Navarrete

Kenny Navarrete
Prof. Derohanessian
English 115
24 November 2014
Discrimination Towards Immigrants
The U.S. is a country founded by immigrants and based on the idea that all men and
women should be treated equal and have freedom. Despite what this country was founded on
there still seems to be discrimination towards immigrants, almost as if citizens of the United
States have forgotten what our forefathers founded this country on. Throughout history, the most
recent immigrants to this country have almost always confronted some sort of discrimination
often they have had to take the hardest, worst paid jobs, and have difficulty assimilating entirely
into society. Some people feel as though the large amounts of people being allowed into the
country are cause for alarm, so they discriminate against them. And it is not all citizens who are
discriminative towards immigrants but there is still a very large population of people who do
discriminate based on where people are from. There is discrimination in the workplace and in
public areas (such as restaurants, retail stores, movie theaters, sports centers, etc.). Motives
behind discrimination towards immigrants differ from person to person, some people might
discriminate because of racism, or the common idea that immigrants are taking all the jobs that
American citizens could have, or people will discriminate just out of plain ignorance and not
understanding a certain culture.
Immigrants are discriminated everywhere including the workplace and many public
areas. Amy Tan, the author of the short reading Mother Tongue, talks about how her mother was
an immigrant from China and spoke a broken or limited English so most people did take her

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seriously because of the way she talks. Tan says the fact that people in the department stores, at
banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not
to understand her, or even acted as if they did not hear her (Mother Tongue 78). Immigrants
always get this type of treatment because of their accent or the way they speak English and it is
not fair to them to be discriminated because they are not used to speaking English especially
when they have spent most of their life speaking a completely different language in their native
country. Discrimination also goes on in the workplace as well, sometimes a big reason why an
immigrant will not get a job somewhere will be because they have a heavy accent or their
English is broken or limited so they are treated differently than other people that are also
applying for the job. Although employers are not allowed to base employment decisions on how
well an applicant speaks English, it is almost always the case on why an immigrant will not get
the job. For most immigrants it is very difficult to get a job and when immigrants do start getting
jobs American citizens that are unemployed start complaining and saying that illegal immigrants
are taking the jobs legal citizens. But what most people might not realize is that immigrants who
are getting these jobs are not getting office jobs or jobs that can give them the ability to support
themselves and a family, they are getting minimum wage paying jobs or jobs that nobody wants
to do such as working in factories, picking fruit all day long, or construction, only a small
percentage of immigrants are actually getting jobs that would be considered a good job that
would allow the to support their families.
Racism in the United States has always been a problem in the United States; racism even
takes place between American citizens. But there is also a lot of racism towards immigrants who
are new the United States. Immigrants to United States face harsh racist feelings on a daily basis,
and especially after an event that causes a lot of alarm and shock. For example, the hate crimes

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following September 11th, which included murder and beatings, were directed at Arabs only
because they shared or were looked at as sharing the national background of the hijackers
responsible for attacking the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Now that was years ago but
there is still hostility, discrimination, and racism towards people of Arab descent even though it
has been thirteen years since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It also is
not just Muslim Americans who receive discrimination it is immigrants from all over that are
affected by racism and discrimination. A lot of times people believe that just because someone is
an immigrant it automatically means they are staying in the country illegally but that might not
even be the case at all. Recently President Obama just used his executive orders to save about 4.7
million immigrants from being deported and that upset a lot of people because all these
American citizens who are opposed to Obamas action are opposed to it because they believe
that if there is high crime rate and the percentage of people living in the area is a good
percentage of immigrants than they link crime rates and immigrants together putting the blame
on immigrants. Author of the article Background on Discrimination Against Immigrants says
Ethnic minorities can fall victim to anti-immigrant bias that includes a recurrent preoccupation
with nativism (i.e., policies favoring people born in the United States), resentment when socalled immigrants succeed (often related to a fear of losing jobs to newcomers), and disdain or
anger when they act against the established norm (e.g. when they dont know or refuse to learn
the language) (Background on Discrimination 1). People are so worried about their own well
being that they antagonize and hate another group of people so that they can make sure their own
needs are met first.
People will often discriminate towards immigrants solely because they do not understand
the culture and just see them as weird and different so they choose to discriminate instead of

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accepting them into society as regular people. Porochista Khakpour, author of the article Reality
T.V. Goes Where Football Meets the Hijab, states part of assimilation was a crash course in
sober self-awareness. I gravitated toward the freak, the outsider, the antagonist, the one who did
not belong in the protagonists vision, not because I had low self-esteem but because conditions
couldnt have allowed for normal self-esteem (Reality T.V. 1). Khakpour is saying that as an
immigrant in a different country you will always feel like the outsider and always feel different
than the rest of the people because people will look down on you and treat you different because
of your ethnic background. It is just that people these days are not accepting of new things they
fear change and do not like the idea that their way of life has to change for immigrants, when in
reality immigrants are going through a hard time and struggling everyday to become part of
American culture.
When it really comes down to it immigrants are the victims of discrimination. Immigrants
work hard in jobs that nobody else would want to work and they mostly work in terrible
conditions. But public officials are trying to make life for immigrants better. And social media
creating television shows that portray certain ethnic groups are good for society if the show is
pushing a good agenda and perception of a certain culture. For example The Cosby Show did so
much to change attitudes about African-Americans in this country, and I think sometimes people
are afraid of things they dont understand. So if The Cosby Show Can do so much to prevent
events like this from happening then maybe those Muslim reality shows will help portray
Muslim Americans in a positive light. And we need to continue to grow as a society to accept
people from all cultures and so we may stop discrimination of immigrants and all people in all
places whether it be in a neighborhood, the movie theatre, or the workplace.

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Works Cited
Khakpour, Porochista. "Reality TV Goes Where Football Meets the Hijab. "New York Times 13
Nov. 2011, AR sec.: 18. Print.
"Background on Discrimination Against Immigrants." Do Something. N.p., 2 Mar. 2010. Web.
24 Nov. 2014.
Tan, Amy. The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings. New York: Putnam, 2003. Print.