Immigration

I have heard a lot of people complaining about modern immigration. It's true that these last years the number of immigrants has increased, but do we really know why all these people come from their poor countries here? I don't think too many people stop to think about this.

I think people come to our country for economic and politic reasons. The first ones are related with poverty of the 3rd world so they try to find more quality of life. The second ones are related with their politic system which doesn't allow their freedom.

Immigrants are very different because they come from very different parts of the world: from China, South America or Africa. However, they move from their local villages to find a higher quality of their lifes and their daughter and son's future.

When they arrive here they probablyfeel shocked at the new situation: they have to find somewhere to live, a job which helps them to survive, and so on. I think integration is pretty difficult because they have to learn our language, our customs, accept the low salaries, and so on.

With this, what is our reaction? Actually, plenty of people not agree with the foreigners. We feel like they invade our culture and we tend to look down on them, we are quite afraid because we think they will take our jobs and even in these crisis times.
Luckily, there's a positive side with immigration. Some people turn solidary creating NGOs to help immigrants and also promote projects called linguistic volunteering that helps immigrant to learn Catalan and Spanish. Last year I was in one of this linguistic projects that my school organized. It was called Voluntariat per la llengua and my work was to meet with my partner (who was a foreign classmate and he wasn't able to speak Catalan) once a week during the breaktime and do some oral activities. I really liked the experience because my partner learnt some things of our culture and he improved their Catalan at the same time I learnt plenty of things of Ucrain culture!

Like everything, immigration has a negative and a positive side. We don't have to listen to other's opinion, we should observe our surrounding and draw conclusions, because everybody has the chance of improve their lifes. We are all human and we live in the same world. We should be more tolerant and forget the prejudices. They are simple words but a lot of times we forget them!