Who are the women whose land is it by the way? Are they native Americans, immigrants, or the black slave women who produced more slaves to fulfill labor demands of the rich English and other European colonials? And who has the right more than others to claim this land as theirs and of their men and children? These are the perplexed questions that still probably lurk in the mind of every student of history. But in fact all those women who bore the severe hardships and traveled miles with their men before or after the American independence both legally and illegally, then and now, should have the right to own this place.
The Americas is a land of immigrants, even if we scour through the pages of history one has to accept this as a fact. And that is why it is still a most destined place for the immigrants from all over the world. Now evolved to a multi-ethnic society with people from diverse backgrounds and each with their own saga of travail and emigration that brought them here, American culture owes a great debt to all those women who made it possible to shape a distinct American society and a lot can be learnt from their heroic struggle.
The earlier immigration to the pre-New World has been a matter of little contention for the historians as the real dangers started when the world was transforming into a global unit and countries were ever more conscious of their boundary limits. The opportunities that were lying open in America to make progress enticed many people from different regions to come settle in this place, especially in an environment of religious tolerance and a progressing industrialized economy. The unrest in European countries due to successive periods of wars and revolutions, religious and economic persecution resulted in mass exoduses to the New World. The period between 16th century and up till recently was the most convulsive period in this regard. Then the American revolution which made the united American colonies to a separate country, USA, was to start a period of ever more troubles for the immigrants as the newly born country had started worrying of the ill-effects of welcoming new comers to America.
This was a great happening as its effects are seen even today when the world want to get in to America while the former is much more persistent to restrain unchecked and unbridled settlers. But during all these extra-ordinary developments the women in past, and even now, have been subjected to tough times and for this they really deserve a credit as they have made a history of their own.
Not only the women have gained reputation in the social and economical fields but also a rising trend of community leadership and politics is seen in the immigrant women. Most of the women who came to the US were either those who belonged to the modern European countries or in the recent ones the women from Latin America and Asia. In all these regions the women had less freedom to work cooperatively with the men in all walks of life. But still these women learnt great lessons from their journey into America to seek a better life and build a happy family. And they are now significantly progressing in the competitive work environment of the American life.
The immigrants came here in huge numbers by different transport means and suffered a great deal of miseries in there endeavor. The migrated women had to suffer hardships after their settlement in the US.
The recent among these immigrants are the Vietnamese people. The Vietnam woman had a hard time living in the US. Known today as the Vietnamese Americans were not Americans from the beginning. A large number of theirs had migrated to America after the Saigon fell into the hands of communists. In this escaped-manner flee as refugees from their land to save themselves from the effects of massive bloodletting, the migrated people included women, children and spouses of those people who were American service men in Vietnam (Batz, 2000). During their deadly escapes, which are called the escape of boat people, millions of Vietnamese fled through their land to seek asylum in foreign lands. In this situation there were some leniencies shown by the US congress to the refugees to come here. Therefore a large number of these people entered America through their voyages in boats where during the journey many thousand people were killed because of the hardships of the course.
According to a UN report out of 250,000 boat people, 1/3rd of them died at sea by killing, loot and plunder, illness and food shortage (” Boat People” , n.d.). The Vietnamese families initially were having sponsors who used to provide them with food, shelter and take care of their other needs such as medical issues.
But as the time passed the Vietnamese families joined their hands to make small communities. They adapted the American culture without losing their original identity, their tradition and their religion. They never let American culture mixed up in the Vietnamese traditions. They had their aims of higher education which further sent them into the professional fields which needed an expertise work. So the Vietnamese immigrants helped to improve the economic structure of the different states because of the man power of the immigrants from Vietnam (Povell, 2005).
The Chinese women were subjected to a similar fate. These women came to America along with their men to settle down in the Californian region to pursue a better life through achieving their economic goals. The Chinese immigrants were initially attracted towards America in the Gold mining sector especially during the period of Gold Rush places in California but many of them left their homeland only because of economic frustrations there. But here they had to bear the brunt of racism and exclusion especially when the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was passed, despite the fact that Chinese were proving to be productive resources for the whole economy especially in the mining sector and were contributing positive share in forming the US society en masse. Their women were also less in number which made it difficult for the Chinese communities to flourish, and the earthquake in 1906 of California also displaced a large number of them. They were seriously discouraged to continue working in the mining and other sectors. While they were still struggling to make full use of the economic opportunities in different fields, the Chinese were targeted as the victims of prejudice as they were compared to blacks and in many cases were denied the right to get naturalized and to avail the employment opportunities. But the Chinese men along with their women worked hard to pursue their dreams and established themselves in agriculture and fishing to ensure their respectable survival (” The Chinese in California” , n.d.). The experience with the Chinese in America was not good. These excellent and hard working people should have been encouraged to come here in large numbers as the time has proved their abilities which are evidenced the way China is making a respectable position in the world. As compared to the immigrants from other countries the Chinese were comparatively less in number.
It was a fact that women were not equally represented among the nation’s early naturalization records. The US government had announced in general that every immigrant woman has the right to become naturalized but not every court in the US approved this decision (Smith, 1998). There may have been difference of thinking in this issue. Whether the immigrants have the right to get a legal status of citizenship or not. If not then why are the early European immigrants were considered the US citizens? Were not they, themselves, illegal entrants to this land? These complexities might have been a reason behind the naturalization complications and the decisions of the courts regarding these.
There also was an act passed which allowed that if the immigrant women were married to US born citizens they would be granted with the naturalization right. After this the naturalization started making its base on the backbone of the marital status of a woman. If a woman was unmarried and was not having a permit of naturalization from the court, she was considered to be a non US citizen and she had to live in a state of identity crisis besides other social, economical and legal complications suffered by her. If a man had died prior to naturalization after filing the intentions of becoming a US citizen, his widow and his offsprings were, in theory, considered to be US citizens. It was not a practice on every case as there were cases who had filed their intentions of becoming a citizen but after their death their spouses or children were not granted the citizenship, henceforth the children after reaching the age of maturity had to go to the courts and ask for the naturalization certificate (Smith,1988). This was indirectly a very inhumane act with the immigrant women who had reached US after going through loads of problems which included the deaths of their children , siblings and other family members due to lack of food, water, medicine and hard weather conditions. They had to travel through storms in the ship cargoes even.
The connection between an immigrant woman’s nationality and that of her husband convinced many judges that unless the husband of an alien couple became naturalized, the wife could not become a citizen. However, the refusal of the citizenship was also based on the racism concept. Those who were from very lower castes were not given the naturalization as easily as they were considered to be ineligible for the filing of the petition.
By the late nineteenth century the marital status of a woman was the most important thing on which the judges granted her citizenship. Regardless of anything else the judges in their decisions went beyond the rules and regulations made by the government of United States and denied to accept the permit of citizenship of any woman whom they want to. The worst facet of the circle was that when the judges started denying the permit papers on the basis of not showing good moral characters by the immigrated woman (Smith, 1998).
The immigrant women today have been a core part of the US economy. They are not only working as employees but are also running their own businesses. Thus they are not only self-employed but in considerable proportions are creating job opportunities for others. Apart from this there are many women who are working in the services sector as Doctors, Teachers, Nurses and in many other fields. The immigrant women from the Vietnam are especially making their mark in the US economy. Many of them are good at work and effective risk takers. It is because they have now a relatively encouraging environment to work on which was not the case in their native lands. Thus the US economy has a large debt to the work of these women.
One can safely assume that the secret that why America emerged as a leading industrialized and progressive economy is that the immigrants, both men and women, worked really hard here in a free environment most suitable to work and with their last option to flourish their life. They had burnt their boats back thus having no route going to the back. And that may be regarded as a one of the miracles of the modern world. It is a common sense behind this which is that the people who go forward with clear determination and choose their path always have a brilliant chance to make progress.
Recent studies have shown that the business ownership is more in percent in the immigrant women than in the native born women. The immigrant women were entrepreneurs at a rate of 8.3 per cent as compared to 6.2 per cent of the native women. The courage of immigrant women is also seen by the fact that in 1990, 294,164 women were reported to have been self-employed. This number grew to 563,814 in 200 which means a 190 per cent increase in the business ownership among the immigrant women. The women immigrants in America are from many countries and account a total of 41 per cent of all the women entrepreneurs. Only in 2000, there were 27,721 Vietnamese women immigrant entrepreneurs (Pearce, 2005).
The immigrant women and their settlement in America is not important as regards the economic strength of US but they also cast a deep influence in the social life. Their coming to this land has its own implications. Some critiques are of the view that racism, hatred, ethnic and sectarian divide and the persecution of the American reservations and black slaves is the bitter legacy of this whole drama whose effects are seen from time to time in the American life. But others think the immigrants have brought a new vigor to the American life which made it possible for America to become the most powerful country in the world. The combined effort of the best brains has been largely the reason behind Americas queer success as a country.
Immigrants not only bring new ideas to America but also integrate the whole world to the US as people from nearly all over the world gathered here have made America a central place of the world politics and economics. It is a wrong belief that immigrants are responsible for the loss of employment opportunities for the native Americans as they counterpoise the effect by raising the economic activity in the country (Grisworld, 2002). Due to them the economic and foreign policies are greatly influenced in the United States. They also determine good relations with other countries of the US because in many cases the concern of immigrants comes in the way while dealing with foreign countries thus it makes it possible to have good economic relations with them.
The immigrant women came to America with a vision. This vision was to make their lives better and better. In this course they had to face tumultuous times but they never gave up their dream. These women were sometimes tormented by nature during their migration efforts and sometimes miscreants harmed them in their way. They were often raped, plundered and killed. And the maltreatment of them by the earlier settlers who had been opposed to further immigration into US added salt to their wounds. They were subjected to extreme difficulties in naturalization issues besides the economic ones. There are many successful stories of these women which add to the glory of United States of America.
References & Credits:
The above paper was a result of the scholarly study supported by some socially responsible companies. RegInOut Inc, the makers of the registry cleaner windows deserve special credit, for their outstanding commitment toward education.
Batz, Bob. (2000, April 24). Vietnam, 25 years later: Vietnamese immigrants underscore hardship of adjustment. Retrieved March 31, 2007, from the Post Gazette News website: http://www.post-gazette.com/regionstate/20000424viets6.asp.
Boat People. Retrieved March 31, 2007, from the Boat People.org website: http://www.boatpeople.org/boat_people_the_journey.htm.
Povell, Marc. (2005, June 2). The history of Vietnamese immigration. Retrieved March 31, 2007, from the American Immigration Law Foundation website: http://www.ailf.org/awards/benefit2005/vietnamese_essay.shtml.
The Chinese in California. Retrieved March 31, 2007, from the Library of Congress website: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award99/cubhtml/cichome.html.
Smith, L. Marian. (1998). Retrieved March 31, 2007, from the US National Archives & Records Administration website: http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1998/summer/women-and-naturalization-1.html?template=print.
Pearce, C. Susan (2005, January). Todays immigrant women entrepreneur. Retrieved March 31, 2007, from the American Immigration Law Foundation website: http://www.ailf.org/ipc/ipf011705.asp.
Grisworld, T. Daniel. (2002, February 18). Immigrants have enriched American culture and enhanced our influence in the world. Retrieved March 31, 2007, from the CATO Institute website: http://www.freetrade.org/node/329.