Final Strech

Hello there!

So, we can see the end of this semester right on the horizon... We're almost there. Last assignments, deadlines, results...

Results! That's the best part and the subject of this post.

First, we got back the results of the last quiz, the third one, about Inversion. In a very different note from the test about Collocation, it was very good. I thought I had got one answer wrong, but no. A beautiful 10 at the top of the page, and the class started just well.

This was last Monday. Yes, I'm a bit behind the schedule, I know. Last week we had an event on the department, s series of lectures and student's presentations about their research on graduate level. I'm always in awe with such an initiative and how hard the students work in order to put such an event together. They're so accomplished, and I'm happy to be a part of it, even a very small part. This way, I got a bit behind with the posts here. Sorry about that!

So, back to the Monday class. We had the beautifully amazing results on our quizzes, and I was relieved to see a good grade on the page, as I told you before. First, though, we'd had a Portfolio check point. I'm usually the first one on the list, but my computer was having a very bad day that Monday. It was a nice change of pace, actually. I usually talk about what I'm doing, stay a bit on the class and then leave to escape an usually very hot place - the class room is a furnace in hot days. Observing others talking about their projects was really nice, even if I tried not to be invasive - not polite, right?, even if irresistible sometimes. At the end,  I was able to talk to Thiago about my portfolio - this blog that you're currently reading :) 

 Inversion quiz

We're almost done here, folks, I'm sorry to say. Despite being really glad with the end of a busy semester, I'm truly attached to my blogs, and this one is not different, I assure you. The reasons why I'll tell in the last post. Thus, stay tuned! (No, it is not the end yet... the best is yet to come!).

For now, we'll skip one class to go straight to Thursday, when we got the second essay results. And, guess what? Another A-ssay on the hand! Talking like that I sound really smug and pretentious, but I assure you I'm nothing like that. It is not exactly the opposite, but I'm usually not so sure about the things I do. I try to understand my motivations and all, and that's specially true about writing, but I'm always questioning myself. For me, in healthy doses, such questioning is necessary, in every step of our stay in this world. In the academic field, it is an essential element of improvement and learning. Always questioning, knowing that the things are not graved on stone. 

This way, seeing a good grade linked to one of my writings is a happy reassurance of what I'm trying to achieve on the academic environment and in my life in a more general view. 

No, this time I'll not post the grade or the reviewer comments - I think you had enough of that already. However, I'll post the essay itself, the one about immigration. I hope you like it!

Immigrant opposition and the long life of non factual arguments

Present times witness a world that gradually gets smaller in terms of access to longer distances. The same reasoning can be applied to how information is quickly accessed in different places. Those two facts, however, do not mean an easy circulations between different nations or an accurate perception of current facts. It is just the opposite: the borders are getting narrower with the increase of legislation against the flux of immigrations around the world; information is handled according the interests of some groups,, distancing themselves from attested facts. In this context, based on what happens today under the administration of President Donald Trump, it is urgent the debate around arguments against immigration, some of them taken as true, despite based on false data. Actually, it is scary the permanence of misleading ideas about immigration. In this sense, there are three common wrongful arguments against immigrations that remain relatively intact nowadays that deserve a more careful analysis.

The first one, in the economic context, is that immigrants will take American jobs in an era of constant crisis, hurting more specifically the “poor”. It is important to highlight how such idea is not a prerogative of the United States, being a strong argument on the countries that barrel the entrance of refugees from war zones, for example. On the United States, however, such argument was one of the strongest pointed on the Trump’s campaign for presidency, figuring even as a strong element of its success. Nevertheless, there is established data supporting that natives are not affected at all by the flux of immigrant on job perspectives. Economically speaking, immigration is, in fact, a factor of economic expansion and job opportunities, as immigrants head in majority to growing regions, helping its development.

The second argument is cultural and concerns how immigrants do not assimilate to a foreign society as the previous immigrant waves did. Once more, there is research proving the opposite. Assimilation is not an easy process and it is never fully achieved as an immigrant do not simply leave behind its culture and ancestrally. However, according the National Academy of Science1, the assimilation process in current time is going very well, even if it is take time and it is never perfect. The never complete assimilation not a bad aspect of immigration, as immigrants should keep their heritage alive, in a connection to their native and to their adopted land in a constant construction of individual and group identity.

At last, the third argument against immigration highlight in the debate presented here is very popular on Trump’s administration: immigrants increase the level of crime. The safety argument is a “loud voice” on immigration opposition; along the economic issue, it is the main discourse used by the legislation addressing the subject. Contrary to this idea, immigrants are less likely prone to commit violent and property crimes than natives; there are research defending that cities with more immigrants are more peaceful2. It is not a matter of saying that immigrants do not commit violent acts or crimes, far from that. The significant idea here is rebutting the argument of the prevalence of immigrants on criminal activities. Such idea has had a long life on the United States, being of significant importance to its misleading actions on the matter.

In order to establish a comprehensive and more accurate debate about immigration, it is of great importance separate wrongful arguments from facts. An important aspect on the matter are how every nation is composed not by a sole cultural identity, but by many – every nation was formed by immigration waves in some point of their history. Another factor pointing to the relevance of such debate is the current state of the refugees’ crisis. Social, cultural and economic isolation is not a prerogative of a sovereign nation, as every country is formed by and for people. If the refuges crisis is humanity’s crisis, as argumented by Zygmunt Bauman3, the spread of misleading ideas about immigration is part of the crime being perpetuated legally by nations and citizens that support such wrongful arguments without a care about facts and established research and, even less, with the life of the human beings involved.

In the last paragraph, the conclusion, I inserted a new element. I knew it would be trouble for me, but I couldn't resist writing about Zygmunt Bauman and his statement about the "crisis of humanity". I did not want to write a whole essay about that, even if it is worthy a longer text, so I put this bit on the conclusion. It is not recommended to bring up a new idea or argument on the conclusion, but I did that aware that it was not the best way to finish my essay... I don't know, sometimes we can be really stubborn on our writings, and the "Bauman" bit is a  good example of the writer pigheadedness. 

For now, that's it, folks. Soon, we'll talk about Wednesday (it is a very important subject, don't miss it :).

And, as always, stay tuned!

ALMOST the end of term :)

PS: The background for the post today was the sound of Robert Johnson's Complete Recordings. One of my favourite bluesman, Johnson made a cameo on the second season of Timeless, a TV show that had been a good relief on the last month. Try it, it is surely a good entertainment.