Annotated Bibliography

What Makes an American an American?

Alana Neal

Professor Malcomb Campbel

UWRIT 1104

March 16, 2018

Kohut, Andrew. “Most Mexicans See Better Life in U.S. – One-In-Three Would Migrate.” Pew

Research Center's Global Attitudes Project, 23 Sept. 2009,

www.pewglobal.org/2009/09/23/most-mexicans-see-better-life-in-us-one-in-three-would-

migrate/#support-for-tough-stance-against-drug-gangs.

This article from The Global Attitudes Project talks about some of the problems going on

in Mexico. According to a study done most Mexicans find that the main problems are crime,

economic problems, illegal drugs, and corrupt political leaders. The number one problem in

Mexico seems to be the drug violence; within three years the country had 10,000 deaths related

to drug violence. According to this article about six in 10 (57%) say that people who move from

Mexico enjoy a better life in the U.S. A majority of those in regular contact with people who are

living in the U.S. say they have accomplished their goals. In these studies, Mexican’s seem to

think their country is making progress with its drug war and economy. In a survey, 56% of

Mexican’s claimed that they wanted to see having law and order in their country as a top priority.

This could be another reason they choose America, because America has a much better criminal

system. 77% of Mexicans agreed that the military is having a good impact on the drug war.

This article was written by Andrew Kohut. Kohut studied graduate sociology at Rutgers. He is

the Founding Director of the Pew Research Center, in Washington, DC. This article is helpful to

determine what Mexicans view as their biggest problem, and why they are coming to America. I

do not think I can use a lot of material from this article, simply because it included a lot of data

on things that were not relevant to my topic and was written in 2009. This article is different than

all of my other articles because it was made up of a lot of percentages and came from the point of

view of the Mexicans.

Sides, John. “Analysis | What makes someone a "real" American? 93% of Americans actually

agree on this.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 14 July 2017,

www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/07/14/whats-very-important-to-being-

american-93-of-americans-actually-agree-on-this/?utm_term=.4a5c5c8f11f4.

This newspaper article from The Washington Post touches on the controversy of

immigration and what a majority of American citizens think make somebody deserving of

citizenship in America. The article was written in 2017. According to this article and a View of

the Electoral Research (VOTER) survey, many Americans can agree that the most important

criteria for being an American is that a person has respect for American political institutions and

laws. In fact, This survey found that most Americans found it more important that a person

respected American laws than if they were born or even lived in America for a long time. The

article shows that while there is a slight gap between republicans and democrats in the

percentage of how strongly they feel about a criteria, republicans and democrats follow the

same pattern of what is least to most important. The author talks about the results of the

survey showing a challenge but also an opportunity. The challenge being if the religion of an

immigrant will divide Americans and the opportunity being that the civic definition of American

citizenship is strong. The author of this article is John Sides. Sides is an associate professor of

Political Science at George Washington University. Being that this author is a professor of

political science means that he is knowledgeable on immigration laws and the immigration

process. This article is different from the others because it compared immigration views based

on political views. This article is helpful because it helps me answer the question of what other
American citizens think makes someone else deserving of being an American over someone

else. This is relevant to my topic of exploring the question of what makes an American an

American in the American peoples eyes.

Verkuyten, Maykel. “Public attitudes towards support for migrants: the importance of perceived

voluntary and involuntary migration.” Shibboleth Authentication Request, www-tandfonline-

com.librarylink.uncc.edu/doi/full/10.1080/01419870.2017.1367021.

This academic article from the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies talks about voluntary

and involuntary migration. Voluntary migration being a person who chooses to migrate to

another country and involuntary meaning a person has no choice but to migrate to another

country. In this article the author does two studies, The first study focusing on the perceived

voluntariness verse involuntariness of migrants. The study broke up the respondents in five

categories: left, center left, center, center right, and right. On top of these political orientations

there were demographic controls which included: age, gender, and education. There was higher

support of cultural rights for migrants among females compared to males and higher educated

compared to lower educated, and for more left- winged participants. The study found that there

was a stronger perception of involuntary migration associated with lower endorsements of

cultural rights. Study two examined the feelings of empathy and anger associated between

voluntariness and involuntariness of migrants. The study found that there was a higher

perception that most migrants decide to leave on their own rather than they have no other choice.

It also found that involuntariness of migration is associated with more empathy and less anger,

while voluntariness migrations is associated with stronger feelings of anger. The author of this

essay is Maykel Verkuyten. Verkuyten is a professor and head of Department at the Department

of Social Sciences at Utrecht University. He is a researcher at the European Center on Migration

and Ethnic Relations. I think this article is helpful to get an idea on people’s perception on why

immigrants are leaving their country, which is relevant to my topic of immigration to help

explore immigrants reasons for leaving. This is a good start, I think my next step would to be to

find out how this perception compares to the reality of why people leave.

West, Darrell M. “Inside the Immigration Process.” Brookings, Brookings, 28 July 2016,

www.brookings.edu/opinions/inside-the-immigration-process/.

This article from Brookings gives a closer look into the immigration process, and how

complex it actually is. This article focuses on a German immigrant attempting to get citizenship

from her marriage to an American citizen. The author claims that his wife was denied citizenship

at first, due to the fact that the marriage papers only proved that they were married five years

ago, on their wedding date, but not now. He mentions that the process of getting a green card and

becoming a citizen is very expensive, they charged for things as simple as taking your finger

print. On top of the process being expensive, the author points out that in his experience the

offices for collecting biometrics were located in distant suburban communities with no bus lines

or mass transit, making it hard for people with no cars to get to these places. He says it is hard

for many immigrants to afford and navigate through this complex process. The immigration

process is lacking technology and communication skills. The author says his wife had her

citizenship approved for nine months before they were told. Darell M. West is the author of this

article. West is Darrell M. West is vice president and director of Governance Studies and holds

the Douglas Dillon Chair. He is the coauthor of 22 books and has a PhD in political science. This

article is different from the other articles I read because it includes personal experience. This

article was useful to help explain a little bit more about the immigration process and why it can
take people so long to go through the process and get their citizenship. I do not think I will be

using a lot of the information from this article, being that it was written in 2013 and has not been

updated. In 2018, there could be changes in the immigration process.