My goal for my project is to expose the multifaceted stories of immigrants in order to bring to light a new perspective to society. The United States has a very long history of Immigration, considering that the country was founded on that fact alone. However, there is also a very big issue of discrimination of immigrants as well. According to the book Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and The Making of Modern America, it was in 1921 where Congress implemented permanent immigrant quotas as a way of controlling the makeup of the country and requirements of receiving a citizenship. There were less desirable areas in Europe that the U.S congress did not want to get mixed in with the people of the areas that they had already accepted. These quotas affected the rate at which each race received their citizenship so that they can control the makeup of the nation without looking outright discriminatory, and this tactic is still used today. Media news coverage also has a hand at contributing to the discrimination of immigrants. According to the book White Backlash: Immigration, Race and American Politics, the media does seek to present immigration in a more positive light. However, they also equally highlight the negative aspects of immigrating (the consequences, the painful journey of actually making the way to the U.S, the result if you are caught illegally immigrating, etc.)
My project goal originated because of the way the media covers immigration. It is very well known that shock value is what grabs people’s attention, and there are so many experiences and voices that are left out. I personally have never seen a difference in anyone’s stories about immigrating on the media. They all are similar; they all are sad and devastating. They rarely ever talk about what happens after the journey to get here to the U.S, they almost never talk about what life was life before immigrating, nor do they talk about how life is years later after immigrating. I want to seek these sides of the story out in my project to bring awareness to these experiences that are almost never heard of and remove the statistical-like view on immigrants. There are more sides to one story and my hopes is that diversifying the studies and stories that have already been covered can providing the missing context to this topic.
Timeline for Project
Week 7 : Develop first draft of proposal
Week 7-14 : Research background information for project idea
Week 12 : Start surveying people who would like to participate in project (The surveying will be on rolling bases until the final weeks of the project)
Week 15 : Have clean draft of proposal for current project, literary review/bibliography and some participants willing to be in the project
Tentative Timeline
Week 20: Have around 5 participants interviewed
Week 22: Have visuals prepared for audio clips from interviews
Week 24: Have around 5 more participants interviewed
Week 26: Have visuals prepared for audio clips and finished project
