Refugees In America

On Friday, October 21, 2016, the article “My mother is vetted every day of her life” was posted by Lev Golinkin. After reading the article I can tell that Ms.Golinkin’s intended audience is all of America. In this article I would say that she is credible since she talks about a topic in which she has seen her mother go through first handedly. Lev begins her article by simply describing her mother, a refugee from Ukraine. Her mother was a doctor in her native country, however once she came here she became a low class citizen striving to raise her children with minimum wage. She argues that she does not want Americans to feel pity for her mother, but rather understand that refugees love America.

As a child of refugee parents I will definitely say that i agree with every word that the author expresses in this article. My mother and father both fled their home country, Somalia,  because of the conflicts that were taking place at the time. Everyone overseas until today believe that America is paradise and whoever resides here is just blessed. For my parents that was not the case. My parents came here not knowing anything whether that was the language, culture, work ethics etc. At the time my parents only had one child. My mother was put straight to work. Because she was uneducated the only thing she could do was become a housekeeper at a hotel. She was never given the chance to seek education. Fighting to maintain a household and feed what eventually turned out to be four children  with only $7 an hour at the time became a struggle. In the article Lev talks about how refugees will go through all of this and not look back just so their children will become something. I find that so fascinating because growing up my mom would always say, “Why do you think I’m breaking my back cleaning hotels? It’s all so my children will become educated and live the life that I never got the chance to live.” I will always remember those words. Most people might say that refugees are living the life and that they are just feeding off of the government. I don’t what they’ve been seeing but that is no shape or form even true.

I believe that this article was written very well. The different arguments that the author lists are authentic. Most of her claims were backed up by meaningful anecdotes and life stories that her mother went through. Lev also does a great job at keeping it non-emotional. She does not point fingers at America. Rather she says, “People often ask if it bothers me that Americans take things for granted. I always reply that I think that’s fantastic. One out of every 113 people on the planet is stateless or internally displaced. We don’t need more.” I find this incredibly fascinating. This article overall was put together very thoughtfully and does a great job at grabbing at reader's attention rather than attacking others to get the point across.

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