why do people immigrate?

Honestly, why?

I've been told it was for many reasons, be it fleeing famine (such as the Irish during their potato blight) or trying to "live the American dream." It could be like the case of Maya and Alejandro from the popular TV series Heroes- they need to seek medical attention.

It’s hard to look at this as an American, living in America, heck, never having been outside of the country except through my television set (thanks for another whopper of a question, Kay!). From what I hear, from what I see, from what I read, from what I know of the world, it’s pretty great over here.
Really great.
So great, people would be willing to give up their past lives, be willing to uproot from their birthplace, from the land of their fathers and their father’s fathers just to have a chance at all of this wonder, this opportunity, this freely-given potential.

It may be out on a tangent, but in most other countries, education is not provided for by the government. I wish I could say it breaks my heart to see some, if any, of my classmates not realize the chance they’ve been given and to take this “boring school thing” for granted, but all it does is irritate me.
The man who taught me how to play ‘cello used to get upset and lecture people who bummed about like that; called it the “American Brat Syndrome.” Boy, could he go at it, too- the worst part of it was the utter truth to it. How we’re lucky to be in America, and how the kids he once taught in Nepal (I believe he was in the Conservation Corps) had barely anything, how they ate up the chance to learn like it was ambrosia. All of it would have started, of course, when someone didn’t practice when they should have, or no one was bothering to take the instruments home…