Historical and Current Issues of Immigration

Question 1
Immigration is the movement of people from their native country to another country where they do not possess citizenship. The movement is as a result of several factors, such as war, disasters, in search of economic prosperity as well as better living conditions. The migration process is often complicated since it’s so engraved with many issues that hinder successful transition.
Just as in the article of The St Louis Tragedy, today’s immigration process is held up tightly by the international and political negotiations based on racism. Since the Jewish were Semitism, the western countries, Cuba, United States and Canada felt it would be unwise to allow the ship to dock in their territories since they were anti-Semitism.
In today immigration, racism hinders people from the discriminated regions from accessing high-end areas since they are no equals (Croddy, Marshall, Bill and Carlton, 2003). The Canadians in the articles thought if Germany did not want the Jews refugees in their country because they were non-equals with the other Germans, why then would Canada accommodate them yet they would only steal their money and downgrade their economy. This mindset is prevalent today, and citizens of a country feel there are superior to the refugees who come to lag their economies behind, thus no need to accommodate them.
Fear and prejudice as well contribute to today’s immigration issues. Canada, during the St Louis tragedy, feared to allow non-white and non-Christian refugees into their territories.

By doing so, they felt that they were keeping their country safe from dangerous communists. With the advent rising of terror, immigration has heightened on fear and prejudice that a particular immigrant group would be harboring terror suspects, such as al-Shabaab.
Due to an increasing number of immigrant present worldwide, countries have imposed policies to help minimize the number of immigrants allowed into a country and made the process very expensive. During the St Louis tragedy, Canada and United States made it tough for the German Jews to migrate by increasing the visa cost. They also set up quotas indicating the number of German citizens that are allowed, United States; 27,370 and Canada 5000 (Kühl,1994). In the recent times, countries have also taken up the trend of quotas so as to limit the number of immigrants allowed into the foreign countries.
In conclusion, The St Louis tragedy article reflects on critical humanitarian issues that are facing the current immigrants, that need attention so as to, achieve fair and justice refugees treaties that reflect more on the moral imperative rather than a country’s economic impact.
Question 2
The U.S as a nation has struggled with its immigration policy since the year 1978 even though it establishment was as a country of newcomers. This conflict has been attributed to various issues mostly coming up as a result of opinion differences among the population creating prejudice for the immigrants. Differing political considerations, as well as motivations, has also played a role in the problems facing immigration policies in the country.
Prejudice is evident when it comes to religious, cultural and language differences among the immigrants to the native population (Bush, Jeb, Thomas and Edward, 2009). The nation was mostly founded by Protestants even though; subsequent immigrants were loyal to the Catholic Church which made people view them as a threat making it a primary concern among the people.
Cultural and language differences were evident from the Irish, German, Chinese, Italian, Swedish/Norwegian and Russian immigrants especially after the events surrounding World War 1 which increased anti-German hysteria. This cultural and language difference had the effect of making the immigrants more noticeable to the population hence increasing the backlashes against them. It also brought out issues of racism in the form of patriotism among the political blocks whose aim was to curb the immigration of immigrants into the country.
The political blocks, built by people who had different political motivations as well as considerations. There are some that supported the immigrants with the aim of increasing the labor force of the country with cheap labor as most of the immigrants always tended to be illiterate hence were taken advantage. Some wanted to grow their voters’ numbers through offering the settlers food and shelter in exchange for votes during elections.
On the other hand, we have the political blocks against immigration for security reasons as well as those who had reasons that tended to be racist yet hidden as patriotism to the country to maintain their culture. The immigration costs also managed to affect the policies in place such as those associated with border enforcement and those for the legal processes that usually overwhelmed the humanitarian concerns (Long, 1996).
It clear that World War 2 also provided a clear picture of what happens to the unwanted people which helped improve immigration even though restrictions remained. These limitations were, as a result, the prejudices that could be still observably festered by the different political blocks.
Work Cited
Bush, Jeb, Thomas F. McLarty, and Edward H. Alden. U.S. Immigration Policy. New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2009. Print.
Croddy, Marshall, Bill Hayes, and Carlton S. Martz. The Immigration Debate: Historical and Current Issues of Immigration. Los Angeles, CA: Constitutional Rights Foundation, 2003. Print
Kühl, Stefan. The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1994. Print
Long, Robert E. Immigration. New York: H.W. Wilson Co, 1996. Print.