Khady Thiam

Professor Kylee Pastore

English 11000

15 March 2022

The Struggles of Immigrant Students

I chose this topic because I relate to it very well. If you didn’t get this already, I am an immigrant. I came to this country four years ago when my parents decided that it was an excellent idea to continue my education here because in my native country it is always a challenge to find a job after your education. It was very hard for not only me, but also for a lot of my immigrant friends to come to a country where you don’t even know the language and it feels so overwhelming. How would you feel if you were in school and trying to learn, but you wouldn’t know what the teacher is talking about without picking a phone to translate. It’s so maddening. Occasionally, I feel very incompetent just becuase I don’t know a lot of big words which I shouldn’t because I know I am a great student. I am studying this topic because I want people to understand how immigrant students have to work twice as hard as native one’s to be on their level of education.

Finding a perfect source for my topic was a bit challenging, but I found online a great Academic journal which is about immigrant students who interrupted their studies to come to this country and how that is affecting their grades in school. According to Stephanie Potochnick, the author of this piece, “immigrant students have lower academic achievement and attainment than their peers, but are just as or more engaged in school” (1). I think a lot of the audience of the article, which I am sure are mostly immigrants, will find this very relatable. The purpose of this article is to let people, especially teachers, know how immigrants struggle so much in school just to get good grades. When reading this piece I picked up the tone of it as educational like the author is just informing people of this knowledge, giving us information about this, but I feel like she is more in a stance of frustration that immigrant students have to work so much harder to succeed, which can be burdensome. This article was released in august 2018, which to me is a perfect date to release it. Friendship day is celebrated in the month of august and I think immigrants need the friendship of the people in a country in order to succeed in that country.  

In this article the author is talking about the psychological problems that some immigrant students may face. It is called “Psychiatric disorders and psychosocial problems among immigrant students.” The authors say “Background Migration is associated with stress that may result in adverse physical and psychological health problems (Sabri, Borham 1). I found this quote very accurate because having to leave your home country, your friends and some family members behind to come to a country that you don’t know anything about in hope of finding a better life than the one you left behind is very stressful. If you are like me and do not interact well with people, you are going to have a very difficult time making friends therefore being lonely and also feeling it. The purpose of this article is to raise awareness to these subjects that people don’t usually talk about. The tone on this Academic journal is educational like the last one. The authors are informing the audience, which are people who are reading from the site where the article was published, about these studies that they conducted on immigrant and Egyptian students. 

In this youtube video the study is about teachers putting native and new immigrant students together, so the native ones can learn their stories and know how it feels like to be in their position which is the purpose of the video. Something that stuck with me was when the narrator said that “immigrant populations are struggling with the perspective that their presence in this country is a threat and that their differences make them dangerous”. Immigrants feel that way because that’s how natives make them to be and they eventually believe it. Like one of the teachers said, it’s important that people get to know that immigrants are also people that want respect and love. The tone of these kids is sadness, but also a hint of pride of how far they have come no matter how many struggles they have met on their way. The audience of this piece is people who are interested in learning more about immigrants and their stories on youtube. I found this youtube video very touching. It is wonderful to see that there are people who are trying to teach these young kids to not be racist and to make them try to understand the sides of the immigrants. I loved this video. It is also very relatable because I was like that when I first came to this country and I actually still am.  

In this news article called “High Achieving Immigrant Students 2: Academic Pressure & Cultural Identity”. It is about immigrant students that are grouped because they look a certain way like a Chinese person being called a Japanese. A kid that was being interviewed said “When I got into high school, I still had to prove–kind of prove that I was Asian, because, like, people kind of–they think, `Oh, you’re half.’ It’s like I don’t have an identity, and I think that kind of is offensive in a way. You’re half.” I am not mixed, so I do not know how it feels like for mixed people to be called half, but I can imagine how that can make somebody feel like they don’t have an identity. That sounds like a very stressful situation because I know who I am and my parents and where I come from and that kind of affects my behavior, so It is not cool at all to make someone feel like they are half. The tone that this kid and many interviewers used was kind of sorrowful, but also laughable for them like they are used to it which is the depressing part. The purpose of this news article is to show people how their words can affect somebody and also to show how much pressure is on these kids. One of them said that “I definitely do think that, you know, within my culture, students are pressured to the point of, you know, they don’t get dinner or they don’t, you know, get this or that because their parents are upset ’cause they got, like, a score they didn’t like. It’s horrible.” It is very horrible to learn that immigrant parents expect so much from their kids when they live and experience what it is to be an immigrant. It is not the same since now their kids know the language better, but still it’s not an excuse to treat their kids like this. I can’t imagine one of my parents putting this much pressure on me. 

To conclude, immigrant students suffer so much in this country because of so many reasons like leaving their lives behind and having to start all over again in a country where they are not familiar with a lot of things like the language. I believe that it could have been a lot easier for immigrant students if they had so much support from their teachers. I am not saying to give them a different assignment than the native ones because that’d be just wrong and I like to be challenged like many people, but understand that their situation is not easy. People need to know that immigrants didn’t come to this country to steal their lives or take things away from them, all they want is to have a better life than the ones they had. If you don’t like them it’s your problem just let them be happy and learn. Just because I left my home country to come here does not mean I am not human. 

Citations

1) Potochnick, Stephanie. “The Academic Adaptation of Immigrant Students with Interrupted Schooling.” American Educational Research Journal, vol. 55, no. 4, [American Educational Research Association, Sage Publications, Inc.], 2018, pp. 859–92, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26643552.

2) Sabri, Youmna, and Maha Borham. “Psychiatric disorders and psychosocial problems among immigrant students.” Egyptian Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 42, no. 1, Jan.-Apr. 2021, p. 16. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A657949644/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=f9930bf7. Accessed 16 Mar. 2022.

3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33OINi3xVbc

4) “High Achieving Immigrant Students 2: Academic Pressure & Cultural Identity.” Morning Edition, 30 Nov. 2004. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A594149035/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=c698c8c9. Accessed 17 Mar. 2022.