Our great nation stretches from Manhattan Island, New York to San Bernardino, California. Our nation was built upon principles of freedom and liberty. We feel pride in our hearts when we see the American flag or hear a patriotic song. We feel a strong brotherhood as Americans and feel very secure with one another in our advanced society. This is a great contrast to many feelings expressed by our nation about Latin American immigrants who have come into our country illegally. Such contrasting emotions are poorly founded because these Latin Americans should be treated with just as much love and respect as we treat fellow American citizens and we should not try to kick them out of our country. It shows conceit on our part and a lack of discipline to find a good, peaceful answer to an important question in our lives. There is an answer and it does not involve a harsh, warmongering spirit. We must reform the immigration process as to allow more legal immigrants into our country to avoid them coming over illegally.
Illegal immigration is a problem in our country. There are many illegal immigrants that live all around us. We see them in their homes, we see them at the supermarket. Sometimes distrust is created because of the select untrustworthy few that cannot afford to live and turn to violent lifestyles to make ends meet. From that, racism is born, and neighborhoods that at one time were happy turn dark and cynical. What the ignorant white middle class does not understand is that the circumstances surrounding these people in their homelands creates a need for a better life. “Every immigrant that decides to make the (illegal) journey here is risking their life,” quotes a Kentucky paper in an article about immigration. “But it is worth it that they try, because of the situation in [their] homeland”.
One issue facing the American people is whether or not the Latinos that are here illegally should be deported or not. Many Republicans feel the need to punish them, for they see them as lawbreakers. Others who have spent much time around these immigrants, like Hillary Clinton, have expressed much love and compassion for illegal immigrants. There has been much controversy especially since 2006 when the House and Senate each proposed reform of the immigration system. Spiegel Online International, an online news site, explained that our nation is not able to survive without immigrants. Immigrants fill the thousands of jobs that other Americans refuse to do and they do it very well. Our very own Statue of Liberty proclaims “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” but are we giving them this liberty or is it just a cliché phrase that our society has learned to avoid? They explain how well Tom Tancredo stated the problem when he emphasized that America is becoming a new “Tower of Babel”. He is a House Senator who voted for a new immigration bill in 2006. They show that 473 people died attempting to cross the border in 2006 alone. Part of this bill incorporates sensors, drones, and large fences along the border to keep illegal immigrants out of the country. It also deals corporal punishment to anyone who administers medical treatment to illegal immigrants. Senator Hillary Clinton has said that this would “literally criminalize the good Samaritan and probably even Jesus.” In 2004 only three US businesses were actually prosecuted for employing illegal immigrants. Our country is probably not ready for such a drastic change in policy.
Senator Clinton is not the only person concerned for the welfare of these Latinos. Many of these people have been abused and mistreated. A good example of their unfair treatment and racism is from presidential candidate Ron Paul. He has expressed that “current reform proposals would allow up to 60 million more immigrants into our country, according to the Heritage Foundation. This is insanity.” Apparently Dr. Paul hasn’t read the epithet written on our Statue of Liberty either. Our nation was founded on principles contrary to that of the current white conservative mindset. Our nation was founded by immigrants who were being oppressed by their government, and looking for a better way of life. Now it is under the name of liberty that citizens of this country can criticize and scorn as thousands of people pass through a deadly desert, literally risking everything so that they can cross into the warm embrace of our country.
Let us take a step back and take advice from the true legal inhabitants of this country, the Native Americans. Before the American continent was settled by white people, our Native American friends said that before we judge our brother we must first “walk a hundred miles in his moccasins.” The Latinos that cross over into our country do so to protect their families who are in conditions most Americans can’t understand. They suffer oppression from their native governments, starvation, and in many cases live among great risk of violence.
One example of this can be found in the house of the Gonzales family in Esquintla, Guatemala. Mr. and Mrs. Gonzales have six children to care for and many times have had to send their children to bed without any dinner. They live in a house made of cardboard and tin nailed together, held up by a few wooden logs. They have a refrigerator but it was long since unplugged to save electricity. Water enters easily and fills the muddy dirt floor often. Pools can be seen on the floor causing a nearly unbearable stink. Mr. Gonzales has had been laid off of several jobs in the last year and out of despair went and applied for a worker’s permit to enter the United States to save his family from any more suffering. He was repeatedly denied a visa so he attempted to enter the States illegally. After nearly losing his life crossing the Río Grande he returned to his family and currently works for three dollars a day as a security guard. Living conditions are so poor these people have to branch out just to survive. As one of the strongest nations in the world, it is our job to support these people and protect their unalienable rights.
John Adams, one of the founding fathers of our country, stated in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” To deny our friends that hail from many Latin American countries these rights is to go against what our nation was founded upon. According to the government’s website for immigration services there are two ways to enter the United States legally – immigration through a family member and immigration through employment. This makes the immigration process easy, so the question rises as to why so many come over illegally? The reality of the matter is that the government is overly concerned with the illegal immigrants that are already inside our borders and too scared to let more come in for fear of overpopulation. This creates an enormous backlog of visa applications and immigration becomes nearly impossible. United States embassies are filled daily, large lines going into the streets of people applying for a legal visa into our country. The majority of these people are flat-out rejected permission to enter our country and those that do get “accepted” are forced to wait for a period of sixteen to eighteen months for their application to be processed. With such a difficult process and such poor chances in one’s favor it is no surprise that these would-be legal immigrants are required to use other methods to earn a living for their suffering families. This is one of the reasons we are receiving so many illegal immigrants.
There is a definite problem of illegal immigrants in our country. They come over and are receiving benefits of health care and education and are not paying insurance or taxes, which support the government and also help boost the economy. Another issue is the amount of jobs these illegal immigrants are occupying. Our economy would not be able to handle losing all those jobs, especially in cities like New York and Los Angeles, which have such a large illegal Latino population. There is no question that this is a problem. The question is how we should solve it.
Many leaders have been approaching the problem of illegal Latino immigrants in a very violent manner. Many people in our nation including some presidential candidates feel that those who have entered our country illegally must be punished and do not deserve to stay here without some sort of penalty. They feel that breaking just one law, crossing the United States border is worth tearing apart families and breaking up lives. The breaking of this law was done with much better intentions than the very people who are pointing the finger as they speed on the road to work or tell a white lie to their boss. Jesus expressed this fallacy when he said “Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote of thy brother’s eye” (Matthew ch. 7, vs. 5). Others explain that this is completely unnecessary because doing so would break up even more families and disrupt the lives of good, faithful citizens. So what is the answer? We cannot allow all of our Latino friends to come across the border illegally. Such a thing would only progress the problem we have at hand. It appears that increased border patrol is necessary.
There is an extreme need for reform in the visa application process to allow more and more legal immigrants from all countries who will help boost our economy. If there is a need to deport immigrants, let the criminals and other offenders be deported, but let us remember that we are dealing with human beings and breaking apart families. In short, a rethinking of the immigration system should be done. Barack Obama said it well when he said, “the time to fix our broken immigration system is now… We need stronger enforcement on the border and at the workplace… But for reform to work, we also must respond to what pulls people to America… Where we can reunite families, we should. Where we can bring in more foreign-born workers with the skills our economy needs, we should.”
