Social Class & Cultural Diversity

Hello There!!

     This week was an interesting one. Not a whole lot of statistics to share, but I have some interesting thoughts, as well as some interesting ideas I observed in class this week.

      This week we ran a simulation based on a study done on the cost it takes for immigrants (illegal in this case) to come to the US. (The study we based this off of) The costs we covered weren't just about money and possessions, but family life as well.

      In class we had volunteers come up to represent everyone in the study (mom, dad, grandma, etc.). Then we established the background. The father was a welder in Mexico. He was making decent money, which was enough for his family to have a comfortable living. The mother could stay home with the kids, and the kids were in school and had a good social life. But the mother and father want more for their children. They want them to get a better education, and to learn English. So they decide to move to the US. The father had to save up four thousand dollars to pay off the coyotes (border smugglers) to get him across the boarder, and all he could bring with him was what he could carry. But in the end, he makes it to the US.

     In the meantime, his family back in Mexico has some serious life changes come their way. The mother now has to start working full time, so she is no longer with her kids all day every day. Her sixteen year old son now has to be the man in the family. He no longer has time to finish school, but he now ha to start working as well. And the thirteen year old daughter? You guessed it! She is working with mom earning money too. So their whole family dynamic changed.

     So the father and his wife figured it would take about six to twelve months for him to make enough money for his family to follow him to the US, but he can not find a good paying job because he is an illegal immigrant. Since he can not raise enough money fast enough it ends up taking three years for the family to be able to get there. By the time the family gets there, the son is nineteen, the daughter is 16, and they all feel distanced from the father. The son feels distanced because he was the father figure in the family for so long that he has grown up and does not feel that he needs his dad anymore. The daughter is distanced from the father because she spent so much time with her mother raising money. And the mother is distanced just because of being the breadwinner for so long.

     Not only has the family dynamic changed, but now the children are thrown into a new culture and a new language to learn. Their children will now suffer until they can figure out the language and find work that will accept them. And any hope for continuing education is almost zero due to those language barriers.

     Families that lose their father change dramatically. People might not think they change too much, but they change a lot. The same goes for losing a mother. The father and the mother both play very important roles in the family, and when it is disrupted it can change the whole family dynamic.

     Thanks for reading! Sorry if this one wasn't the most interesting or intriguing, but it will be better in the future. Thanks!