Oral BAC - Thème : Espaces & Echanges

SPACES AND

EXCHANGES

  1- Introduce

I’m going to talk about the notion of spaces and exchanges and particularly migration to the United States.

  2- Definiton

First, let’s define what spaces are and what exchanges means.
An exchange is when somebody gives something and receives something.
As for spaces, they can be real places like cities, countries, but they can be virtual places like the internet.

  3- Topic and question raised

To illustrate this notion, I will speak about immigration, especially migration of asylum seekers to the USA. This subject raises questions : To what extent do immigrants contribute to the US demography and economy ? What challenges do illegal immigrants face ?

 4- Definition of immigrants and documents studied

1) To introduce this topic, we studied an article from Reuters (it’s an international news agency). It was published the 13 September 2018. According to a Census Bureau survey, in the U.S, it seems that there are more foreign born people than ever, despite the government’s attempt to restrict illegal immigrants. According to the survey, a great proportion of immigrants are higly educated Asians. The number of immigrants from Mexico may have fallen but demographers estimate that the number of illegal immigrants is actually undercounted. At the end, we see that one of the reasons why more immigrants are coming and staying is America’s strong migrants who fear violence or poverty in their home country but it can be hard to know a btter life. So immigrants contribute to the US demography because there are more and more migrants in U.S.

2) To continue, we studied 4 shorts texts. The first text entitled « A city adventure » talks about some immigrants who come from Cuba and their impact on the culture and politics. They bring their own culture (dominoes, spanish). It feels as if it were Cuba in this American city’s neighbourhood. The third text called « A silent majority » talks about the German immigrants and their impact on the educationnal system, the economy. (they created famous businesses like Heinz, Bayer) They have impacted the American culture (Christmas trees, gymnasiums). So they help the economic development. The last text talks about start-ups which were founded by immigrants and their children. This text tells us 25 % of high-tech start-ups were created by immigrants. To conclude, the 4 documents show their impact and assets of immigrants for the USA and we can see that some migrants impact a lot in the american’s economy.

3) To finish, we studied 4 pictures about the challenges that migrants face nowadays. The first picture shows us the Statue of Liberty turned on its side and which makes an artificial fence beteween the USA and Mexico. It shows laws impose restrictions on migrant flows. The second picture is a map of the US-Mexico border fence. We can see the Rio Grande River is a natural barrier. After, we see a photograph of Bordel Patrol agents who take immigrants into custody after they climbed over the main US-Mexico border. This is a big challenge for immigrants who want to cross the border illegally. The last picture is another map about the Trump’s border wall : He wants to have a wall built because he wishes to prevent Mexican migrants and migrants from Central America from coming. Trump also wants to stop trafic. The US restricts migrant flows nowadays but it’s not new « The US began regulating immigration from Great Britain in 1777 »

  5- Conclude and give your opinion

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