Alejandro Estevez
Prof. Crowe
Freshman Composition
16 November 2020
Cover Letter for Research Paper
In my Research Essay, I wanted to discuss the American Dream and the Death of the American Dream in its relation to the immigrant experience. I was highly indecisive in the first stages of developing my topic. The way I arrived at this topic was because being a first-generation American is an important part of my identity and watching the presidential debates made me interested in the history of immigration and the treatment of immigrants.
Since this was a Research Essay, I wanted to keep my tone serious and keep my diction simple yet effective because immigration and opportunity are very hot and controversial topics right now. In the process of writing my paper I found this concept of the American Dream being something polarizing. I kept mentioning it as something that is either achieved or not achieved, when, success is subjective. One person’s idea of success can be extremely different from another person’s idea of success. I think that’s something I could have used to my advantage more throughout the essay because it would keep the reader interested. Another benefit of writing around success being subjective is the wide range of audience. Although my intended audience is the academic realm, the audience could be a person who is an immigrant or not, or it could be a person who is a diehard patriot who believes America is the best place on earth or a person who dislikes America. If I were to say success is a spectrum, thus, there is no achievement of the American Dream or Death of the American Dream, which would have been a much more intriguing argument. One other issue I had with my paper was the sources. About a half of my original sources I could not retrieve so I used my family as examples and replaced my statistical information with the simple population numbers in the 1800s and some statistics regarding contemporary immigration. Besides those two retrospective concerns, I was overall happy with how my paper came out.
I really practiced all of the course learning outcomes through this essay since the subject is rather dense. For example, I heavily relied on “Locate research sources (including academic journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles) in the library’s databases or archives and on the Internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, timeliness, and bias” and “Practice systematic application of citation conventions”. Even though I practiced MLA citation throughout high school, there is always room for improvement, and I enjoyed the research process.
How Does the Immigrant Experience Shape the American Dream?
The American Dream has been core to American culture for hundreds of years, but how did it develop and what experiences have shaped this concept? Ironically, in history, the United States was always perceived as the land of freedom and opportunity; even though many people practiced things that contradicted freedom such as slavery and genocide (genocide of Native Americans to increase expansion). Due to the American ideal that everyone deserves equal opportunity, the American Dream is defined as an individual working extremely hard to reach the most ambitious goals and aspirations. Since this concept implies working to climb the social ladder, it gives hope to socially and economically marginalized groups of people. The immigrant experience encapsulates this hope of achieving a happy and comfortable life through the means of work. Although the American Dream allows for success through opportunity, often times, laws and society “gatekeeps” immigrants from gaining success no matter how much work they do, which is the death of the American Dream. Both immigrant experiences demonstrate the impact of how immigrants influence American culture and in formulating the American Dream.
The history of the immigrant experience in the United States has been extremely prevalent in describing what the American Dream is supposed to be. In the industrial revolution (roughly 1865-1900) “the U.S. population more than tripled, from about 23.2 million in 1850 to 76.2 million in 1900” (Newman 361) making the total population of the U.S primarily made up of immigrants. Many of these immigrants came from Eastern Europe and Asia, which diversifies the Western, Anglo-Protestant culture that dominated the population. Most, if not all immigrants, left their home country to escape oppressive governments, religious persecution, and hope for opportunities to advance economically in society (Newman 361). Even in the formation of the first colony in Virginia, opportunity was one of the main driving forces in the decision of investing in the joint-stock company to establish settlements in America. Therefore, the birth of America was founded upon the desire for a possibility to better one’s life through literally building from the ground up. Since the immigrant experience is centered around the search for freedom and opportunity and immigration resulted in the birth of the country, it can be said that the American Dream exactly represents the goals and means of achieving success in the United States.
Although the immigrant hopes in the pre twentieth century is exactly what the American Dream states, society has rejected these ideals formulating the concept of the Death of the American Dream. This is best represented in the industrial revolution because there was not enough recognition in improving the life of the poor (including new and old immigrants) and there was no recognition in the struggle/disparity between the rich and poor. Due to the increase of jobs in a variety of emerging industries and factories, there was a shift from rural life to urbanization and cities. A majority of immigrants resided in these urban environments resulting in congestion, horrible sanitation, rampant disease, etc… These conditions also applied to the working conditions that immigrants would encounter. Jacob Riis’, How the Other Half Lives, contains a series of pictures exposing the life of those who live in the slums (observe Figure 1-3). Since there were no labor laws that were supposed to protect workers, immigrants were often treated as expendable cheap labor by exploitative factory owners (Newman 632). This notion was rather universal and did not consider how influential the work was. For example, the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad was one of the greatest influences in bolstering the American economy and the people who constructed it included Irish immigrants and Chinese immigrants. They completed this enormous feat under dangerous backbreaking working conditions off little wage and no breaks. This made the life of immigrants in the work force stagnant and there was not much advancement in their status. Another example of society hindering the flourishing of immigrants, is the restriction of immigration to the United States. This includes laws/political action like the Chinese Exclusion act, literacy tests that restricted employment, and a tax that they had to pay before entering the U.S. (Newman 362). People who supported this include:
1.labor unions, which feared that employers would use immigrants to depress wages and break strikes, (2) a nativist society, the American Protective Association, which was openly prejudiced against Roman Catholics, and (3) social Darwinists, who viewed the new immigrants as biologically inferior to English and Germanic stocks (Newman 362).
Literature, Art, and Photography captured the depressing sentiments felt by the immigrant community, from the quality of life to working conditions.
The phenomenon of the Death of the American Dream is also depicted in the American literature. For instance, in The Great Gatsby, written by Scott Fitzgerald in the age of Modernism, depicted this concept in the 1920s. In Chapter 2, Fitzgerald describes the borough of Queens as the “valley of ashes” where a billboard of two large eyes looking over the over the land. The valley of ashes is described as gray, gloomy, empty and businesses are stagnant. The eyes almost represent God looking over this depressing scene in without any intervention, symbolizing the death of faith and hope, which are core concepts of the American Dream. Although, Fitzgerald does not say immigrants work or live in the “valley of ashes”, it is implicit that immigrants are working to get no where or getting no work if American owned businesses are completely lifeless. This is because immigrants come to America with little to no belongings or money, greeted with discrimination, and they must assimilate to a new culture. Another piece of literature that implied the Death of the American Dream was A Death of a Salesman, written by Arthur Miller. The play follows a hopeful American salesman who perceives himself as a successful and well-liked salesman, while in reality, he’s unsuccessful and does not advance in society no matter how hard he works. He believes this false reality up until his tragic death in a car accident. This is another example where even an American cannot achieve his own goals through hard work; thus, a majority of immigrants must be stuck in a cycle of working without making progress.
The immigrant experience and the American Dream in the nineteenth and twentieth century somewhat parallels and simultaneously diverging from the contemporary immigrant experience. Many contemporary immigrants experience both achieving the American Dream or rejecting the preconceived notions of the United States being a land of opportunity. One of the most obvious changes in immigration since the industrial age is the diversity in the influx of immigration in the contemporary era. Instead of immigration being almost exclusively coming from Europe and Asia, now, immigrants come from Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and more regions. According to the Department of Homeland Security’s 2019 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, there were 1,031,765 immigrants who entered the United States legally. This is very stark difference from the influx of immigration in the nineteenth and twentieth century, which is due to the harsher immigration laws and the enforcement of ICE. An example of the exclusion of the American Dream for immigrants through systemic means is the immigration process as a whole. One of the most complex and frustrating problems with American immigration is the amount of time it takes for immigrants to come to the US legally. This then becomes an issue for future immigrants who are trying to escape from dire situations like war, prejudice, or wide scale terrorism. Essentially, these are situations where waiting is not an option. Some similarities between both of these immigrant experiences could be living and or working conditions, being abused by their advantageous employers, or they might experience rejection for not assimilating to the American culture. Despite all these obstacles and roadblocks, immigrants persevere in hopes to provide the future generations of their families with a foundation that they do not have to experience the same struggle they had to endure.
In my family the existence of both the death of American Dream and the possibility of achieving the American Dream have been supported through life experience. All my family are immigrants from the Dominican Republic, including my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and some cousins. Fortunately, through hard work and dedication my father and mother decided to be the first people in their respective families to graduate college and receive doctoral degrees. They achieved this enormous feat, while not being accustomed to the culture, being unable to speak the language fluently, working to provide for their family, and taking care of the needs for their families. This is a testament that the immigrants already come to the U.S with the American Dream mentality in order to succeed in life and beyond. On the other hand, there are many instances where societal circumstances come in between the ambitions and the execution of those ambitions. For example, two of my uncles on my father’s side have worked extremely hard working in “bodegas” and working as taxi drivers. In spite of all the hard work they have been doing for years, they are relatively in the same position they were in when they started working in the U.S. These are only few examples of the Death of the American Dream and the achievement of the American Dream. Every immigrant has their own sets of circumstances and conditions that make this situation less black and white.
The American Dream has been an ideology in American culture that defined the U.S as a land of opportunity and the only way to succeed is through the means of work. Although the U.S is considered a land of opportunity, some people take advantage and work extremely hard and find themselves in the same position as they were previously. This phenomenon is called the Death of the American Dream. The immigrant experience almost fully shapes the definition of the American Dream in their search for freedom and their desire to provide for their families in hope that no one will struggle like they have. Throughout history, especially in the Age of Industrialism, immigrants have both experience achieving the American Dream against all odds, and others have unfortunately not achieved the American Dream because of systemic “gatekeeping” opportunity. Examples of systemic “gatekeeping” includes unaffordable education, the lawful process of immigration, and the enforcement of harsh immigration laws. Even though the immigrant experience in relation to the American Dream seems polarizing, the concept of success is rather subjective. An individual may consider success to be receiving less that minimum wage or gaining doctoral degrees. The elusive concept of success makes the phenomenon of the American Dream complicated but, it can fuel the drive to maintain anything and everything America can offer.
Index
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Work Cited
“Chapter 2.” The Great Gatsby, by Scott Fitzgerald, Gale Group, 1925, pp. 23–38.
“The Growth of Cities and the American Culture.” United States History: Preparing for the Advanced Placement Examination, by John J. Newman and John M. Schmalbach, Amsco School Publications, 2018, pp. 361–373.
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. Oxford University Press, 2019.
Riis, Jacob August. How the Other Half Live: Studies among the Tenements of New York. Franklin Classics, 2018.
“Table 3. Persons Obtaining Lawful Permanent Resident Status by Region and Country of Birth: Fiscal Years 2017 to 2019.” Department of Homeland Security, 28 Oct. 2020, www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2019/table3.
