In “Why a ‘Good Immigrant’ Is a Bad Narrative by Maeve Higgins, she speaks about the value of immigrants and how they deserve a chance of life in the U.S, she all speaks about the importance of treating all immigrants equal. She talks about the low crime rates revolving around immigrants, and how they come to America, and try to open businesses to build the economy. She also talks about Annie Moore, she was an undocumented immigrant that came to the U.S and built up her life to become exceptional. She also talks about her personal experiences as an Immigrant building up her life and how she won the Alexander Hamiliton Immigrant Acheivement Award for contributions to Manhattan and New York. One quote from the Ted Talk that shows the idea and concept that Immigrants are all equal and how they try their hardest to build their way up to being exceptional in the U.S economy. Maeve Higgins tells us that she feels like she has to be exceptional to be able to get somewhere in life and to be able to be treated with basic human respect and dignity, “Constantly having to prove yourself worthy of basic human dignity is exhausting, and it's unfair.” (Higgins)
Girl In Translation By Jean Kwok is about a young Chinese girl immigrating to the U.S from Hong Kong, trying to accustom to the new morals and ways of life. Kimberly and her mother live in a very run down, bad apartment in the projects of New York, a place that was basically abandoned. Kimberly has to attend public school, where she has some challenges in the beginning, but eventually makes a good friend named Annette. Annette shows her the ways of life in the U.S and eventually Kimberly gets the hang of school there, and gets very high math tests scores, and was able to be a candidate to go to a private school. On top of school, Kimberly has to go to the factory where her mother was employed after school to work very long hours, sometimes being there all night with her mother. One quote from the book that shows Immigrants trying to build their way up in the new place of life for them is Kimberly stating she is trying and working very hard so she can get her and her mother out of the projects of New York, and into a safer place for them, “The only future I could see for us, for you, was here, where you could become whatever you wanted. Even though this isnt what we’d imagined back home, we will be all right. ( Kwok 20 ).
What are the benefits of an immigrant being exceptional? Do you see any exceptional immigrants in your story? If not, what do you see instead?
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