Chinese Immigrants in the United States
Chinese immigrants have been coming to the United States in great numbers and for a very long time. The immigrants started coming to America in the 1840s and up until the present. Currently, the majority of immigrants in America are citizens due to the country's high immigration rate.
Reasons for Immigration
Some Chinese immigrants to the United States arrive over a long enough length of time to intermarry with Americans and have American children, making the subsequent generations citizens of the United States. The majority of Chinese immigrants arrive in America with the intention of staying for an extended period of time or permanently. The major reasons why Chinese immigrants move to America are in search of education, employment, and escaping persecution from their country.
Motivations for Moving to America
The people who move to America in search of employment do so because they view America as a country filled with freedom and hope for riches as compared to their country. People mostly come to America so that they can become rich and assist the people they have left back in China. This is because economic hardship is the key reason why most of the Chinese people migrated to America.
Interview with Zhou Fang Cheng
The interview below is a story and background of a 36-year-old Chinese immigrant named Zhou Fang Cheng who migrated to America in search of education opportunities that would lead to him getting a good job and ultimately riches that would enable him to assist his family back in China. The interview is meant to be a way of understanding the issues that immigrants go through before, during, and after their immigration to the US. The story helps in assessing the reasons that made him want to migrate to the US, issues that made it successful for him to migrate and his experience after settling in the US.
Interview
During the interview Zhou described himself as a person who is hard dedicated and committed to working hard so as to have money to support himself and his family back at home. He said that his full name is Zhou Fang Cheng and that he was born and raised in China until the age of 25 years when he migrated to the US in search of work so that he could earn enough to help him fulfill his dream and his family's needs.
He was born in a village called Wuyuan which is in Jiangxi and he was raised around that area. The village is around 200 kilometers from the city of Guiyang which by driving is around three and a half hours by car. The village was ancient and as a child, he remembers all the problems they faced as a family because his family was very poor. His father and mother were farmers for as far as he could remember and he and his 6 siblings, who were 4 sisters and 2 brothers, could help when they could.
The village he was raised in was a poor and isolated area where most of the people who grew up there relocated when they grew up in search of jobs that paid well, and most of those jobs were only found in the cities. Due to the fact that the village he grew up in had few economic and educational opportunities, he had to relocate to the cities in order to continue his studies. Although they were poor and at times struggled to survive, his parents were strong believers in providing education to their children with the belief that education could lead to their children having good jobs and money. This is why his parents struggled and managed to take him to the university where he studied biomedical science.
Although the tuition fee was cheap considering Zhou has passed and was partly sponsored by the government, to his parents, the school was very expensive. He got a job after he completed school, but according to Zhou, the job was not paying so well. While working, he heard from a friend about how a person can migrate to the US as a student and end up getting a job and making good money. He opted to save money and pay for a course in the US. He applied to do a nursing diploma because that was all he could afford, and it took a considerably shorter period even though he had good grades to pursue medicine.
He explained that because he spoke limited English, he had a difficult time trying to communicate with the people and fellow students. In America, during the first few years, he had a problem adapting to the life because it was totally different from what he was used to. He also had to work odd hours in aged care homes so that he could afford school and his other needs. Even in order to get the aged care jobs, he had to get training which he had to pay for.
Analysis
In order for Zhou to be incorporated in America, he had to make various changes in his life. The changes involved a process of adjusting cultural, social, and institutional factors. The factors began his process of immigration and later on his settlement. The issues that propelled him to migrate to America were so that he could develop himself and his financial status. He also chose to migrate to the US because many people from his country had moved there and had gained financial and personal benefits (Bloemraad 16).
In America, he had to adapt to the education requirements and standards. He also had to adapt to the language barrier because he spoke limited English. Thus, in order for him to survive with other students and get jobs just like the rest, he had to adapt fast and learn to speak better English (Zhou 426).
Push factors also led to him moving to America because at the time China was undergoing economic hardships, and America was viewed as a country where people could go and earn much better than they did in their home country. The pull and push factors are the other events apart from personal needs that prompt a person to immigrate to another country. It was easier for Zhou to settle in the US because of the people he met there who were from China and other countries. Through such interactions, he gained confidence and they helped each other financially and morally when the need arose (Zhou 421). There was co-dependence among them.
Apart from this, Zhou found out that America was not all milk and honey as he had thought and that he had to work really hard in order to achieve the level of success he always wanted. To Zhou, the United States had its own challenges including dealing with people from different races, various discriminations in places of employment, and other areas in the country (Hooper 26).
Work Cited
Bloemraad, Irene. Becoming a citizen: Incorporating immigrants and refugees in the United States and Canada. Univ of California Press, 2006.
Hooper, Kate, and Jeanne Batalova. “Chinese immigrants in the United States.” Migration Policy Institute 28 (2015).
Zhou, Min, and Guoxuan Cai. “Chinese language media in the United States: Immigration and assimilation in American life.” Qualitative Sociology 25.3 (2002): 419-441.
