The control variables of age at divorce, race, the number of resident children, employment, income, gender ideology, and cohabitation status were all found to be significant predictors in the propensity to get remarried.

I appreciate that Brown and Porter explained where they received their responses from and who they contracted. I liked how Brown and Porter used two nationally represented surveys to create a large sample size for their study making it generalizable to women in the United States. I also liked how they defined and explained the dependent and control variables. By defining those variables they made the study easier to understand. I didn’t like that they only included women in the study. The non-inclusion of men makes the study only generalizable to women.

This article was not worth reading. Brown and Porter spent the majority of the article discussing the methods and all the variables used in the study. They didn’t spend a lot of time on the implications of the results. Most of their conclusions were similar to past studies, so I found part of their study redundant. I found the article hard to get through because of how uninteresting it was. I didn’t find this article useful because I already assumed most of the results. I would not read this article again or recommend it.