Free Custom «Enrique's Journey and A Country for All» Essay Paper

Factors that drives contemporary migration

Immigration can be defined as relocating to a native land especially in search of a better lifestyle. Immigrants enrich other countries, while on the other hand their country continues rotting in poverty. Most of them are tired of poor living standards, and move to America so as to support the people relying on them. Most of the undocumented immigrants are determined to conquer any circumstances, as long as they get a chance to earn a living in these native lands. However, this comes with a price of living their entire lives hiding from the authorities. In this case, undocumented immigrants are pushed away from their homeland due to poverty and move to America in the aim of securing employment.

A country for all is a book written by Jorge Ramos who explains the plight of undocumented immigrants. He is known for his influential character, and wants to make people understand the benefits brought by immigrants. In his book, Ramos quotes, "fixing the United States' broken immigration system has been one of the most urgent challenges facing our country." He calls them the invisible. He outlines the difficulties they face in their daily activities. For example, he says that they have to try as much to stay away from police which is very hard to achieve in America. As much as they need protection because of the people who want to harm them, they have to keep distance from the police so as to secure their stay in America. Twelve million of America's workers are undocumented immigrants.

Ramos is Mexican journalist who has always been fighting for the right of documented and undocumented immigrant. Ramos argues that the immigrants are pulled by freedom and economic stability in America hoping to one day be identified as American citizens. He says that the determination of immigrant in improving their living standards have highly contributed to the economic growth of America. Apart from poverty, political instabilities such as war and lack of freedom are the reason that drives these people from their homelands. Ramos argues that the American government should accept the reality of immigration and stop wasting billion of dollars trying to break immigration system. Generally, he gives solutions of dealing with this emotional issue and hope that the government will change their strategy in dealing with undocumented immigrants.

Ramos's book seems to be against president Obama's dream of breaking migration systems in America. In his book, he says that a new dawn came after Obama was elected as the president. This proved that racism and ethnicity is no longer practiced in America. The black president promised to support documented immigrations. He claims to boost America's security by doing this while on the other hand, Ramos thinks that this will increase crimes such as terrorism. This would be because of desperation and people will be ready to take any job that comes around. Ramos says that these undocumented immigrants are ready to sacrifice their lives just to improve the lifestyle of those behind them. America is currently the superpower, and is known to have variety of cultures. In addition to this, Obama himself is not American naturally because his father was African.

In Sonia's Enrique's journey, she tells a story of a five year old boy who was separated from her mother due to immigration. Her mother left her and moved to United States with the hopes of having a better life so as to support her only child. Honduras is their homeland but she prefers moving to United States where economy is better.  Enrique struggles living alone with no one to give him the motherly love he deserves. At some point Enrique despair having to ever meet his mother again. He decides to continue with his studies through the money she gets from her mother with the hopes of meeting her when he is grown up. Eleven years later, Enrique begins the journey of tracing his mother (Ramos, Jorge and Fitz, pp 87).

Sonia takes us through the hardships faced by immigrant before crossing the border. He fails a couple of types but he never give up, and instead he is motivated to continue with his journey. Despite seeing how other children being hunted and killed like animals by cops, he still continues with his journey. On the way, Sonia describes the troubles faced by undocumented immigrants. For example, she elaborates the operation on the border. Corruption is the key to freedom of moving in and out of the border. She says that the cops there worship money and allows only the immigrants who have money to bribe them. This makes it hard for many to cross, because poverty is what that drives them out of Honduras.

Through the experiences of Enrique, Sonia explains the reasons that lead to undocumented immigration. First of all, immigrant seem to have the dream of succeeding in life yet they lack this opportunities in their country and opt to find it in America. On the other hand, America has all that takes for a person to achieve the best in life. This motivates most parents to immigrate so as to secure the live of their children. The other factor that promotes immigration is the need of children reuniting with their parents who resettled in America. In Enrique case, we see how later she was joined by his girlfriend who was pregnant leaving their other child. This means that migration will still continue. For instance, that child will one day look for their parents and this will be through undocumented immigration.

It is evident that, immigration is caused by political, social and economic factors. However, running away from homeland makes it worse because it enhances slow growth rate in immigrant's homeland.