The story of Immigrant Child

Immigration has been a significant part of the historical forces shaping any country. In the last two centuries, the United States has received distinct waves of people from Europe, Asia, the Caribbean, and Africa, many seeking to move into this country permanently and become full American citizens with all the rights and responsibilities thereof. Two of the largest waves of immigration were observed in the twentieth century, each with distinct characteristics. As a consequence, today, one of every five Americans, more than 55 million strong, is an immigrant or the child of an immigrant. IMMIGRATION can be of several types. Generally, people come with varying educational and economic assets and many times with skills that are not useful or valued in this country. In turn, each immigrant’s experiences are also shaped by the economic, demographic, and political conditions of the receiving communities. In school the children mix themself while involving in certain activities or courses. Yet every one has distinct thought process. The teachers and parents at certain level fail to assimilate this many times with few exceptions.

There are Cambodians, who left their country in haste because of the fear of death by starvation or persecution, using a rather narrow window of opportunity to escape. The second group is a typical, albeit recent, “European” group, the Portuguese, who have been arriving at these shores since the 1800s and are now visibly incorporated into the power structure of their U.S. community. The third is a more recently arrived group, a transnational community from the Dominican Republic, which benefits from the institutions created by other Latino groups that arrived earlier and than there are Asians who arrived due to business or work related reasons. Children are not only a product of socialization forces but they also respond to multiple socialization agents in unique, individualized ways. Families do not abide by all the rules of engagement that schools provide, and perhaps even rebel against some rules that compete with other important agendas in their lives. For example, parents know that their children need to attend school, but they might ask their older children to take care of younger children when the parents are sick. Parents might also take their children out of school for family celebrations or holiday vacations and may not think that it is important to have a designated time and place to complete homework (in the face of other life demands). Yet their choices and the opportunities that are available to both children and families are very much the product of complex contextual, historical processes beyond their own immediate control. They are not only simultaneously actors and reactors, but also creators of new spaces that mainstream institutions such as schools must, in turn, adapt to and incorporate. While attending school with primarily children of a similar race or ethnicity has some positive affects, such as fostering a sense of belonging, racial segregation in schools often translates into economic segregation which is a risk factor for various markers of academic success. In the later adulthood of child it creates a pressure points on the thought process and differentiate people in terms of “we and They”. As an immigrant child the parents and school hold the full responsibility to remove the rift of “We and They”. There is hardly any study or information available which shall describe developmental outcomes of children of immigrants, particularly during middle childhood.  What we hear, read or see is only the information of adults along with their children. The benefit of being immigrant child gives the rich cultural experiences they have as bicultural children, knowing multiple languages and traveling abroad.

Comparing immigrant with non immigrant children ticks out several differences. Comparing Asian to Latino parents’ involvement in their children’s education may provide information regarding broad differences in parenting practices.Thus, when different cultural children get mixed they adapt from each other and later start to raise questions regarding different parental techniques which parents are unable to answer. Therefore it is beginning of a rift among child and Parent and than later rift turns towards society. So important thing is that parent and school should be trained by themself as to avoid such conflict which might be visible as a small particle of sand but later it would become deep desert where everyone would get affected.