Group Project 2

 Arialis Perez

Group 1, which is the group I am part of, presented on the topic of the Economy and Racial Divide. Unlike our first group presentation, I consider this one to have been harder to create, at least personally, because each one of the group participants had to narrow all of the possible topics into one of their choices and when it comes to both economy and racial divide, there’s a lot of material to cover. I believe everyone did an amazing job in their assigned topics, especially because it was noticeable that there was thorough research behind every fact shared. In addition, some instructive videos were also included with the intention of providing context and exemplification. I was assigned to the Economy topic in which I focused on the Local Economy in Miami Dade county. Since the economy is related to so many factors and can be influenced by so many others, I decided to talk about the ones I consider the most important ones or at least the ones everyone should know of. The first one is the sources of the economy of the city, which include tourism, media and telecommunications, and international trade. According to sources, it supports around 145,000 jobs only in Dade County, and in 2019, it generated around 1.4 billion dollars in tax revenue. The media sector includes filming and entertainment, commercial advertising, and television, especially Spanish-language media. In the trade sector, we have Miami’s main port, Port Miami, considered the largest port in Florida state, which contributes more than $43 billion to the Miami-Dade County economy and provides more than 335,000 jobs in Florida state. The second topic I included is the unemployment rate, which in Miami is currently around 2.30%. The third and last of my topics of choice is housing in Miami. The income growth rate in the city is very slow being just a 1.3% increase in income annually.

 

The next group made their presentation on the topic of Law and Order along with Immigration. Some of the topics they covered include crime rates, border control, why immigrants migrate, the effects of children separated from their parents at the border, and the immigration policy in the U.S. Out of all the topics they presented, the ones related to immigration impacted me the most, for all the struggles they deal with before, during, and after migrating. Border control is directly involved with immigrants, especially illegal immigrants, and they are there with the intention of preventing them from crossing the frontier as well as any illegal activity that might occur there, like terrorist attacks or illegal narcotics. Immigrants outnumber the border patrol agents considerably, which makes it harder for the agents to stop or keep the situation under control. The presentation also mentioned some of the reasons why people decide to migrate, including the opportunity for a better life, better education, overall instability in the country where they are coming from, or persecution. The struggles immigrants face before moving into a new country may include poverty, hunger, lack of basic needs (food, water, housing, clothes) or services (water, electricity, gas), the uncertainty of a stable future, a stable job, and education. The struggles they face during immigration could be similar to the ones mentioned before, plus the fear of the overall trajectory and process. Once they get to the country of immigration, at the beginning they will likely have to deal with acculturation, rejection from society, unemployment, poverty, and language barriers, just to mention some of the factors.

 

 

The other group presented on the topics of Healthcare and Education. Personally, this was the presentation I enjoyed the most because of the topics of choice. Some of the ones included are free healthcare, teacher shortage, the Biden Education plan, homeschooling, and gun laws. For the topic of free healthcare, the presenter compared the benefits and downsides of it. A study by Harvard University researchers states that because of the restricted access to healthcare, around 44,800 deaths occur yearly, and this number could be decreased significantly if everyone had the same access to healthcare. In addition, there wouldn’t be a need to wait for insurance or loans in order to afford the treatment needed. On the downside, the most important one mentioned is that free healthcare could take as much as 40% of the government’s annual budget. Additionally, it would increase taxes by around 20%, and the wait times to be attended by a specialist would also increase significantly.  There is also the debate about whether people should receive completely free access to psychological consults, which would have a huge positive impact on everyone’s lives. The topic regarding teacher shortage included some of the reasons why this is happening. According to a chart included in the slide on the topic, 48% of professors abandon the profession because of dissatisfaction, either with the profession or the salary. The Biden Education plan intends to reduce these numbers by increasing wages enough to afford a decent living, and by expanding quality programs that prepare and support teachers in their own journey of education. Gun laws are one of the most controversial topics mentioned in this presentation, and according to the data provided, out of 572,537 deaths, 58.8% of them were suicides, 32.7% were homicides, and 2% were accidental deaths, and guns were the primary factor in most of them. As of today, there’s still a debate about whether gun restriction constitutes a violation/restriction of freedom. Most of the topics presented by this group are of high controversy, which allows for debates and argumentation, which I consider to be very interactive and thought-provoking, that’s why I enjoyed this presentation so much. Overall, I strongly believe everyone did an amazing job at researching their content. Not only that, they knew how to conjunct the ideas and place them in the right order for the presentation to run smoothly, and the additional resources like graphics and videos were also of great help. I once again enjoyed this activity and looking forward to the next one!