Immigration
Immigration continues to be a social issue affecting our community today, unfortunately
individuals experience discrimination and are targeted because they either come to the United
States to provide a better future for their families or are trying to escape death threats from the
places they were born. This social issue affects me on a more personal level because coming
from immigrant parents and growing up with mostly family members who are not residents I
have experienced them being discriminated against by society and not given the proper medical
care and educational opportunities. Being part of a minority group in society means that we are
constantly facing discrimination and have limited resources. In order to fully understand the
daily struggles that immigrants go through in this country I will study family members and
friends who are either immigrants themselves or have personally been in a situation in which
someone close to them was discriminated against based on their cultural background. The
questions I asked my interviewees required individuals to give me their personal thoughts and to
express any emotions they felt towards immigration, ways they see discrimination taking place in
their society, thoughts about negative stereotypes, and to identify some solutions that can create a
change. Both the questions and probes helped me understand culture because I was able to see a
similarity between the roles and beliefs that are held by individuals and the ways in which they
associated them with immigration.
The pivot chart above shows the average score of how agreeable individuals were towards
the stereotype associated with the issue of immigration basing it from a scale of 1 representing
“Strongly Disagree” and 4 representing “Strongly Agree”, the results were separated by the
different races who participated in the survey. From the survey, the question that I used as my
dependent variable was the statement, “On average I think immigrants create more jobs than they
take away from people born in the U.S.” and the independent variable that I chose was race.
Some of the patterns that I noticed from the pivot chart is that hispanic individuals seem to agree
the most with the statement whereas Asian/Pacific and Mixed/Other had very similar averages.
There is a decline in the average score for both individuals who identified as African American
and White/Caucasian. These patterns are important to the issue of immigration because the data
implies that hispanics/latinos are found to be the most affected by the influence of negative
stereotypes that are held against immigrants in the community. This data supports that
hispanic/latino individuals are more concerned about the issue of immigration than when
compared to another race in the community. Based on the data provided some of the questions
that need exploring is whether individuals hold negative stereotypes about immigrants, if they
have been neglected job opportunities due to immigrants, what are the reasons as to why they
agree or disagree with the statement, and whether their responses are influenced by personal
experiences.
