Thursday, March 17, 2011

Immigrant Children

In the official American Immigration Lawyer's Blog, Ms. Crystal Williams disputes a "study" for the Center for Immigration Studies, an Anti Immigration group, which states that in 2009, 200,000 people were born in the US to immigrant women here who were "lawfully admitted as temporary visitor" and they are all growing up to become terrorists. Both the claims are of course preposterous. Ms. Williams reasons why the number (200,000) is impossible in her blog. http://ailaleadershipblog.org/2011/03/15/msu-on-steroids/

In this blog, I want to make a case that first generation immigrant children achieve much more than their peers who are not. I was one of those who had a child born in the US, when my husband was on a J visa at Harvard Medical School, and this is my story too.

In her book, "Battlehymn of the Tiger Mother" Ms. Amy Chua, a Yale law professor argues about how, we immigrant mothers do not have the softer way of parenting as does native American mothers. We are not concerned about hurting the feelings and self confidence of our children. We feel that if our children achieve, they gain the self confidence through admiration from teachers and other students, rather than from parents. I have "American" (I will use this term to mean US born) mother friends who say "wow" when their children get Bs and Cs. If my children got a 95, I would ask why they did not get a perfect score. The result? Both my happy healthy kids went to the ivy leagues, and are now both in med school. In both their graduations, about 95% of cum laude students were first generation Americans. My kids loved the education they got, and have already given back numerous hours in social service. They will continue to do so, because they feel for Americans. (Not to mention the high taxes they will pay as future doctors).

Would they have done this, if birthright Citizenship was not granted to them? Would these high achieveing ivy educated kids love a country that did not care for them? We would be back to the America of the 50s, with a generation of Willy Lomans if we followed the dictates of Center for Immigration Studies.

For more information contact Houston Immigration Lawyer or Houston Immigration Attorney, Annie Banerjee

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