Text 2  A century ago, the immigrants fr

shuhaiku2020-05-20  141

问题 Text 2  A century ago, the immigrants from across the Atlantic included settlers and sojourners. Along with the many folks looking to make a permanent home in the United States came those who had no intention to stay, and who would make some money and then go home. Between 1908 and 1915, about 7 million people arrived while about 2 million departed. About a quarter of all Italian immigrants, for example, eventually returned to Italy for good. They even had an affectionate nickname, “uccelli di passaggio,” birds of passage.  Today, we are much more rigid about immigrants. We divide newcomers into two categories : legal or illegal, good or bad. We hail them as Americans in the making, or brand them as aliens to be kicked out. That framework has contributed mightily to our broken immigration system and the long political paralysis over how to fix it. We don’t need more categories, but we need to change the way we think about categories. We need to look beyond strict definitions of legal and illegal. To start, we can recognize the new birds of passage, those living and thriving in the gray areas. We might then begin to solve our immigration challenges.  Crop pickers, violinists, construction workers, entrepreneurs, engineers, home health- care aides and physicists are among today’s birds of passage. They are energetic participants in a global economy driven by the flow of work, money and ideas. They prefer to come and go as opportunity calls them. They can manage to have a job in one place and a family in another.  With or without permission, they straddle laws, jurisdictions and identities with ease. We need them to imagine the United States as a place where they can be productive for a while without committing themselves to staying forever. We need them to feel that home can be both here and there and that they can belong to two nations honorably.  Accommodating this new world of people in motion will require new attitudes on both sides of the immigration battle. Looking beyond the culture war logic of right or wrong means opening up the middle ground and understanding that managing immigration today requires multiple paths and multiple outcomes, including some that are not easy to accomplish legally in the existing system.

选项 “Birds of passage” refers to those who ______ . A.stay in a foreign country temporarily B.leave their home countries for good C.immigrate across the Atlantic D.find permanent jobs overseas

答案A

解析本题考查考生根据上下文理解文章关键词语的能力。由第一段最后一句可知,被称为birds of passage的是那些回到意大利的移民。不过,作者之所以提到这部分回到意大利的移民,是为了说明当时有相当一部分移民无意在美国永久居留。因此,birds of passage并不是特指回到意大利的移民,而是泛指那些无意在别的国家永久居留的人。故A项“在外国短暂居留”为正确答案。B项“永远离开他们的祖国”,与原文信息相反。C项“跨越大西洋移民”,一方面将所指限定在“跨越大西洋”的移民,意义过于狭窄,另一方面并未提及移民后是否永久居留这一关键信息。D项“在海外找到永久性工作”,意义倾向于“在国外永久居留”,与原文中相反。
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