Reflective Letter

Dear Reader;

               I hope that by reading through my web page you have learned as much as I have throughout the course of this class. This class has changed my way of thinking about how the world around me works, not just in terms of migration but what life is like for people elsewhere in this world. While there are several things in this course that stuck out to me above the rest I feel that everything I have learned here will stick with me.

               The first thing that I will always remember is the trip down to Mexico where I learned about what it is like for the people of Nogales and the effects of the American governments policies on them. Growing up in Arizona you get an outlook on Mexico and the migrants that it sends, while I never had a negative outlook on these people like some may have, my ideas were greatly changed when I took that trip. The walk through the desert, the factories, the shacks everything will stick with me. It is one thing to learn about things from a book or news article it is another thing to see it with your own two eyes. I highly recommend if you ever get the chance to take the trip down south and see for yourself what is going on.

               The next thing that stood out for me was the idea that people of countries tend to move when their country starts to begin developing. This concept was the most baffling to me, it seems to counter intuitive to everything that we have learned in the media. The media tends to paint migrants as people that are incapable of living life in their own country, showing the country as some place that is some dirty gross country with nothing to offer. So, when I learned that people move when the country begins to develop I was shocked. However, when I began to think about it I made sense. People have lived their life happily easily for many years working on farms or some form of other basic work. Once that way of life is threatened by a change in economy they are forced out of their normal way of life and often forced to move so they can make a decent living.

               This class and I hope this website is something that will stick with me and hopefully with you the reader. Migration is a completely normal part of the modern world and I hope that through learning we will be able to one day change the mentality surrounding it. With a better understand and a change in the mentality I hope to see better migration laws in America that can help the people from these countries that truly need this type of help. These people are not attempting to ruin America just make a better life for themselves and their family.

Thank you for reading,

David R.