Sides, John. “Analysis | What makes someone a "real" American?

93% of Americans actually

agree on this.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 14 July 2017,

www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/07/14/whats-very-important-to-being-

american-93-of-americans-actually-agree-on-this/?utm_term=.4a5c5c8f11f4.

This newspaper article touches on the controversy of immigration and what a majority

of American citizens think make somebody deserving of citizenship in America. According to

this article and a View of the Electoral Research (VOTER) survey, many Americans can agree

that the most important criteria for being an American is that a person has respect for

American political institutions and laws. In fact, This survey found that most Americans found it

more important that a person respected American laws than if they were born or even lived in

America for a long time. The article shows that while there is a slight gap between republicans

and democrats in the percentage of how strongly they feel about a criteria, republicans and

democrats follow the same pattern of what is least to most important. The author talks about

the results of the survey showing a challenge but also an opportunity. The challenge being if the

religion of an immigrant will divide Americans and the opportunity being that the civic

definition of American citizenship is strong. The author of this article is John Sides. Sides is an

associate professor of Political Science at George Washington University. Being that this author

is a professor of political science means that he is knowledgeable on immigration laws and the

immigration process. This article is helpful because it helps me answer the question of what

other American citizens think makes someone else deserving of being an American over

someone else.
 Overall this was a very good annotation I like how you established the credibility of the source. I also like

how you found a source that shows the way that people feel about immigration. The only thing that I would

perhaps change is the way that you structured the sentence “The challenge being if the religion of an immigrant

will divide Americans and the opportunity being that the civic definition of American citizenship is strong.” It took

me a few reads to understand what the sentence was trying to convey, rewording it may provide more clarity to

the reader. Other than that, I think this is a very good annotation.
Verkuyten, Maykel. “Public attitudes towards support for migrants: the importance of perceived

voluntary and involuntary migration.” Shibboleth Authentication Request, www-tandfonline-

com.librarylink.uncc.edu/doi/full/10.1080/01419870.2017.1367021.

This academic article talks about voluntary and involuntary migration. Voluntary

migration being a person who chooses to migrate to another country and involuntary meaning a

person has no choice but to migrate to another country. In this article the author does two studies,

The first study focusing on the perceived voluntariness verse involuntariness of migrants. The

study broke up the respondents in five categories: left, center left, center, center right, and right.

On top of these political orientations there were demographic controls which included: age,

gender, and education. There was higher support of cultural rights for migrants among females

compared to males and higher educated compared to lower educated, and for more left- winged

participants. The study found that there was a stronger perception of involuntary migration

associated with lower endorsements of cultural rights. Study two examined the feelings of

empathy and anger associated between voluntariness and involuntariness of migrants. The study

found that there was a higher perception that most migrants decide to leave on their own rather

than they have no other choice. It also found that involuntariness of migration is associated with

more empathy and less anger, while voluntariness migrations is associated with stronger feelings

of anger. The author of this essay is Maykel Verkuyten. Verkuyten is a professor and head of

Department at the Department of Social Sciences at Utrecht University. He is a researcher at the

European Center on Migration and Ethnic Relations. I think this article is helpful to get an idea

on people’s perception on why immigrants are leaving their country. This is a good start, I think

my next step would to be to find out how this perception compares to the reality of why people

leave.
 I like how in this annotation you describe the next step of your use of this source and how it furthers your

research. I think this adds to the complexity of the research and helps to add credibility to yourself as an author. I

also like how you described in detail the way the study was conducted. There is nothing that I would really change

in this annotation, good job.

Kohut, Andrew. “Most Mexicans See Better Life in U.S. – One-In-Three Would Migrate.” Pew

Research Center's Global Attitudes Project, 23 Sept. 2009,

www.pewglobal.org/2009/09/23/most-mexicans-see-better-life-in-us-one-in-three-would-

migrate/#support-for-tough-stance-against-drug-gangs.

This article from The Global Attitudes Project talks about some of the problems going on

in Mexico. According to a study done most Mexicans find that the main problems are crime,

economic problems, illegal drugs, and corrupt political leaders. The number one problem in

Mexico seems to be the drug violence; within three years the country had 10,000 deaths related

to drug violence. According to this article about six in 10 (57%) say that people who move from

Mexico enjoy a better life in the U.S. A majority of those in regular contact with people who are

living in the U.S. say they have accomplished their goals. In these studies, Mexican’s seem to

think their country is making progress with its drug war and economy. In a survey, 56% of

Mexican’s claimed that they wanted to see having law and order in their country as a top priority.

This could be another reason they choose America, because America has a much better criminal

system. 77% of Mexicans agreed that the military is having a good impact on the drug war.

This article was written by Andrew Kohut. Kohut studied graduate sociology at Rutgers. He is

the Founding Director of the Pew Research Center, in Washington, DC. This article is

helpful to answer my question of why Mexican immigrants are coming to America.

 I like the inclusion of statistics in your research, although it may be boring to read it does give very good
information in a short space. The usefulness of the source is a bit short and doesn’t really tell the reader anything
about how you are going to use the source. Honestly writing one more sentence for your usefulness would solve
that. It is also a bit short I think that they have to be a page long without the MLA annotation but just adding a few
more sentences would easily fix this. All around this is a good annotation.
West, Darrell M. “Inside the Immigration Process.” Brookings, Brookings, 28 July 2016,

www.brookings.edu/opinions/inside-the-immigration-process/.

This article gives a closer look into the immigration process, and how complex it actually

is. This article focuses on a German immigrant attempting to get citizenship from her marriage to

an American citizen. The author claims that his wife was denied citizenship at first, due to the

fact that the marriage papers only proved that they were married five years ago, on their wedding

date, but not now. He mentions that the process of getting a green card and becoming a citizen is

very expensive, they charged for things as simple as taking your finger print. On top of the

process being expensive, the author points out that in his experience the offices for collecting

biometrics were located in distant suburban communities with no bus lines or mass transit,

making it hard for people with no cars to get to these places. He says it is hard for many

immigrants to afford and navigate through this process, it was hard for him and he has a PhD.

The immigration process is lacking technology and communication skills. The author says his

wife had her citizenship approved for nine months before they were told. Darell M. West is the

author of this article. West is Darrell M. West is vice president and director of Governance

Studies and holds the Douglas Dillon Chair. He is the coauthor of 22 books and has a PhD in

political science. This article was useful to help explain a little bit more about the immigration

process.

I like the inclusion of a source that shows the struggles of getting a legitimate citizenship. I like how you

showed the validity of the source as well although the sentence where you just say that he is a PHD is a bit out of

place. Maybe moving it to the beginning or the end of a sentence would fix this. Like the third source it is a bit short

but the overall structure of the annotation is good.

 The overall annotations are very good and the problems that certain ones do have are easily fixed. The

biggest things that I would fix would be the length and some of the credibility analysis. Otherwise I think that these

annotations are very good, you did a good job.