Brother I'M Dying Essay

Becca Michelsen

Perhaps one of the biggest issues of the Presidential Election of 2012 between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney was the issue of immigration. Politicians in many states debate how to handle the recent influx of immigrants into the United States, many of them illegal. Some believe illegal immigration is destroying our country by letting non-taxpayers take advantage of our public works and taking jobs out of the market for legal citizens. Others believe this recent influx could actually be good for the United States because with more people on American soil, there’s a larger population to purchase American goods and services. In both views one factor sways the political opinion: economics. But should economics really be the force that drives the opinion politicians and citizens when deciding the fate of thousands people, many of whom may be suffering in their own country?

Edwidge Danticat’s heartbreaking autobiography of her own family’s struggles with their emigration from Haiti to the United States Brother, I’m Dying makes one question how we view immigration in the United States. Economists and politicians often see groups of immigrants as new populations, not as individuals, as humans who have rights. Humans, who just as our ancestors did, dream of our country as a place in which they can practice their unalienable rights that should be given to them at birth, no matter what their race or place of origin. The United States from its infancy has been an asylum for those who feel their rights have been violated in their own countries. This theme has shaped our national identity: a picture of great diversity. How then can we deal with immigration as an issue of economics when it truly is an issue of humanity?

Danticat’s autobiography makes apparent the alarming inhumane way the United States deals with immigrants. Danticat reflects on the horrible experiences she had as her family was in danger in their own country and then pulled...