Broken American Dream

   Nowadays most of the Hollywood movies are presenting us a wonderful picture of the American society, which is full of freedom and opportunities. But Crossing Over help us understand the immigration problem of the real American in a completely new way.
It is a story constitutes of about six small stories and these stories are linked by one or two threads. It is a multi-character canvas about immigrants of different nationalities struggling to achieve legal status in Los Angeles. The film deals with the border, document fraud, the asylum and green card process, work-site enforcement, naturalization, etc.
      Max Brogan, an INS agent stationed in Los Angeles, who decides to help an illegal textile worker (Alice Braga) by making sure that the woman's son is taken care of by his grandmother in Mexico when the woman is detained. After a while, the woman escaped from the prison and then tried to across the border to see her son. But finally she died in the desert alone with an illegal status. Meanwhile, Max's partner Hamid Baraheri, struggles to reconcile his job with the culture of his family and the reckless behavior of his younger sister. His brother killed her sister mistakenly. Max Brogan investigates this case and found the truth at last. And Cole Frankel, an adjudicator who determines the status of immigrants and their green cards has a sexual relationship with Alice Eve who is a beautiful Australian actress .This beautiful girl sacrifices her body for a green card and got deported at last. Ashley Judd plays Cole's wife, who defends immigrants in status cases. She deals the case that a girl with a Middle Eastern descent was deported because she wrote a paper asking rights for the killer in 9.11. In a parallel storyline, a young Korean youth, days before his family's naturalization ceremony, makes a decision that could have terrible consequences.
      In this movie, all the heroes come or stay in American to live up their own American dreams. Someone wants to be a musician and someone wants to be a movie star. They want to get into the American society totally, since we all know the American society is like a melting pot. Though some of them succeed, the others got deported. Immigration problem has been troubling the U.S government for so many years and it is still a big problem that cannot be solved immediately. We often think immigrates are rich or have a high IQ living comfortably. But the truth is like this. According to the survey carried out by the American population immigration center shows that now there are 12 million illegal immigrates in American and are still increasing. Many of them only attended the high school and do many heavy works in the U.S. Their rights can never be ensured and they get low pay living in a bad environment.
The young Mexican mother came to American illegally and worked hard in a small illegal factory in order to live. The illegal immigrates provide the American with much cheap work force, and also become the burden of American employment , medicine and social welfare system. They want to earn a living there, but the American government cannot deal with them. And the girl with a Middle Eastern descent got deported because of her wrong words shows us something more thought-provoking. The American is a multinational country, so the immigration policy there is always loose. But after the 「9/11」 terrorist attack, American government are worried about their safety and started to take serious actions.
Unlike the movie Far And Away showed in class telling us about the success of immigrates, this movie seems to reveal the real immigration to us cruelly. It is full of tears and also full of love from human beings. The INS agent cares about the young mother from Mexico. Maybe it shows that the government knows the pain of all the immigrants and is willing to take action to solve this .But now this problem is too complicated to solve. So we should look at the American dream in a sensible way. Don』t think immigration and American dream are perfect things. Everything is not perfect. The broken American dream is an education to us.