Immigrant Chicago

            The main reason that immigrants are still a big part of the city of Chicago is that they make up most of the population of growth into the city every year. The other reason that immigrants are important to the city of Chicago is because they also fulfill a lot of the service and factory position that are available. Immigrants usually come into the city with a low education level or with little English skill and many of these jobs provide them with the income they need. When it comes to Mexican immigrants many of them are still coming from rural, or farming communities and lack the skills necessary to work with in a city that is still an industrial city. Many immigrants migrate to the outer suburbs to obtain jobs in the factories and in landscaping business because these are the skills that they posses. Other immigrant population faces other problems because they come into the county highly skilled and educated.  Other white or European immigrants may have an easier time finding a well paying job because they come over with education or with the ability to speak English. However even with these advancements many immigrants find themselves in job niches, for example there are many Irish construction workers or Asian dry cleaners.

            Immigrant challenges are still similar to problems they faced in the 19^th century. Immigrants still face the problems of entering the county with their entire families. Limit on the amount of people from particular countries entering into the United States as well as the challenges of obtaining a visa to enter into the country make it hard for families to enter into the county together. The difference with immigrants today is that they are able to communicate more easily with those who are still living in their home country. The cost of long distance call and the ease of travel now makes the ability to contact loved ones or even to return home a real possibility something that was not always the case in the 19^th century. Immigrants today are also usually more educated then immigrants that entered into the county when it first started. Today’s immigrants may be in more service level jobs then in the 19^th century because though Chicago is still a semi industrial city a lot of the factories have moved outside the city. Immigrants have similar experiences to those who immigrated to the United States in the 19^th century because they move into niches that contain people who have similar origins and cultural traditions. Like the neighborhood of Pilsen that was one a Czech neighborhood when there were large numbers of Czech entering into the city, Pilsen has become a predominantly Mexican neighborhood since the Mexican immigrant population is one of largest immigrant populations to the city of Chicago. Chicago is still a large immigrant city and many of the immigrants’ still face problems that are similar to the problems they faced in the 19^th Century.