Blog 4 "Bringing to Light the Plight of Immigrant Children"

http://faithandimmigration.org/blog/bringing-light-plight-immigrant-children-césar-j-baldelomar 


Key Terms:

1. Xenophobic- having abnormal fear or hatred of the strange or foreign

2. FOT- Flight Operation Teams

3. Insurmountable- not being capable of being surmounted or overcome

What Is Going On? 

         The article that stood out to me was "Bringing to Light the Plight of Immigrant Children-Cesar J. Baldelomar " mainly because I am from immigrant decent and even though I was young to remember the difficult obstacles that my parents endured, I can picture them every time my parents tell me their testimony. This article focuses on the suffering of parents who live with the anxiety of being deported, which in the end determines the future of their children who are U.S. citizens. When talking about the children, they often think about their educational life. Many children ,who are citizens, must work part time and even full time to help support their immigrant parents with the bare necessities. By doing this, they often put a stop to their education and normally will not prosper in the future. This is important because if they truly want to help their parents, then the only way is to get an education. Since this article was written by a teacher who daily witnesses this struggle in his students, I believe that this an important issue to focus on. Cesar J. Baldelomar gave many statics not only about immigration but also the different ways the students are affected. Some statistics were “Today there are an estimated 5.5 million children with unauthorized immigrant parents, about three-quarters of whom are U.S.-born citizens.” or “the federal government spends billions each year to arrest, detain, and deport immigrants, many of whom are parents. The statistic that stood out to me when talking about education was “In several cases students who had struggled at first recovered their academic performance or saw improvements in the long run.” This is important because throughout the blog Cesar mentioned that for a U.S. citizen children it is difficult to get back on track after working either part-time or full-time in a job. 

My Predictions

          I do not understand why it is that the government is determined to spend billions of dollars on trying to deport immigrants when they could be using their money where it is better suited. Education is one area where the money could go to. I predict that if the government will stop using the billions of dollars to deport parents of U.S. citizen children, and instead give that money to help focus success in these children, then this country will be more intellectually diverse. For example, my parents are immigrants to this country, even though it says otherwise in sheets of papers, and I was the only one that was born here. I believe that I have made a contribution  to both of the countries. Every time I go to Mexico, I always share part of my knowledge and gain knowledge from the people around me, which gives me a unique point of view when I get to share my opinions in an issue. No one should be denied education, because education is a right. 

Blog 1 "Preventing Haiti's Next Crisis"

Link : http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/preventing-the-next-haitian-crisis/ 


Key Terms:
1. Bangladesh Cyclone (1991) - (cyclone is a violent rotating windstorm) Bangladesh Cyclone was the         deadliest tropical cyclones ever recorded.  It hit the city of Chittagong district of southeastern.

2. Rule of law - a state of order in which events conform to the law

3. Ireland's Potato Blight ( 1840s) - an unknown disease hit the potato fields in Ireland. Between one third and one half of the crops went bad. The people in Ireland did not necessarily go through a period of starvation but there was a sense of famine.

4. Bengal Famine (1943) - a famine in the region of eastern India and Bangladesh where about three million people died due to starvation and malnutrition.

Why and How? 
One can never explain why or how something happens when it comes to natural disasters. On January 12, 2010,  Haiti experienced an earthquake that nearly destroyed everything that they worked hard to build for their survival. We have no one to blame, but we do have the responsibility to help the people who were affected by it. Most people automatically think of money as the main way to assist a vulnerable country, but sometimes it is more than that.  "Think outside the box" is what everyone says and that is exactly what this economist did.  Edward L. Glaeser holds a very interesting point of view about Haiti's disaster and our approach to helping them. He doesn't state the obvious solution which would be sending money, food and water, and resources. He dug to find one of the base problems that not only caused the high mortality rate in Haiti, but also in the events of Bangladesh Cyclone (1991), Ireland's Potato Blight (1840s), and Bengal Famine (1943). All of these disasters have something in common. They do not have a well coordinated and organized system that knows how to respond to a foreign attack or unexpected catastrophe. Edward compares the system that was taken after the past events of the famine and cyclone to our own disaster which was September 11, 2001. His comment on September 11 is, "The achievements were not just acts of individual heroism but a reflection of organizational competence, which itself was built up over decades by a wealthy, reasonably well- run city, and further reviewed improved after the crisis." His idea to help Haiti is to create a well-structured preparedness system that would allow the people to be ready at any time to deal with these types of events which could end up lowering the mortality rate.

My Predictions
I believe that with the donations coming into Haiti and Edward's preparedness plan, there would be more peace in the lives of the people in Haiti. Not only will they feel safe knowing they have a Plan B, but their entire government can take on a new perspective when rebuilding Haiti that will better their lives. I predict that the government will find new ways of constructing earthquake proof schools, having a system that deals with storing food and water, and creating one or two back up plans that would be taught to all of the people of Haiti for their own safety. My final prediction is that if Haiti presents these plans to other countries, then the other countries will help Haiti to become stabilized and assist in rebuilding a more organized country.