Dear Readers,
My thesis is how immigration has influenced the economic conditions, lifestyles, and personalities of Chinese immigrants. My first step in my paper is to analyze both the positive and negative effects immigration has on people’s economic conditions. I have included an interview and a few statistics from an encyclopedia to explain how immigrants improve their financial situation but also cause psychological imbalance at the same time. Then I discussed how immigration had affected people’s lifestyles, which includes religious beliefs, diet habits, and language. Finally, I talked about the influences of immigration on people’s personalities from the different situations of the first-generation and second-generation immigrants.
As I was writing my paper, I thought about existing Chinese immigrants and Chinese people who are going to emigrate to the United States as my audience. If they are reading my paper, it should be easy to understand and persuasive enough to deliver my thoughts.
The biggest challenges during my writing have been my grammar and vocabulary. After reading it a few times, I hope there are no mistakes influencing people’s understanding of my paper. In order to prove my points, I did a lot of research, which include articles from the New York Times, an interview, statistics from outside sources, and an encyclopedia. I still believe that I should work more on concentrating my words to keep my article shorter.
If I had two more days, I would focus my attention on the transition between each paragraph and cut my sentences shorter for readers. I would also try to fix my grammar mistakes.
Sincerely,
Kaiwen Lian
Effects of Immigration on Chinese in the USA
In today’s era of globalization, immigration is no longer unfamiliar. There are more and more people coming to strange lands to pursue a new life. Immigration has both good and bad effects on Chinese people who emigrated to the U.S. and experienced their life-changing. The most significant changes occurred in the economic conditions, lifestyles, and personalities of Chinese immigrants.
Chinese immigrants often experienced significant changes in their economic situation. Although immigrating to a different country sounds exciting, sometimes it is still a hard decision for most people because starting a new life means stepping out of their comfort zone and giving up everything they had. Career is one of the essential things people giving up for immigration. Investment immigration is the most common way for Chinese people to emigrate to the United States. According to the U.S. Department of State’s official website, a foreign national must invest $1,000,000 or $500,000 (in a high-unemployment or rural area) in qualified commercial enterprises to obtain a Green Card. In China, to fund such a massive amount of money, most of the people who want to emigrate are mostly middle-class or above and must have a certain amount of fixed assets. However, when they left their original career and stepped on the United States to pursue their next job, the psychological gap will form after changing in the working environment. Due to the lack of English skills and specific requirements, most new immigrants have to go from white-collar to blue-collar. In the Encyclopedia Multicultural America, it explains that for Chinese immigrants in low-pay employment sectors, many are waiters, sweatshop sewing women, and cooks (Lee). Accepting such a significant job change may not be easy for many new immigrants.
Besides, Chinese immigrants often experience a social class change followed by the job change. In an interview with Katherine Chen, a freshman at Baruch College, who emigrated to the United States with her family ten years ago, she described how her family’s economic situation changed after immigration. “I remember my childhood in China was rich and varied. I participated in different extracurricular activities after school, and my parents often take me to swim or hike during the weekend,” Katherine said, “but everything changed after we emigrated. My parents must work during the weekend, and we can’t afford any extracurricular activities. In our first few years in the United States, it was even hard for us to pay the rent on time.” Like other immigrants from China, Katherine’s family experienced a considerable class change because everything must be started over. Phycology gaps formed by changes in jobs and social class made immigration a nightmare for some people, but once immigrants overcome these difficulties through hard work and iron will, all sufferings have their reward. It reveals the fact that there are always two sides to a coin. Most Chinese immigrants admit that their living condition in the U.S. is better since China is still a developing country. Compared with China, the United States offers more job opportunities and higher salaries. According to the Encyclopedia Multicultural America and Statista.com, the median family income of Chinese Americans was $62,705 in the United States (Lee). At the same time, an employee in urban areas of China earned around 82,413 yuan (about $11,643) annually on average (Textor). It is not hard to see that working in the United States can receive more wages than working in China. Therefore, Chinese immigrants can improve their living conditions through hard work. For Chinese immigrants, immigration has both positive and negative effects on their economic situation, and besides that, immigration also impacted their lifestyles.
Cultural differences between China and the United States will cause Chinese immigrants to change their lifestyles. Nowadays, for most of the Chinese immigrants, they are willing to assimilate to the American culture, just like the old saying: “Do in Rome as Rome does.” Religious belief is one significant impact brought by the United States on Chinese immigrants. “In God we trust,” is the official motto of the United States, which shows the importance of religious belief to American values. However, for some Chinese immigrants, religious belief is an unfamiliar concept because China is an atheist country. Under the influence of religious cultures, more and more Chinese immigrants choose to believe in one religion, such as Christianity. According to a New York Times article in 2019, through the investigation of some local churches in New York, reporter Alexandra E. Petri noticed that “Of the 500 or so converting in New York last weekend, about a third were Chinese immigrants… Most of the Chinese immigrants live in Brooklyn and Queens, and they are having a transformative effect on local Catholic churches.” As evidenced by the article, religious belief has become an integral part of the life of some Chinese immigrants.
Similarly, immigration also has an impact on Chinese immigrants’ diet habits. According to the FAO Statistics Division in 2010, the United States has 114 grams of protein intake per person on average, while China only has 67 grams of protein intake per person. As seen in the statistics, per capita meat consumption in China is half that of the United States. Under the influence of American food culture, Chinese immigrants combined their traditional food with American tastes to create recipes with higher protein content. For example, the Encyclopedia Multicultural America explains that “Some Chinese American dishes are created in America, e.g., chop suey, made of finely chopped meat (usually pork) and vegetables, mixed in a brown sauce (Lee).” The living habits of Chinese immigrants have changed not only in religion and diet but also in their language. For new Chinese immigrants, learning English is a challenging goal in their life since they rarely speak English in China. As Binovo indicated in his 2003 New York Times article, “For many Asians, one problem is learning English… more than 200,000 Asians in New York City spoke English either ‘not well’ or ‘not at all.'” This situation didn’t get any improvement in the past few years. Many new immigrants still can’t speak English, but they are trying their best to fix it. Some new immigrants attended language schools, and the other chose to participate in English classes operated in the local church or learn English by themselves. It’s very confusing to learn a new language, but this is the inevitable challenge on the road of immigration. Immigration is changing the lifestyles of Chinese immigrants on the one hand; on the other hand, immigration is also imperceptibly changing their personality.
Immigrating to the United States has considerably impacted the personality of Chinese immigrants. Retaining a sense of original culture and identity becomes an unexpected problem for most Chinese immigrants. Living in a diversified country like the United States will awake the cultural pride of Chinese immigrants. Thus they are more sensitive to their original culture and often pay more attention to preserve it. As the Encyclopedia Multicultural America indicated, through the influence of vibrant Chinatown communities, most Chinese Americans tried to maintain their sense of Chinese cultural practices and identity (Lee). Besides that, many recent immigrants “will demand that their children only speak Chinese at home… and attend Chinese language schools on the weekends.” to preserve their language (Lee). This phenomenon can be seen as that immigration makes Chinese immigrants cherish their culture and language of their motherland much more than before.
Furthermore, immigration to the United States also makes Chinese people more inclusive of new things. Life experience of living in the United States will be much different than living in China because of the greater diversity and choice. America is a melting pot because it contains people from different countries and regions. There is no simple definition for American culture because it includes all different traits all over the world. Based on my personal experience, living in such a diversified country has entirely broadened my horizons and brought me into contact with more new things. It is the same for most of the Chinese immigrants. Immigration gives them more chances to contact customs and habits from different countries, which will make them more inclusive and open-minded. Personality changes do not only happen to first-generation immigrants. Immigration often brings more impact for the second and subsequent generations of Chinese Americans because they are more influenced by western mainstream values. For example, this change of personality is reflected in the family structure. As Jonathan H. X. Lee indicated in Multicultural America, first-generation Chinese immigrants tend to have an extended family structure, such as several generations of kinfolk live in one household. However, for the second and subsequent generations, they are more willing to have an American nuclear family structure, which is moving away for college and work and starting new families away from their parents. As suggested, the new generation of Chinese American values individuality and privacy much more important compared with the previous generation.
In conclusion, immigration has a significant impact on the economic conditions, lifestyles, and personalities of Chinese immigrants. Some of these effects might be negative, such as the psychological gap and the language barrier, but some other impacts are positive for Chinese immigrants, such as the unique life experience living in the United States. In brief, people should realize that immigration is not a pure fantasy or a nightmare because it has both plus and minus on immigrants.
Work Cited
Bovino, Arthur. “The Neediest Cases; As Chinese Immigrants Struggle in a Strange Land, Just Asking for Help Is a Challenge.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 28 Dec. 2003, www.nytimes.com/2003/12/28/nyregion/neediest-cases-chinese-immigrants-struggle-strange-land-just-asking-for-help.html
ChartsBin, FAO Statistics Division. “Daily Protein Intake Per Capita.” ChartsBin, 2010, chartsbin.com/view/1155
Katherine, Chen. Phone Interview. 30 Minutes. 26 April. 2020.
Lee, Jonathan H. X. “Chinese Immigrants.” Multicultural America: An Encyclopedia of the Newest Americans, edited by Ronald H. Bayor, vol. 1, Greenwood, 2011, pp. 277-352. Gale eBooks, https://link-gale-com.remote.baruch.cuny.edu/apps/doc/CX3307000016/GVRL?u=cuny_baruch&sid=GVRL&xid=ef00ef51. Accessed 24 Apr. 2020.
Petri, Alexandra E. “’Spiritually Speaking, I Am Free’.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 19 Apr. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/04/19/nyregion/chinese-immigrants-catholicism.html
Textor, C. “China: Average Salary 2018.” Statista, 9 Mar. 2020, www.statista.com/statistics/278349/average-annual-salary-of-an-employee-in-china/.
Travel.State.Gov. “Immigrant Investor Visas.” U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of State, travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrate/immigrant-investor-visas.html.