Guidelines for Writing a Blog Posts:PART ONE (2-3 sentences)Open your blog with a few sentences where you summarize only ONE of the author2019;s points/perspectives that you want to address in your blog. Choose ONE point/perspective from the assigned course reading that you want to take up in your blog. You should not summarize the overall essay or the author2019;s overall argument. Instead, choose only ONE point/perspective that you want to write about from the reading and simply STATE what that theme or point is.PART TWO (two paragraphs)Write a critical analysis of the perspective you have chosen to focus on in (part one) above. Spend some time thinking about your own thoughts or reflections on the author2019;s perspective. Develop your own thoughts on the author2019;s perspective. The main idea is to demonstrate that you are grappling with the author2019;s perspective from your own perspective2014;or that you are having a conversation with the author.PART THREE (1-2 paragraphs)Riff/comment (blog-style) on the author2019;s perspective and how it is addressed in the world beyond our classroom (1-2 paragraphs). You are required to make a connection between what you read in our class and how this issue is addressed somewhere else in the world. You are required to post a link or an image as part of your post.For examples of 201C;blog-style201D; writing, see:http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/12/30/tens2026;http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/writing-a-go2026;http://website101.com/social-media/how-write-blog-2026;http://weblogs.about.com/od/startingablog/tp/Writi2026;PART FOURWrite one sentence where you state a theme or question you would like to discuss in class.Below I have attached the material (article) to answer these questions properly. Also I have attached the guidelines as well.
blog_post_guidelines.docx

family_activism_immigrant_struggles_and_the_politi2026;_______1._from_reunification_to_separation_.pdf

Unformatted Attachment Preview

**A critical analysis does NOT mean explaining what you think of the particular issue at
hand (e.g. media images). It DOES mean explaining what you think of the AUTHOR2019;S
perspective about the issue at hand.
**Imagine you are in a cafe or sittingTIPS FOR PART TWO (CRITICAL
ANALYSIS)
In many of your other courses, you are asked to evaluate an author2019;s argument. That
approach entails evaluating whether you think an argument is strong or weak; valid or
invalid; convincing or non-convincing. This is *not* the kind of critical analysis you
are asked to do for this class.
**Your assignment is to reflect on the CONTENT of the argument rather than the
STRUCTURE or LOGIC of the argument. Your assignment is to reflect upon the
author2019;s ideas, critiques, and contributions. This will require using YOUR OWN
VOICE and IDEAS 2013;and developing your own REFLECTIONS upon the author2019;s
ideas.
around a kitchen table talking to the author. Imagine that the author asks you: 201C;What do
you think of my perspective? What did you think of my ideas?201D; Your job is to illustrate
that you are responding to questions such as these.
**Use the first person or the 201C;I201D; while you are writing.
**Avoid summaries of the author2019;s main points or focusing heavily on the author2019;s
argument. Focus on your ideas/your voice.
**Be sure to avoid going on a tangent. Your critical analysis MUST be kept closely
linked to what the author2019;s perspective is about. Throughout, you must show how what
you are talking about is related to the ideas in the reading. One way to do this is to write a
few sentences that are your own reflections, then add one sentence where you link your
own idea back to the author2019;s essay (For example: The author argues that human
trafficking must be understanding in relation to the global economy. To a certain extent, I
agree with this. However, I think it also has to do with patriarchy and the ways that
prostitution is an acceptable practice in our world).
**Be sure you are not falling back into summarizing the author2019;s argument.
HOW TO WRITE PART TWO:
2022;
Sarah Gualtieri is an author who wrote about early Syrian
immigrants during the Jim Crow era. Say, for example, in part one, that you said
you wanted to write about her perspective that:
201C;Gualtieri2019;s writes that Syrians were positioned between whites and blacks and
many Syrians tried to pass as white to survive the pressures of immigration and
Americanization.201D;
2022;
Your job in part two is NOT to consider whether you think she has
a strong or weak argument or whether you think she did a 201C;good job201D; or a 201C;bad
job201D; proving her point. Instead, your job is to write about WHAT YOU THINK of
Gualtieri2019;s argument. What are your thoughts/reflections on HER ideas and
discussion of this situation? You could, for example, write:
201C;Her argument led me to think about the unique position of Arabs in light of U.S.
racial categories. I usually think of race in black and white terms. Her reading helped
me realize that some people are positioned in between. I wondered if this positioning
impacts people2019;s identities? Does it create confusion for people when they are trying
to come to an understanding of who they are in America? When Gualtieri wrote about
the unique difficulties Syrian shopkeepers faced because they were not considered
white or black, it led me to think about people in today2019;s society who are positioned
between white or black. Our society is still organized in white or black terms. It
seems as though kids growing up 201C;in between201D; may not know where they fit in the
identity groups at their schools. It also seems it might be difficult for people 201C;in
between201D; to fight against racism if other people don2019;t even know anything about them
or don2019;t know that they experience racism. It seems as though this is what Gualtieri
was getting at when she illustrated how isolated Syrian shopkeepers were in the Jim
Crow era.
Grade Breakdown for Blogs:
BLOGS:
Opening: 2/2
Critical Analysis: 4/4
Riff: 3/3
Question for class discussion 1/1
Total: 10/10 points
BLOG RESPONSE:
Completing the assignment: 1/1
Making reference to reading: 1/1
Total: 2 points
1 2022; FROM REUNIFIC ATION
Copyright A9; 2014. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.
TO SEPAR ATION
The preservation of family unity has become a common referent for
immigrants and their descendants as well as for a broader community of support. Spearheaded by community, political, and religious leaders, this defense of
family is mainly informed by the shared lived experiences of immigrants facing
the prospect of deportation in a historical and legal context that had privileged
family reunification and unity for almost four decades. As immigration policy
changes seek a diminishment of the family reunification rationale to one that
emphasizes 201C;highly skilled201D; professionals, today2019;s immigrants are experiencing an unprecedented reality: the contradiction between a history and official
discourse that has prioritized family unity and reunification and a reality that
threatens the survival of undocumented and mixed-AD;status immigrant families
already living in the United States. This chapter reviews the legal and political
changes that have led to the current record rates of deportations and related family separations and the decline of family unity as a state goal. Additionally, I analyze the economic and social effects of immigration policy changes in the past
fifty years, which have led to a dramatic increase in detention and deportations
and increased the vulnerability of the undocumented and their family members.
Immigration policy analysis matters not only because the laws expand or curtail the possibilities of legalization but also because policy directly affects trends.
Migration patterns and migration 201C;crises201D; are caused both by demographic and
economic trends and by immigration policy, which shapes who can or cannot
migrate and how they can or cannot migrate. One clear example is Douglas
Massey, Jorge Durand, and Nolan Malone2019;s (2003) persuasive argument that
intensification of border enforcement in the past two decades has impeded circulatory migration (a previously common pattern) and forced migrants to bring
their families to settle without status rather than risk going back and forth to visit
Pallares, Amalia. Family Activism : Immigrant Struggles and the Politics of Noncitizenship, Rutgers University Press, 2014.
ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uic/detail.action?docID=1809810.
Created from uic on 2018-11-19 19:42:50.
23
24
Fa mily Ac ti v ism
them. In this way a policy designed to diminish undocumented migration actually increased it.
Even a policy that aims to be inclusive can be exclusionary if it is designed in
a way that prevents millions from accessing the pursued good. As I review below,
with one exception, the capacity of the family reunification visa system has
remained the same for decades, creating a backlog that has led to more undocumented migration. Hence, U.S. policy (on both the admissions and enforcement
ends) has facilitated the existence of eleven million migrants who are undocumented, made 201C;illegal201D; and therefore deportable. As Mae Ngai, Cecilia Menjivar,
Nicholas De Genova, and others have argued, illegality is created by a system
that creates the boundaries of legality and illegality, and 201C;illegals201D; are a production of the state.
Copyright A9; 2014. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.
Immigration Law, Family In(Ex)clusions,
and Migration Patterns
Before the 1950s there was no consistent policy of family inclusion for migrants,
and there were several instances of family exclusion targeting non-AD;European
migrants, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act, which would not allow the Chinese to bring spouses, or the bracero program, specifically targeted toward men
who, in a time of labor shortages during World War II, were recruited to come
alone and work and return to Mexico. The lack of concern for the family rights
of Mexican immigrants was made even more evident in the massive repatriations
in the 1930s, when citizen adults and children were sent back to Mexico along
with their noncitizen relatives. In fact, according to Edward Telles and Vilma
Ortiz (2007), 60 percent of the 201C;repatriated201D; in this period were citizens. It was
not until the 1950s that family reunification was explicitly included as a category
that made someone eligible for admission. The McCarran-AD;Walter Act of 1952
was the first to introduce a system of preferences for the selection of immigrants
applying for admission that was based on both skill sets and family reunification. However, because it still continued the national origins quota system that
gave preference to immigrants from those populations already here, this policy
favored mainly Western European applicants.1
The 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA), by contrast, which was
informed by the civil rights movement, did away with the national origin preference while maintaining the skills category and expanding the family emphasis
(adding parents of U.S. citizens over age twenty-AD;one to the list of immigrants
not subject to numerical limitations, and altering the size of preference categories so that family reunification was emphasized). According to Charles Keely,
this expansion was due to the negotiation of two philosophies of immigration,
one that emphasized humanitarian values and one that was concerned with
Pallares, Amalia. Family Activism : Immigrant Struggles and the Politics of Noncitizenship, Rutgers University Press, 2014.
ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uic/detail.action?docID=1809810.
Created from uic on 2018-11-19 19:42:50.
Copyright A9; 2014. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.
From Reunification to Separation
25
maintaining American culture (1971, 8). Humanitarians favored repealing the
national origins quota and expanding the family numbers, as there had been a
backlog since the passage of the McCarran-AD;Walter Act. Those concerned with
the 201C;preservation of American society201D; wanted to continue the national origins
quota system and were open to family reunion with the condition that the American economy and labor were protected. The 1965 law reflected compromises
by both factions (the death of the national origins preference and emphasis on
family reunion were concessions to the humanitarians, while efforts to protect
American jobs via labor certification and to curtail Western Hemisphere migration favored the preservationists). Eliminating the national origins preference
allowed for the significant expansion of non-AD;European migration. However, it
was a controlled expansion, as there was a numerical restriction of 170,000 individuals for the Eastern Hemisphere, and a 120,000 ceiling on Western Hemisphere migration.
Hence, since the 1950s there has been an immigration norm that prioritizes
family reunification in cases of family members abroad, and family unity in cases
of families who reside in the United States. This includes not only prioritizing
family members for visas (regardless of race) but also facilitating legalization for
those who married in the United States. Citizenship was bestowed to partners
and parents of minors (and siblings) of citizens and residents, although the latter have a longer wait for reunification. Very close relatives of citizens were not
subjected to the numerical limitations of the quota system. In no legislation have
children (under the age of twenty-AD;one) ever been able to bestow citizenship
upon their parents.
This creation of a family reunification system that prioritizes the nuclear family (in the immediate family relatives category) and locates siblings and adult
children in a secondary category (in the family preference system, which has
a limit) reinforced what Monique Hawthorne (2007) considers a very limited
North American model of family that does not consider different cultural constructions of family, and does not even reflect the different models that exist in
the United States. According to Pat Zavella, including only spouses and children
under the age of twenty-AD;one as part of the family unit is a provision that 201C;codifies a heterosexual nuclear family and excludes other types of family structures
that are prevalent in the United States and Latin America2014;AD;such as single parents, the elderly, multigenerational, extended, those headed by minors, or same-AD;
sex families, as well as children born 2018;out of wedlock2019; or who have informal foster
relationships with parents (in loco parentis) such as children cared [for] by their
grandmothers when parents migrate201D; (2012, 1). This restricted model has not been
altered since 1965, with the very recent and important exception of the recognition of same-AD;sex marriages in visa petitions starting July 2013 and of same-AD;sex partnerships in prosecutorial discretion (in cases of individuals facing deportation)
Pallares, Amalia. Family Activism : Immigrant Struggles and the Politics of Noncitizenship, Rutgers University Press, 2014.
ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uic/detail.action?docID=1809810.
Created from uic on 2018-11-19 19:42:50.
Copyright A9; 2014. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.
26
Fa mily Ac ti v ism
since October 2012.2 While an analysis of how these very recent policies may
affect immigrant family policy and politics is outside the scope of this chapter, the
positing of a nonheteronormative model of immigrant families by youth activists, discussed in chapter 4, certainly indicates a better fit with the youth activists2019;
model of family than with the traditional one.
However, while all these nuclear families were considered equal in theory by
the 1965 INA, they were not equal in reality due to the differences in the volume
of migration across the country. Mae Ngai (2013) discusses how Senator Phillip
Hart2019;s proposal prior to the 1965 act that would have allotted 48 percent of all
visas to countries that were the largest senders in the previous fifteen years was
not accepted by the Kennedy administration, which was pursuing a civil rights2013;AD;
era ethos of equality and insisting instead on the visa system that allotted an
equal number of visas to all countries. This meant that citizens of the countries
that send the largest number of immigrants, such as Mexico and the Philippines,
have much longer waits for visas. Since all countries have an equal limit of visas,
regardless of sending patterns, citizens2019; relatives and even very young children
have had to wait years or decades before being able to enter the United States.
Despite these limitations, which led to different lived legal experiences
among immigrants of different national origin, this policy not only shaped law
but also immigrant communities2019; understanding of the law and their expectations that family was the primary rationale for migration and legalization. One
cannot overestimate the discursive power of these family reunification policies. The prioritizing of admission based on family reunification has informed
immigrant communities2019; notions of what is fair, just, and achievable, and these
notions are shared by most immigrants, regardless of their legal status.
While one could argue that these reunification policies apply only to legal
migration and do not include those immigrants who did not enter legally, these
distinctions are problematic to make retroactive for at least a couple of reasons. It is not until the 1980s debate on the Immigration Reform and Control
Act (IRCA) that the issue of 201C;illegality201D; surfaced as a central concern, which
remains prevalent through today, and that the distinction between 201C;legal201D; and
201C;illegal201D; became a central focus. Second, because of IRCA, many people who
were undocumented were able to legalize2014;AD;subsequent reunification of families
has therefore included the reunification of family members of individuals who
were once undocumented but gained legal status and were able to petition for
family members. The fluidity between the undocumented and the legal migrant,
between the citizen and the noncitizen, suggests that this norm of family unity
is widespread and porous, predates the stark illegal/legal divide, and continues
to be shared by most immigrants. As the visa backlogs became longer, many
immigrants who were related to citizens opted to migrate without authorization
and felt morally justified doing so. Insofar as the U.S. immigration system has
Pallares, Amalia. Family Activism : Immigrant Struggles and the Politics of Noncitizenship, Rutgers University Press, 2014.
ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uic/detail.action?docID=1809810.
Created from uic on 2018-11-19 19:42:50.
Copyright A9; 2014. Rutgers University Press. All rights reserved.
From Reunification to Separation
27
prioritized and recognized a need for family (the basis for this is discussed later
in this chapter), the standards and norms have relevance for the undocumented
immigrants2019; sense of what is fair.
By the mid-AD;1980s, the United States had already experienced a family reunification system that was limited in its breadth and would become more so in subsequent decades. The economic crisis of the late 1970s and early 1980s, conjoined
with the migration influx of Central Americans (in addition to the substantial
migration of Cubans coming from the Port of Mariel), led to the intensification of public concern about immigration and to the development of a national
agenda and legislative process that concluded with the passing of IRCA in 1986.
IRCA is the federal government2019;s first attempt to manage and control 201C;illegality201D;
by combining an amnesty program that legalized about two million people who
could prove they had arrived in the United States before 1982, but also created
employer sanctions to punish those who hired undocumented immigrants. Like
the 1965 act, it was a trade-AD;off between immigrant rights supporters, who sought
a human solution for the undocumented, and restrictionists, who conditioned
the amnesty on establishing measures that would impede and/or disincentivize
more undocumented migration. No significant changes to the numbers of the
visa quota system were made in this or any subsequent bill, nor was there any
provision that would expand the restricted family model created by the INA.
In fact, newly legalizing family members was quite restricted, as IRCA did not
allow for the legalization of spouses and minors of applicants who had arrived
after 1982 to legalize as derivatives as long as the newly legalized had temporary
status. (It took four years from the granting of temporary status to becoming a
legal permanent resident [LPR], which then qualified an immigrant to petition
for family.) Hence, IRCA is the first policy to create split families among those
living in the United States, consisting of those who qualified and those who did
not, leading to deportations of many of those who did not qualify. This development led to pressure from immigrant rights supporters for the 1994 modification of section 245 I of the 1990 act, in which an adjustment of status provision
allowed for undocumented family members of residents and citizens who had
been residing in the United States to petition to legalize without having to leave
the country and wait.
Because these new family legalizations were added to the caps in the visa
list (and the quota was not formally expanded to accommodate the post-AD;IRCA
demand), amnesty made backlog longer, significantly slowing the process for
future applicants and further lengthening already lengthy waits. The Immigration Act of 1990 made a one-AD;time adjustment in order to accommodate IRCA
beneficiaries2019; petitions, raising the maximum number of visas per year from
500,000 to 700,000. This was the f 2026;
Purchase answer to see full
attachment