Meaning of Illness essays

Meaning of Illness essays Professional Articles The Social Meaning of Illness The article that I choose to use for this assignment was "The Measurement of Meaning in Illness" by Betsy L. Fife. I was assigned chapter 5, which dealt with the social meaning of illness. The chapter explored the idea of illness as a form of social control and considers the various models of illness and how they have changed over time. The Sociological model of illness refers to the subjective judgment regarding the meaning of the condition or behavior. It defines illness by defining its abnormal and undesirable affects. Illness is also shown to be a social construction, or something that exists in the world because we have defined it as existing rather than it being an objective condition. This means that labeling a condition an illness will reflect the perceived undesirable affects of that condition. Therefor, when we label a person as ill, we are labeling them as undesirable. Illness is defined in terms of social norms which are expectations within a given culture regarding proper behavior or appearance. From the sociological standpoint, illness is a form of deviance. Deviance refers to the behaviors or conditions that socially powerful persons within the culture perceive either accurately or inaccurately as immoral or as violating social norms.. Violations of social norms result in the enforcement of negat ive social sanctions, or any form of punishment from ridicule to execution. These social sanctions are enforced by social control agents such as parents, police, doctors and teachers. Over time there were several theories that were developed to help explain illness. Modern theories of the causes of illness are divided into either personalistic theories or naturalistic theories. Personalistic theories of illness are derived from thoughts that an illness occurs when a god, witch, spirit or other supernatural power lashes out at an individual either deservedly or m...

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 Known also as the Simpson-Mazzoli Act for its legislative sponsors, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 was passed by Congress as an attempt to control illegal immigration into the United States. The legislation passed the U.S. Senate on a 63-24 vote and the House 238-173 in October 1986. President Reagan signed it into law shortly after on Nov. 6. The federal law had provisions that restricted the hiring of illegal immigrants in the workplace and also allowed illegal immigrants already in the country to stay here legally and avoid deportation. Among them: Requiring employers to stipulate that their employees had legal immigration status.Making it illegal for an employer to knowingly hire an illegal immigrant.Creating a guest worker plan for certain seasonal agricultural workers.Increasing enforcement personnel on the U.S. borders.Legalizing the illegal immigrants who entered the country before Jan. 1, 1982 and had been U.S. residents continuously since then, in exchange for back taxes, fines and admission of entering the country illegally. Rep. Romano Mazzoli, D-Ken., and Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., sponsored the bill in Congress and steered its passage. â€Å"Future generations of Americans will be thankful for our efforts to humanely regain control of our borders and thereby preserve the value of one of the most sacred possessions of our people: American citizenship,† Reagan said upon signing the bill into law. Why Was the 1986 Reform Act a Failure? The president couldnt have been much more mistaken. People on all sides of the immigration argument agree that the 1986 Reform Act was a failure: it didnt keep illegal workers out of the workplace, it didn’t deal with at least 2 million undocumented immigrants who ignored the law or were ineligible to come forward, and most of all, it didnt stop the flow of illegal immigrants into the country. On the contrary, most conservative analysts, among them members of the Tea Party, say that the 1986 law is an example of how amnesty provisions for illegal immigrants encourage more of them to come. Even Simpson and Mazzoli have said, years later, that the law didnt do what they hoped it would. Within 20 years, the number of illegal immigrants living in the United States had at least doubled. Instead of curbing abuses in the workplace, the law actually enabled them. Researchers found that some employers engaged in discriminatory profiling and stopped hiring people who looked like immigrants – Hispanics, Latinos, Asians – to avoid any potential penalties under the law. Other companies enlisted subcontractors as a way to insulate themselves from hiring illegal immigrant workers. The companies then could blame the middlemen for abuses and violations. One of the failings in the bill was not getting wider participation. The law didnt deal with all the illegal immigrants already in the country and didnt reach out more effectively to those who were eligible. Because the law had the Jan. 1982 cutoff date, tens of thousands of undocumented residents were not covered. Thousands of others who might have participated were unaware of the law. In the end, only about 3 million illegal immigrants participated and became legal residents. The failings of the 1986 law were often cited by critics of comprehensive immigration reform during the 2012 election campaign and the congressional negotiations in 2013. Opponents of the reform plan charge that it contains another amnesty provision by granting illegal immigrants a path to citizenship and is sure to encourage more illegal immigrants to come here, just as its predecessor did a quarter-century ago.