Shadoe Valentin (Edison) Immigration

I hear so many different points of views when it comes to immigration (legal or not), that I truly believe that people don’t realize what they’re saying. Let’s ‘put up walls’? infest the waters surrounding our borders with alligators? or even deporting first time offenders? What has America come to that as a whole nation, we decide ‘we don’t want you’, ‘you don’t pay taxes’, ‘you’re just going to free load off  of us’. The sad truth is that the vast majority of immigrants (legal or not) come here to better improve their lives. They want to come to the land of the free and home of the brave. To a place where women can wear pants and put on make up, where a family can practice their religion with out being stoned to death, and where everyone is different and a CHANCE to better their life.

The illegal immigrants that DO occupy our home land have made a great journey to get here.  The majority of Americans think that Mexicans are the only illegal immigrants to make it here, so I’ll start with them. The journey they take to get here is long and dangerous, more so than say being an American soldier in Iraq. Many of these desperate people make the travel with no clothing besides what they’re wearing on their back and the shoes on there feet, they have no vehicles to travel in only their feet to carry them, if a coyote (someone who helps immigrants to cross the borders) is willing to take them, they could use most of their life savings to pay them and often times only to be given up to authorities. If they decide to walk, they have to go through the desert to TRY and avoid border control, if they are lucky enough to make it past that hurdle then they have to avoid the dangerous wild life they might meet in that desert and worry about dehydration and the cold nights. After all the walking it takes from even the closest Mexican city to the closest city in the U.S., theses brave men (and some women and children) can arrive emaciated, dehydrated, and sores, blisters, and infection on their feet from all the walking they’ve done and conditions that they’ve had to endure. Once they get here they’re already homeless with no life here.

 If they can go through all that trouble just for a CHANCE to establish a better life for themselves and their family, let them stay. Let them stay, because they already have something that most of us ‘Americans’ have. An appreciation and understanding of WHAT AMERICA IS and WHAT AMERICA STANDS FOR, the right to PURSUE happiness.

They start paying taxes the moment they arrive, they just have no way of claiming them. The moment they arrive, they start learning english. The moment they arrive, they start to work, and they usually work the jobs that we ‘Americans’ are too good for. They’ll clean the bathrooms that we wouldn’t think of touching. They’ll cut the grass we don’t have time to cut. They’ll take that laborious journey to establish a hope for their future and the future of their kids, when we won’t even WALK to the 7-eleven to get a gallon of milk; we have to drive ourselves.

 Instead of trying to push them away and have nothing to do with them, let’s learn from them. Let’s learn to appreciate what we AMERICANS have built upon. Let’s take pride in ourselves. I read a previous post on immigration here, it said “3 out every 100 people in America are immigrants” that’s 3% of America. 3%! Are we really fussing over 3%? Stop being selfish.

This entry was posted on 22. April 2009 at 22:50 and is filed under Social Problems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.