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Let's Not Forget to Polish Ourselves for Others

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  We have talked and learned about discrimination against immigrants and how we can address it, but what about ourselves? When we can’t even take care of ourselves and keep ourselves healthy, we can’t take care of, understand, and emphasize with others. Self care includes things that are very simple such as eating healthy and exercising well. These sound very easy, but they are the most important aspects in our lives because they are the basis of our wellbeing. If we are not physically healthy, our mind will not be capable of dealing with other aspects in our lives such as work and relationships with others. Mental health is also very important, of course. We should integrate some activities, such as seeing friends, doing something fun everyday, finding ways to relax, etc. in our daily lives in order to stay mentally healthy ( Mental Health America, n.d. ). Benefits of self care are significant because self care does not only help us to stay healthy but also makes us better carer for o
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Work Synergistically: Team Work Makes the Dream Work

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  When I look up organizations that try to eliminate discrimination against immigrants or address any similar goals, many organizations and coalitions can be found. For example, Interfaith Immigration Coalition is a partnership that fights for immigrant justice as well as tries to improve freedom of religion and confront any discrimination against minor religions (Interfaith Immigration Coalition, n.d.) . Also, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization that tries to improve systemic equality among all people who live in the states. One of the ACLU's areas of focus is immigrants. They explain, “The ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project is dedicated to expanding and enforcing the civil liberties and civil rights of immigrants and to combating public and private discrimination against them” (ACLU, n.d.) . Moreover, Oxfam is a non-governmental charitable organization that fights inequality to end poverty and injustice (Oxfam, n.d.) . Oxfam is a British founded organiz
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Let's Understand Each Other: We Are Not Opponents

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  Have you ever avoided anyone just because they look different than you? Most people think that they don’t discriminate against anyone and that they treat everyone equally, however, the fact is that most people have taken actions based on their various biases. Most times, they discriminate against someone implicitly, while some people may have done it purposely. Discriminating behaviors against immigrants occur both implicitly and purposely as well as other types of discriminations, but in both cases, how you naturally perceive impressions when they encounter immigrants is often the cause of the bias and discrimination. According to Why We Instinctively Reject Immigrants (n.d.) , it is human’s natural reaction to avoid people who look different and unfamiliar in order to protect ourselves. People naturally feel uncomfortable being with someone who they don’t think belongs to their own community, and they instinctively divide those “outsiders” into different groups from themselves ( “
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Win-Win for You and Them

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  According to Romero (2020) , “nearly two million college educated immigrants labor in jobs for which they are overqualified, or cannot find work at all (para. 1). Even though a lot of immigrants in the US are highly educated or qualified for professional skills in their home countries, they still struggle to find jobs because of various barriers and discrimination. Many of them end up taking lower paying or lower skilled jobs, which forces them to lower their living standards as well. There are many different reasons why employers hesitate to hire immigrants, but major reasons include the bias where they think that immigrants are all illegal and it is a hustle to hire them. Even though it is illegal for employers to pick who to hire based on candidates’ national origins or citizenships, they can still implicitly or purposely and secretly prefer hiring US-born citizens. This fact does not only affect immigrants’ lives but also companies’ or the whole country’s growth because so many t
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First Things First: Start with Tiny Steps

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  According to Camera (2016) , a quarter of all children in the US are either first or second generation immigrants. This means that their academic skills play a significant role in schools’ achievement as a whole. However, there is a big achievement gap between immigrant students and US born students. One of the biggest reasons is their languages. Murphey (2014) explains that English-learning students scored 40% lower than native English-speaking students in both reading and mathematics. This means that if schools successfully improve immigrant students’ academic skills, that will significantly improve the entire school’s achievement. All schools highly value an improvement of their students’ academic skills. However, how can we do so? Of course, practical and organizational strategies are needed, such as hiring more teachers who can teach English as Second Language, but there is a thing that everyone, including board members and teachers, can start in every educational setting today
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Begin with the End — Eliminating the Discrimination against Immigrants at school and work in 5 years — in Mind

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Context The number of immigrants in the US has been growing more and more, and it was as big as 44.9 million in 2019 ( Batalova et al., 2021 ). Most people know at least one person, who came here in the US from another country, and it can be their friend, family member, coworker, classmate, neighbor, etc. Immigrants can play important roles anywhere in society including companies or organizations, and therefore they should be best educated for their bright future. However, unfortunately, many immigrants have felt uncomfortable with the way they are treated. According to Szaflarski and Bauldry (2019) , the longer immigrants have lived in the US, the poorer their mental health is, and one of the major stressors is discrimination against them. They face discrimination that are related to many factors including linguistic and cultural barriers on a daily basis, but most people don’t realize what they are going through. If you can successfully include immigrants in your environment, especia
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Where We Were Born Doesn't Decide Where We Belong

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In 2019, there were more than 44.9 million immigrants living in the US, and the number is still growing (Batalova et al., 2021). Although immigrants contribute to the economy and vitalize local communities, they are often seen as outsiders who don’t belong here, and many people have biased impressions against immigrants while some of them even treat them unfairly such as underestimating them in educational settings and/or workplaces or avoiding communicating with them assuming that they don't understand English. Therefore, many immigrants have felt that they are un-welcomed and uncomfortable just because they were not born in the US. This blog is dedicated to helping concerned immigrants, their families, and natural-born US citizens to treat and to be treated equally regardless of their languages, cultures, and where they came from. Reference Batalova, J. et al. (2021). Frequently requested statistics on immigrants and immigration in the United States. Migration Policy Institute. 
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