“We need to remain a nation that doesn't just welcome but that celebrates legal immigrants who come here seeking to pursue the American Dream.”
How many foreigners do you know? How many of them are your friends? Are they more like you than not? Do you learn new things from them? Does your cultural knowledge expand when you are surrounded by them? (I hope the answer to all these questions was yes).
Have you ever wondered how many immigrants live in the US? Well, as of 2013 there were 41.3 million living in North America, which signifies 13.1% of the population, pretty significant if you ask me. I think that, just as president Obama said on October 2012, “Kids who think of themselves as Americans -- they should stay.”
I guess I think that way mostly because it affects me personally. I have been an international student in the US for 4 and a half years now, I feel like my place is in the United States. I see my life evolving here -- I see myself staying here, and I also see politicians making that harder for me in the future.
Not only for me, but for everyone. I know a family back home in Colombia; they have two girls and one boy, they all did their undergraduate studies in the US. The oldest girl married her college boyfriend and has not been able to see her family since the marriage because she cannot leave the country for 5 years in order to get her residency. The next girl studied and got a job after college and after a couple of years of work the US Embassy decided to deny her work visa so in a span of a month she had to leave her whole life in the US and go back home.
After hearing these stories, it's hard not to think and worry about my future. Especially with the immigration topic and reform being a hotly debated topic with a lot of people cheering for both sides, and I am definitely not the only one going through this.
President Obama has tried to help immigrants. On April, 2015 he tried to pass an order that would protect almost five million undocumented immigrants from being deported. Unfortunately, US District Judge Andrew Hanen did not pass the order.
It was not only the US District Judge Hanen who was against helping immigrants, 26 states, including Texas, were also against Obama’s reform to keep millions of immigrants from being deported.
Now I understand feeling like you are just giving up your country, but try to look at it from our perspective. Granted, there are people that might be here for the wrong reasons or looking for the wrong things, but I assure you that there are others, like me, who are looking to achieve goals and dreams and that will probably just add to the country rather than take away anything from it.
Trump, as we all know, is one of the candidates in this political cycle that has said some of the most ridiculous things about immigrants. We are not all here illegally and we are certainly not all rapist, murderers, drug lords or thieves because we come from Mexico, Colombia, Chile, or wherever.
Besides him, Marco Rubio also has very strong feelings towards immigrants. He wants to make the citizenship process “a very long path” as if it wasn't tedious and long enough already.
I personally would like them to have more of a Pope kind of approach, you know “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” except about the Christian part because of religious freedom and all. Bridges are better than walls!
I understand why there are conflicts regarding immigration. I understand there are people that get into the country illegally, and there are immigrants that do illegal activities. There are also immigrants though that have dreams, goals, ideas, and expectations, and maybe we think that the place to evolve and grow is here so open your minds and your eyes and think about the other side of the argument. Because it affects us all, doesn't it?
This upcoming November when you are voting for the next president of the United States of America, you might want to see what their stance is on immigration. Just a thing to think about.
