Hello and welcome back to my blog. This is the final post! In this post, I will be covering the struggles of a specific group of immigrants in America, refugees. Refugees face the problems that immigrants face and more. I will be highlighting more specifically in this post their struggle to find long-term work in America and the long wait for refugee status to get approved.  

The Struggle to Find Long-Term Work 

One of the many problems facing refugees in America is the struggle to find work. Researchers have found that most refugees are less likely to find work the longer they stay in America. They found that five years after a refugee gained lawful permanent residency, their employment began to declined. The decline of federal funding was one of the major causes for this increase in unemployment. Researches have also found that a refugee’s ability to blend in can be disrupted by the expectations of others. Because of these issues, refugee support organizations have begun to form. There are federally funded organizations that focus more on short-term resettlement and there are privately funded programs that help refugees to look for long-term jobs. One of these is the UN Refugee Agency. This organization is dedicated to helping refugees to advocate for themselves, especially in the work force. They also teach immigrants how to avoid scam and fake job offers.  

Click here and here for two articles delving deeper into these civic issues.  

The Wait for Refugee Status 

One of the other major problems that is unique to refugees is the lengthy process of getting refugee status. In America, this wait used to take approximately two years. Once the Trump administration came into office, they began to alter the refugee status process. Now the wait can take up to almost five years. Trump changed this process with the intentions of stopping immigrants and refugees from entering America, especially during the pandemic. Click here to read an article covering more of this topic.  

Thank you for reading my final post. I believe that the immigrants of the world have overcome many obstacles to get to where they are today. We must also learn to be understanding and empathetic to each person’s situation. Especially in America, we should be more appreciative of our immigrants, as every immigrant makes America the nation it is today. I hope you learned at least a little bit from my blog.

Welcome back to my civic blog. As the end of the semester approaches, so does the final post of this blog. For this penultimate post, I wanted to go over a topic that almost all immigrants experience, the application process for citizenship. A common obstacle that immigrants face is the challenges that come with the process of applying for citizenship. In this post, I want to detail some of these challenges and talk about how we could improve this process in a way that benefits all groups.  

Citizenship Application 

The application process itself is a lengthy process in which you can get denied naturalization at every step along the way. The first step is determining if you are eligible to gain citizenship. Here is a link to a worksheet that uses a flow diagram to determine eligibility. If you then are able to apply for naturalization, you must fill out a form called the N-400 Form. You must also pay a fee of $700 to fill out this form. After that, you must get interviewed by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). And finally, after that (if you are not denied), you take the naturalization test. With passing this test, you can then take the Oath of Allegiance to the United States and are granted citizenship. Click here to read a full comprehensive list of the steps to citizenship.

The Naturalization Test

The naturalization test has been an area of controversy in the citizenship application process as many feel that it is unfair. In 2020, the Trump administration made revisions to the widely used 2008 naturalization test. This new 2020 version was named the civics test and created many new barriers for the immigrants taking it. When Biden came into office, he pushed to revert the naturalization test back to its 2008 form. Click here to read more about that. 

As I have mentioned in earlier posts, my father is an immigrant who came to America for college. He is still currently not an American citizen and has a green card instead. Since he is married, has children, has a full-time job, and has lived in America for more than thirty year, the naturalization process would be a bit easier for him. Even though he has still lived here for a very long time, he is still hesitant on becoming a US citizen. He is aware of how long the process would take and would need to set aside a lot of time to prepare. I believe that naturalization should still be a strict process, but it has become very time and money consuming. Many immigrants would not be able to easily pay $700 dollars on an application fee and be able to set aside time to study for the test. 

Welcome back to my blog! This post I am going to focus on a pretty specific topic. I’m sure everyone has heard about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, better known as DACA, at some point in recent years. This act allows for the deferral of deportation of children and young adults who do not have legal American citizenship. This program also gives them the ability to legally work. The In this post, I will be going over how this program affects immigrants. I also will review its background and history and highlight how it has been challenged and changed over the years.  

Creation and History of the Program 

In June of 2012, the Obama Administration created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. It was implemented in August when the USCIS began accepting applications for the program. Since then, more than 832,000 DACA recipients have been able to legally in the United States of America. These minors who were brought to the United States are called “Dreamers”. More than one third of these “Dreamers” came here when they were younger than five years old. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program gives these immigrants a chance to flourish without the threat of deportation. 

Challenges Against DACA

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was first challenged in 2017 by Donald Trump. He called for the program to phase out. The administration’s plan was to end the program as of October 5, 2017. This meant that no new DACA applicants would be accepted in this phase out of the programs. Previous DACA recipients would be somewhat protected. Soon after, the lower court ordered to stop Trump’s termination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Trump responded by requesting for a court review of this order which was promptly declined by the Supreme Court. Later, in 2020, the Supreme Court decided that the Trump Administration made the wrong choice in ending the program and officially declared that DACA would remain.  

Current Status of DACA 

The Department of Homeland Security announced its final ruling on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in 2021. They decided that no new DACA applicants could apply for the program, and this officially went into effect on October 31, 2022. This rule did not affect immigrants currently affected by the program and would allow for them to renew their status.  

DACA recipients should not be faulted for entering America illegally or not having lawful citizenship, as it was not their choice to do so. Since they came to this country as minors. DACA has helped many immigrants to make a better life for themselves.  

Hello and welcome back! This blog post we will investigate some of the issues immigrants have faced that arose during the pandemic. While we have slowly been fighting against the prejudices immigrants face over the years, much of our work as a nation was set back due to Covid.  

As I am sure most of us know, since the beginning of the pandemic people have looked for someone to place the blame on. As evidence of the virus originating from China came out, many Americans began to ridicule China, and some even turned to violence against immigrants. Click here to read an article highlighting some of these violent acts. This article also gives statistics demonstrating this increase. Another article specifies that anti-Asian crime increased by 150% in 16 different cities in the year 2020. Click here to read that article. Because of these very clear statistics, many have begun to follow the Stop Asian Hate movement.  

Stop Asian Hate 

This movement was widely popularized in 2021 after people began to witness the intense amounts of discrimination and violence that Asian people experienced during 2020. Individual states began hosting their own rallies to unite with the Asian Americans and immigrants in their communities. Click here to learn more about the movement and rallies.  

Prejudiced Politics 

One of the other factors that lead to the amplification of hate crimes targeted at Asians was the political atmosphere in 2020. Whether intentional or not, former president Donald Trump was one of the biggest instigators of this fight. Along with spreading false information about Covid-19, he also coined the name “The China Virus” for it. Not only is this name very clearly disrespectful, but it also perpetuated the idea in people’s heads that Asians were the ones to blame. Here is a tweet of Donald Trumps which gives an example of his use of the inappropriate name the “China Virus”. 

Other Effects 

The pandemic has not only affected Asian Americans and immigrants. Many immigrants had interruptions of instability in their lives during 2020. Over the early months of the pandemic, many people lost their jobs; however, the unemployment rate for immigrant workers went up to nearly 34% higher than American born workers. Along with losing more jobs, many more immigrants do not have access to health insurance compared to native Americans.  

Overall, my final thoughts are that many more steps need to be taken to prevent this level of discrimination from happening. Violence should never be the answer, but especially when it is racially motivated.

Welcome back to my civic issues blog where I talk about a different challenge the immigrants face when moving to a new country, especially in America. Last post I talked about the anglicization of non-English names. While language and names are a very important part of cultures around the world, there are many pieces that make up certain cultures, one of which being religion. Not all cultures have a high emphasis placed on religion and spirituality, but many do. One thing that a lot of immigrants will find difficult adjusting to when moving to America is the lack of religion in everyday life. 

Since one of America’s core values is that of religious freedom, you will find a great diversity of religions in each corner of the nation. Immigrants coming from homogeneous religious nations will sometimes have a difficult time adjusting to this aspect of American life. While in their original country, immigrants will share similar beliefs and practices to others in their culture. Because of this, their religions were more easily accommodated in their home-country. For example, in primarily Muslim nations, people are given spaces and time to pray throughout the day at work and school. Whereas, in America, not all workplaces are as accepting as we would like them to be. Not only are employees not provided spaces to pray, but they are also punished for taking the time out of their day to do so. Click here to read about a Muslim man who was fired for requesting prayer breaks. 

Another issue that immigrants and many religious minorities face is the lack of religious monuments or buildings for certain religions. I cannot speak for all religions, but as someone who grew up going to Temple with my dad, who is Hindu, I can say that there are not many Hindu Temples around here. Especially if you don’t live in a location with a high concentration of Hindus, you may have to travel for more than an hour to get to the nearest one.

I am lucky to have one a 20-minute drive away from my hometown called the Bharatiya Temple. Access to religious buildings is not something most people have to think of often. There is no shortage of churches in the area.  

While America does have religious freedom, it does not mean people are free from all judgment and discrimination based off their religious beliefs. Click here to learn about more of the religious challenges that immigrants face in America.  

For this blog, I have decided on a theme that is important to me. I want to discuss the challenges immigrants face when getting settled in a new country, but I will be mostly focusing on immigrants to America. One civic issue that is important to me that revolves around the lives of immigrants and second-generation immigrants is the anglicization of names.  

Many immigrants that come to America, try to build a new life for themselves. Sometimes they face many challenges on their way to achieving their goals. One of those challenges is the mispronunciation of names. Names that are significant to one’s culture or ethnicity are so unique and beautiful, but many Americans struggle to say them correctly. This might seem like a small issue in the grand scheme of things, but this can still have negative effects. A mispronounced name can affect people’s chances of getting a job, experiences in school, social lives, and many other aspects of their lives. Because of this many immigrants have chosen to adopt a second anglicized name. Anglicization is the switch to the use of an English sounding personal name from one of a non-English language. Some children of immigrants will do the same if given a name of non-English origin at birth.  

My father is an immigrant from Singapore. His name is Asoka, which is pronounced phonetically, but somehow, people still have a hard time saying it. He has been called Osaka, Asokie, and Akosa. Despite all of these mispronunciations, he never wanted to change his name; however, he did not wish for his children to deal with the same issues. My older brother was given an Irish name, Ian. I was given and English first name, but my mom pushed for me to have a cultural middle name, Ratnavali, after my grandmother. My younger sister is the only one of my siblings that has a non-English first name, Meena. But my dad had the final say with my youngest sister’s name and chose Gabriella. While I am grateful that people do not mess up my name, I wish my dad had not felt the need to give us English names just to cater to the majority of America.  

While some people view anglicization as a choice, others deem it necessary. At a college in California, one professor tried to force a Vietnamese student to Anglicize her name. Click here to read more about her story. Other times, immigrants feel as if they have no choice but to anglicize their names and later regret it. Click here for an article about a young immigrant from India who worked hard to reclaim her given name. 

Whether an immigrant chooses to anglicize their name or not is not anyone else’s business. Although it is hard to feel pressure, people should not be forced into changing their given name if they do not want to.