As a country that prides itself on opportunity, the United States is constantly a sight of relocation for thousands of people from all over the world who share one goal — to search for a better life.
With the endless opportunities America offers its population, it’s only natural that citizens of foreign countries move here to take advantage. But the perceived “immigration problem” isn’t caused by the amount of people that take part in it. It is the amount of people that do it illegally.
With the immigration reform proposal, a bipartisan deal decided by the Gang of Eight, the government is looking to bring approximately 11 million illegal immigrants “out of the shadows” by allowing them to stay in the country, pay fines and back taxes, learn English and apply for a green card.
As an immigrant myself from Venezuela, I see this as a realistic approach to a problem that can’t be solved any other way.
To some, this proposal can be seen as the government condoning illegal immigration.
People who oppose this deal must consider the sizable workforce that this population contributes to the country, even if it is not legal.
The reality is that a majority of illegal immigrants perform the low-paying jobs that American workers cannot or will not do.
If people want to stop illegal immigrants from coming to the U.S., they’ll have to eliminate motivates them to come — the opportunities.
But there have to be precautions with the proposal.
If 11 million illegal immigrants are granted this amnesty-like deal, this will encourage more people to take the risk and try to make it past the border, cheating the system hoping to remain “off the grid” until the next amnesty in 20 years.
A better system should be implemented for recognizing when visas expire and make border regulations stricter.
I’m not saying send a couple of cops to bag and tag every foreigner in sight, but the Department of Homeland Security should at least have an administrator whose job could be to ensure immigrants have all their papers up to date.
Another big part of the proposal is to revise the citizenship test so that it has more “focus on the American democracy, U.S. history and what is expected of a U.S. citizen,” as well as the implementation of an English web-based learning tool to help immigrants learn English, according to usaimmigrationreform.org.
These are positive changes to ensure the people are prepared to become American citizens. My only suggestion is that these tools — more specifically the citizenship test — are first tried on actual American citizens to test the validity of the exam.
Overall, immigration will be an issue for this country until the right measures are taken so that only the people who did the work filled out the paperwork and fought for their privilege to be accepted are able to come into the country.
My parents devoted their time and their hard work to make sure I could take advantage of the opportunities provided by the U.S., and I believe that we all have the right to pursue this path — as long as it is done right.
