The Legacy of the Civil Rights Movement for the Hispanics

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: USA, grade: 2,3, University of Hamburg (Institute of Political Science), course: Mittelseminar: Introduction to the American Political System (Lecturers: Ph. D. M. Pfau/Dr. Beckmann-Schulz), language: English, abstract: The latest effort of the U.S. Congress to pass a new immigration law to reduce illegal immigration have caused numerous protest above all by Hispanic People who on the one hand have become the largest ethnic minority in the meantime but on the other time make up the largest number of illegal immigrants to the U.S. They feel threatened by the prospects of being criminalized for only trying to make a better living by temporarily working in the U.S. hired by American Companies searching for cheap employees. But they have ignored the laws, as conservative politicians justified the need of a new bill. This is one of the most important factors why some Hispanics now feel the time has come to stand up and march for more equal rights in a country where they provide substantial contributions to the economic growth and apparently nobody cares about their legal status. But the federal authorities describe them as criminals. Some of the affected people won't accept these developments any more and are keen to stop these attempts to destroy all they worked hard for. This recalls the actions the Black People undertook between 1955 and 1970 to assure the acknowledgement of their American citizenship as it was considered in the constitution in some way. Can this be the beginning of a new so-called social movement as political scientists put it? Or ist just a try of interested observers and participators to exaggerate the impact of a ethnic minority group on political developments happening in Washington, D.C to prevent them from thinking they are not welcome in the U.S. and so on? This will be discussed in the presented paper to be able to find a satisfying answer to the question whether or not the long shadow of the Civil Rights Movement helps the Hispanic Commnunity in the US to change its situation profoundly.