Andres Galindo

UWRT 1102-046
Professor Ingram
Are Latinos living in America in disadvantage?
The United States is known to be a country full of opportunities, a country in
which people come to and are able to make money and be successful. However,
sometimes all these dreams and expectations are crashed as new immigrants in the
United States struggle to attain jobs and face difficulties paying all their expenses. The
view that everyone in America is wealthy and successful can be deceiving, and only a
few get a chance to actually make a lot of money while the rest of the people do not get
paid half as much as they do. Many Latinos come to America with the idea of having a
chance of making a life for them similar to native born citizens; however, they are at a
noticeable disadvantage as cultural differences, economic inequality, and the
documentation process interfere with all their expectations.
As the people from Latin America move to the United States, they are
confronted to the differences between the American culture and their own culture. The
American culture is completely different from the culture of Latin American countries.
The traditions held in Latin American countries are not shared by the United States as
each country has its own lifestyle. This cultural difference affects Latinos as they are
used to follow the traditions of their own countries instead of adjusting to the American
culture. The time it takes to assimilate to a new culture depends on each person. There
are people that can assimilate to a culture faster than others depending on how devoted
they were to their mother country and culture. Even though The United States is a place
full of different cultures, these cultures combine and form a new one that is completely
different from all of the rest. While the American culture is influenced by a lot of

different cultures, each Latin American country has a culture that has not been as
influenced as the culture in the United States.
In some cases, language barrier is also a huge factor that stops Latinos from
making any progress in their lives in the United States. Not everyone has the chance of
going to school in the United States in order to learn English. Whether someone can
learn English or not depends on each person as everyone learns in a different way. By
not knowing the language, some jobs become unobtainable as they require people
proficient in English. This leads Latinos to work at factories and industries that they
would not have worked at in their home countries. Working at factories involves
dangerous physical work for several hours a day and a very low wage is paid.
Sometimes, this hourly wage is not enough to pay for all the expenses in a familys
household. Alternatively, persistently poor showings on a variety of social indicators
may suggest the presence of one or more structural disadvantages, structures that
transcend generations and exact a toll on most Latinosthose coming of age in the late
1980s and those today, twenty years laterin a similar manner (Fraga,2010).
Economic inequality has been a problem in the United States for many years.
Not only Latinos are the ones affected but different ethnic groups are also affected by
this situation. For years, a selected group of people were the ones that obtained most of
the wealth in the country while the rest of the people struggled at obtaining jobs and did
not have enough money to pay all their expenses. Latinos, especially those who are new
to America, tend to be truly affected by this inequality as they try to get jobs and are not
able to because preference is given to native born people of America. Sometimes,
people born in the United States tend to have the wrong concept about Latinos as the
image portrayed by the media of Latinos is inaccurate. Since most of the things that the
media shows to Americans come from countries like Mexico, Puerto Rico and other

Central American countries, Americans tend to generalize and think that all people from
a Latin American country are from Mexico. These generalizations and stereotypes are
not true because every country is different. These generalizations tend to translate to the
workforce as Latinos struggle at getting jobs. Latino households, for example, are more
than 20% more likely than the average household to earn under $15000 annually and are
nearly 30% more likely to earn less than $25000 annually. On the high end, Latino
households are only one third as likely to be earning more than $75000 on an annual
basis (Pastor, 1995). These statistics show that, the amount of money that Latinos earn
each year is less than the amount of people from other ethnic groups make. The
proliferation of employable people can depress labor market wages. Low wages may
certainly be viewed as a source of strain because under such circumstances it is more
difficult to accumulate significant economic capital, breeding economic distress (Lee,
2010). As immigration increases in the United States from Latin America, the labor
force gets bigger and fewer jobs become available as the people that already live in the
United States try to get the same jobs. Also, the United States economy has not done
well recently and sometimes even people that are born in the United States cant get
jobs.
Finally, the documentation process is another problem faced by many Latinos in
the United States. The process to become a legal resident of the United States takes a
really long time as you need to have a family member or friend living legally in the
United States. In many cases, even if you have that person that can give you residency,
you still have to wait some years to actually get the permission to come. Confronted to
this, many people decide to enter the United States illegally because they have the
expectation that things will get better once they move to the States. However, once they
get here, they live with the fear that they will get caught, send to jail and eradicated

from the United States. Not only are they scared that they will get caught, but also they
will not be able to apply to a majority of jobs that require legal residency in the States.
They are forced to work at factories in which they get paid an insanely low wage and
are required to do back breaking tasks. Not only they have to work for long hours, but
the conditions in which they work at are really unhealthy. The possibility of a worker to
get dangerously sick increases as they have to spend a lot of time in the same dirty
place. However, since factories usually do not need any prior documentation, these are
the only places in which people with no documents can work at.
The public has to become aware of what is currently going on in order to make
any changes. United States president Barack Obama has been trying to pass an
immigration reform, but the people in congress had disagreed and this reform has not
been passed in the government. Obama cant force Congress to accept a reform, what he
can do is present bills to congress and hope that they agree. The time has come for a
massive immigration reform, one that promotes people hoping for a better life, but at
the same time makes America feel secure in their borders.
People from Latin American countries move to the United States full of dreams
and expectations of how wonderful their lives can be. However, once they get here, they
are confronted to reality and live in perhaps even greater poverty than their home
countries as they are not able to attain jobs and make money to pay for their expenses.
When a government system forces millions of people to break laws in order to achieve a
happier life for them and their families, then it is time for these laws to change. People
need to remember that the United States is a country of immigrants and that by
shunning out others we reject the very thing America is, a home, for those looking for a
better tomorrow.

Works Cited

Pastor, Manuel. "Login to Atkins Library - J. Murrey Atkins Library - UNC

Charlotte." Login to Atkins Library - J. Murrey Atkins Library - UNC Charlotte.
August 1, 1995.
http://edq.sagepub.com.librarylink.uncc.edu/content/9/3/238.full.pdf html.
Fraga, Luis Ricardo. Latino Lives in America Making It Home. Philadelphia,
Pa.: Temple University Press, 2010.
Roberts, Tom. "E-Journals A-Z - J. Murrey Atkins Library - UNC Charlotte." EJournals A-Z - J. Murrey Atkins Library - UNC Charlotte.