Andres Galindo

UWRT 1102-046
Professor Ingram
April 2, 2015
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 the wealthy people 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.
According to 2005 census estimates, foreignborn immigrants now make up 12%
of the U.S. populationone-fifth of the population when children of immigrants are
includedand by many accounts the most recent influx has not ended (Hugg, 2010) 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 traditions held in
Latin American countries are not shared by the United States as each country has its
own lifestyle. For example, in Latin American countries, people tend to be more familycentered and sometimes they would rather spend more time with their families than
working at their jobs. The support given by ones own family drives people to do better
at their jobs and keep fighting to achieve success. However, once people move to a

different country, they do not get to see the family that supported them throughout their
lives and tend to lose motivation as they are confronted to different things everyday.
Another cultural difference that becomes notorious for new immigrants as they
make the transition of moving from a Latin American country to the United States is
that the hours spent working tends to be longer in America compared to other nations.
In some cases, people that move to America have to get two or three jobs in order to
provide for their families, which leads them to spend more time at their jobs than at
home. This cultural difference affects Latinos as they are used to follow the traditions
of their own countries instead of the traditions held in the United States. The time it
takes to assimilate to a new culture depends on certain factors such as the place where
they live, the job they have, and their own personality. There are people that can
assimilate to a culture faster than others because they live a similar life than the one they
used to have in their countries. On the other hand, there are people that were never able
to recreate the life they had in their countries in the United States, so they had to adjust
their lifestyle to the one in America. 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, especially from different European countries, the people in Latin
American countries tend to follow traditions that were not influenced by European
nations, but were held by the native people of each nation.
In some cases, language barrier is also a huge factor that stops Latinos from
making any progress in their lives in the United States. Learning English is not just a
matter of decoding an alphabet, learning vocabulary, and hearing subtleties of accent
(Olsen, 2010) . Not everyone has the chance of going to school in the United States in
order to learn English. In most cases, the people that come to the United States have to

work several hours making it impossible for them to study English. Also, 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. The most frequently cited barrier is a problem for
many immigrants from non-English-speaking countries is English proficiency;
Language is the most difficult barrier, moving up and making more money depends on
speaking good English (Fraga, 2010). This leads Latinos to work at factories and
industries that they would not have worked at in their home countries. Some Latinos
tend to choose these jobs because they do not need to speak fluent English in order to
work in said places. The problem when working at factories is that they involve
dangerous physical work for several hours a day while receiving a very low wage rate.
Sometimes, this hourly wage is not enough to pay for all the expenses in a familys
household, which forces people to take more than one job at the same time.
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. The central focus
of the dream for Latinos is the financial security that comes with regular employment

(Fraga, 2010). Despite the fact that there are Laws designed to prevent the said
preference, the attempts to follow this Law are not sufficient enough as many people do
not like to follow the rules. The final part of the dream for Latinos is to be treated fairly
and respectfully by others (Fraga, 2010). In most cases, 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, and other Central American countries, Americans tend to
generalize and think that all people from a Latin American country are from Mexico.
They make these assumptions without knowing that every country in Latin America is
different and that the traditions held in Mexico are completely different from the
traditions in other countries. These generalizations tend to contribute to the xenophobia
that some people have toward immigrants from Latin America. 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. The amount of jobs in the
United States is limited, and when more and more people start getting into the country,

there will be less spots available and more people will be unemployed. 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. Some people spend years trying to get their documentation right with
no success as this process is slow and, at times, inefficient. Also, the documentation
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 kick out of the United States. Not
only are they scared that they will get caught, but also they will not be able to apply to a
lot of jobs because they require legal residency in the States. Thus, 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 unhealthy 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.
Hugg, Andrea. "E-Journals A-Z - J. Murrey Atkins Library - UNC Charlotte." EJournals A-Z - J. Murrey Atkins Library - UNC Charlotte.
Olsen, Laurie. "Learning English and Learning America: Immigrants in the Center of
a Storm." Taylor & Francis Online. June 24, 2010.