2.7: Mid-Semester 2 Reflection

1. The most important thing I learned about immigration in the 19th century was the push and pull factor and why immigrants decided to leave their home country. Understanding why people immigrate might help to get a better idea of what's going on in the country and what people value.

2. The most important thing I learned about immigration today is that the US government does not care about the well being of immigrants. I already knew this in a way, but I also learned that they aren't really hiding this fact. I'm not talking about the Trump administrations belief on immigrants and how we need a stricter border, I'm talking about how they treat them as people. I learned that it is an official policy of immigration to use kids as bait to catch illegal immigrants. No matter what a person believes about immigration, they are still people too and they don't deserve to be treated like that. Separating families is not ok on any level.

3. The two most challenging aspects of living in the 19th century are the overcrowded cities and bad sanitation. People were rapidly moving to cities and they had not figured out a good sanitation system in any regard, so health was an issue. In the 19th century. In the late 19th century, there were highly successful people like Carnegie and Rockefeller. Based on data we looked at, the richest people to live were born in the 19th century.

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4. The progressive movement wanted to fight poverty, preserve environmental resources, and get the government more involved in the economy. The Highline does all of these things. It might not directly fight poverty, but it improved a bad neighborhood in New York City which could attract new businesses and stimulated the economy. It preserves the environment because they incorporated so much greenery, and the government provided a service to people by allowing this. There was a lot of clap back when the idea was presented to make the Highline. People wanted the railroad gone.