A Day in the Life at the Hampton's

Thornburgh, Nathan. "INSIDE THE LIFE OF THE MIGRANTS NEXT DOOR." Time 167.6 (2006): 34-45. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 23 Nov. 2010.

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In Nathan Thornburgh’s opinion, illegal immigrants working in the Hampton’s are hard working people who deserve the chance to make their lives better. While comparing a small city in Mexico with New York’s wealthy Hampton’s, he believes both sides have benefited from immigrants, and both have paid a price. “They came with nothing, and many have managed to build a solid facsimile of middle-class American life.” Still, most of them “are--in the hard parlance of the immigration debate--illegal aliens.” Thornburgh writes, “Illegal immigrants are part of an emerging presence that was once seen as a blessing but has turned into one of the Hamptons' biggest controversies.” In his opinion, the wages in the U.S. are undeniably good for manual labor in the Hamptons. He mentions, as much as $15 an our for manual labor in the Hampton’s which is 10 times the rate for the same rate in Tuxpan Mexico. In Thornburgh’s opinion, the Hampton’s have long cultivated a climate, “of easygoing tolerance, and for years town leaders dealt with illegal immigration by simply looking the other way.” He believes that is changing, as the numbers grow larger and the complaints grow louder. According to Thornburgh, immigrants will always find themselves coming here, “Their safety comes in numbers: hundreds of thousands of migrants will always win a game of Red Rover with a little more than 11,000 border-patrol agents.”

This article is very important because you get to view immigration from an illegal alien’s point of view. The one theme that explains their arrival is their pursuit of happiness. To them being happy is feeding their children, and shelter. Thornburgh interviews and talks with some of the “better off” immigrants and stresses to his readers how hard and dangerous it is to get to America. After reading this article I personally gained a better respect for immigrants and their reasoning for finding their way to America and it has the potential to do the same for others. Thornburgh challenges his readers to put themselves in the shoes of these immigrants in order to better understand them. By explaining the domino effect immigrants’ fall into when one success story leads to 20 more immigrants attempting the same path, the readers can comprehend the huge number of migrants each year. “In 1985 he brought over his half brother Fernando. Fernando invited two friends, who started bringing their relatives. A handful became dozens. Dozens become hundreds.” This article helps form the reader’s opinion on immigration so that they may make wiser political and moral decisions in the future.