Accessing the Right California Resources

The first resource that I decided to research was James J. Rawls’s “California: A people, a Place, a Dream”. This article discusses the false hope that California promises immigrants that migrate to the dreamland. James J. Rawls states that the California Dream is filled with high expectations that are not met once immigrants get here. California is seen as a place of “endless blue skies and spectacular seacoasts” (Rawls 142). Many people believe that their deepest longing for a better lifestyle will be fulfilled once they arrive to California. However, many immigrants are surely mistaken once they arrive to the “Golden State” and realize that the California Dream is simply a myth. Rawls traces the origin of the false California Dream all the way back to the Gold Rush where a mass influx of eager and expectant people, who believed that no work was required to fulfill their dreams, filled the state of California. These people created the false California Dream that, still to this day, lead immigrants to believing in the false hope that California provides. This article is extremely helpful in the fact that it allows me to get an even better grasp as to what immigrants thought of California before migrating there and how they viewed it afterwards.

The second resource that I explored was “Immigrants Out!: The New Nativism and the Anti-Immigrant Impulse in the United States”. This article focuses on the America’s view of immigrant in the country and even focuses on California's Proposition 187, which was a proposition to establish a state-run citizenship screening system as well as prohibit illegal immigrants from using health care, public education, and other social services in California. This article will definitely be useful in figuring out whether California accepted the assimilation of certain groups of immigrants. Identifying key figuring such as intermarriage between ethnic groups is the ultimate measuring stick as to whether or not a group has truly assimilated in America. This along with many of topics concerning immigration is viewed in “Immigration Out”.