Advanced Essay#2: America's Misconception

Introduction:

I would like the readers to see that I tried to include both my own opinion and the connections from the real world. I think when writing this I just wanted to express all my thoughts and my view on the society we currently live in. I would like you, the readers to recognize and understand the story of Ibanez. The story in some way shows the misconception we have about Immigration and the misconception of what happens once someone migrates to a new country. Writing this essay was hard in the sense of I have a lot of opinions and there are a lot of facts the dilemma is how do I write all of this in a way where it’s not confusing.

Full Essay:

A garage full of immigrants sits wondering. Why was this happening? What had they done besides seek refuge in a country that once screamed freedom? What they would later find out due to it making national news was that they were being detained and sent back to their native country due to fear from the American government. The excuses for why this was happening in the belief of what an immigrant brings with them the word immigrant or illegal alien is associated with drugs, violence, and being unamerican. The government that we are supposed to trust in an attempt to unify the world we inhabit has in many ways failed to deliver their promise. Most take the words of our government as truth and in turn have ruined the opportunity to build a relationship with those trying to live the life that we are privileged to have. We live in a country where we judge without having experienced, we respect and listen to the wealthy, but in reality, we have more in common with immigrants than we do with American billionaires and politicians. We just like immigrants have dreams and aspirations, and we in some cases struggle to get by. Compared to the billionaires of the world we are all at the bottom of the melting pot. The cause of this Immigration issue is due to the fear of change in power within American society.

Immigration according to American politicians is a contributing factor to America’s economic growth. But if that’s the case why has it become such a wedge in American society? We now live in a society where change is inevitable, but as just as many people want to see a change many want things to either stay the same or revert to what they used to be. The policy concerning immigration in the US has changed constantly. In 2016 ICE removed 240,255 immigrants in 2018 that would increase to 256,085. There has been an increase in the removal of immigrants from the US and there have been countless policies set in place to try and limit the illegal migration of immigrants. The most recent and in my opinion the most drastic was the zero-tolerance policy which allowed children to be separated from their parents who were unlawfully entering the United States.

After all that has happened the question began to arise, Are our leader’s actions a representation of the country as a whole? Which formed the bigger question Do American citizens understand and sympathize with immigrants? The answer is simply no, we do not understand nor sympathize with the struggle of an immigrant because we simply have not experienced it. In the CBS News article “You have to live in fear” Is the story of an immigrant named Ibanez who illegally crossed the border after his family at the age of 14. He was born in Mexico and while there he lived a life where a meal wasn’t to be expected every day which he says was one of his hardest memories from living in Mexico. His family snuck into the United States, but while they were on the land of the free they were far from freedom while his siblings are safe from having to immigrate back Ibanez and his mother are not. He is fearful that one day will be the day in which he is separated from his family, but until then he continues to go to school and work to provide for his family.

A common misconception that Americans tend to have about immigrants is that once they cross that border their lives and their families’ life instantly change for the better and that is simply just not true. The life of an immigrant is hard it is full of loss, struggle, and pain you are in every sense of the word on your own whether an immigrant is legal or illegal. Due to the policies that exist today that revolves around immigration the relationship that people from other countries have with one another including our own has made things weird in a sense of probable difference of opinion. I don’t think the word immigrant or any synonym of the word should exist. I think as human beings we inherited the land that was left to us and it’s not the property of one single individual or an established group of people. I think it is one thing to have established a set of rules in a society, but when you begin to prohibit others from pursuing their dreams then something is truly wrong.

We are letting the ideas of our government officials create these ideas of who and what immigrants are. Trump recently said, “We have people coming into the country or trying to come in, we’re stopping a lot of them, but we’re taking people out of the country. You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are, These aren’t people. These are animals.” The basis of what America was formed on does not match the America of today and even early America wasn’t what life for an individual should have been. The idea that we are indoctrinated with unalienable rights for the pursuit of liberty and happiness is not present in the laws of immigration and modern-day America.

Works Cited: Shaban, Bigad. “‘You Have to Live in Fear’: One Undocumented Immigrant’s Story.” CBS News. CBS Interactive, November 22, 2014. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/you-have-to-live-in-fear-one-undocumented-immigrants-story/.

Korte, Gregory, and Alan Gomez. “Trump Ramps up Rhetoric on Undocumented Immigrants: ‘These Aren’t People. These Are Animals.’.” USA Today. Gannett Satellite Information Network, May 17, 2018. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/05/16/trump-immigrants-animals-mexico-democrats-sanctuary-cities/617252002/.