The paper compares two articles about immigration. One article is from a British publication about immigration in Britain. The other article is from an American publication about immigration from America, with specific attention on the 20th century or "the American Century." The article from The Economist explains that to ease tensions within the British government, Blair proposed official supporting of legal immigration and the intensification of stopping illegal immigration. Hirschman's concern is to understand the multifaceted impact that the American century had upon the United States and upon the world, with particular regard to perception and identity.
¶ … 2005, the British publication, The Economist, published an article regarding immigration and the parties who benefit from it. At the time, a decade ago, Prime Minister Tony Blair failed in his attempt to rally support against illegal immigration throughout the European Union (EU). Countries across the continent experienced intense political division regarding this issue. Those who favored politics argued for illegal immigration to cease; those who prioritized economics supported immigration, legal or otherwise. The article explains that to ease tensions within the British government, Blair proposed official supporting of legal immigration and the intensification of stopping illegal immigration. Blair ensured that the administration and bureaucracy regarding legal immigration was streamlined. The article then proceeds to question which parties in society benefit from immigration and how.
Immigration, from the perspective of The Economist is an occurrence that should be calculated, regulated, and firmly enforced. The article questions who benefits from immigration; why should this question be asked? Meaning, what is the point or what is the benefit of this question? Who benefits from this question being asked? This question does not seem relevant. Questions about immigration are necessary and inevitable, but this question seems rather useless. Who benefits from immigration? Who cares? It does not really matter who benefits from immigration. Immigration is a fact of life in every country. Immigration and emigration happen constantly.
Immigration is supposed to benefit everyone ideally. Immigration helps the people who are immigrating, as there is a reason why they are and typically people move with the intention of a higher quality of life than what they presently have. Furthermore, immigration is supposed to enrich and benefit the community into which the immigrants immigrate. Though there may be difficulties and obstacles from many angles of the process, the potential benefits remain steady.
Perhaps the article should have been more specific in the topic. Instead of questioning who benefits from immigration, the question should have been more along the lines of who benefits from the regulation of immigration? That is a much more relevant and engaging question with potential for interesting discoveries. Before this reader could even engage the text, the process could not happen completely because of the central question, which this reader found pointless and counterproductive. The latter question more aligns with the content of the text anyway, but the slight change in semantics makes a huge deal for this reader and perhaps others. Moreover, if the author approached the article with the proposed question in mind, much of the present text could be used in addition to more relevant details. There is no mention of the social, cultural, and educational benefits of immigration. The article focuses upon the economic, political, and business impacts of immigration.
In 2005, Hirschman composed an article for Demography regarding the defining characteristics and consequences of the 20th century, referred to here also as "the American Century." Hirschman's concern is to understand the multifaceted impact that the American century had upon the United States and upon the world, with particular regard to perception and identity. Hirschman provides the historical, social, political, and economic contexts as a backdrop for his exploration of the process by which immigrants became and become American. (Hirschman, 2005)
This article contains a great deal more statistics and graphs than the article in the Economist. Though The Economist contained facts and quotations from relevant figures, the arguments in the Hirschman article come off as more sound and researched because of the combination of descriptive writing practiced in the social sciences, in conjunction with analytical and technical writing in the hard sciences and business worlds. This kind of argumentation structure reinforces Hirschman's thesis and theme, which refer to the overall and comprehensive affects of immigration upon America and upon the immigrants.
Hirschman catalogues the patterns of immigration from the mid-19th century into the 21st century. There are similarities and differences among the waves of immigration at various moments of the 20th century. Furthermore, important terms to his examination that he defines within the text include diversity, immigrant community, and new immigrants. (Hirschman, 2010) One such defining characteristic between the earlier immigrants and the later, or new immigrants, is the frequency of intermarriage. Additionally, after a lull in immigration during the middle and into the latter third of the century, a resurgence in immigration has spread multicultural diversity with greater density and with greater frequency.
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