IMMIGRATION
Immigration is the action of coming to live permanently in a foreign country. Immigration has changed a lot from then to now.
For example, my father said that coming to the United States from Ethiopia in the late 1900’s was a struggle. You are raffled in for a diversity visa lottery. There are 55,000 available for the whole world. You can apply after you finish 12th grade. If you don’t get it, you have to wait one whole year before you get another chance. It meant getting separated from family. The first person who received one was his older brother, but he came on a scholarship for college. He had to leave his family and go solo. Eventually, the whole family made it across the Atlantic.
Way before that, from 1892 to 1954, Ellis Island in New York was the portal into the U.S. Ellis Island is a small island in the New York Harbor. 12 million immigrants entered America via those very doors. I’ve been there. Now, it’s a big and spacious museum. You can get electronically guided tours. The building itself has signs marking up where everything was and some of the immigration certificates were there, along with some old machinery. It is a gorgeous area.
I also guess you could say that when the English started settling to North America in the 1600’s is immigration too. The people technically are entering a foreign country , in most cases, to live there permanently like the Jamestown settlement. And slavery is basically immigration. Even though its forced, and the people might not want to move from Africa, they are going to what in their minds is a foreign country, and unfortunately forever.
We have evolved. Many more people have been immigrating to the United States throughout the years. We have been growing in the Immigrant population. We’ve been expected to reach 78 million by 2065 (American Progress, 2017). This goes to show how many people we have been accepting into America. If you immigrate, you will have to take the U.S citizenship test to become a U.S citizen. That is what my grandma is currently doing. It takes a while, but Immigration is a great thing. It gives you a start in a new life, a new community. It could be for the best. The more people immigrate, and the more we are allowing them to, we know we are helping them. And the fact that the countries that current immigrants are coming from are more diverse than they were 50 years ago makes me happy. It goes to show that we are finally beginning to end racism and we are including everyone.
In this part of history, President Trump is really messing around with immigration laws. He made this issue one of the main points of his presidential agenda. The laws are getting tougher. Do you, readers, agree with this? Is it right? Is it wrong? What do you believe about immigration? If you were placed in charge of immigration laws, what would you do? Comment below with your thoughts.
I believe that all people should be free to live wherever they want to. Most of them have reasons behind their actions. No one should live in poverty, since less than 1 in 5 immigrants actually do (American Progress, 2017). Don’t stop the people immigrating into our country. Don’t purposefully make the laws stricter for no reason. The recent immigrants didn’t do anything, did they? Immigrating is totally fine. If there was no immigration, I wouldn’t be here, in America, with amazing opportunities, and writing this blog. Stop ending futures because with no immigration, that could be what you're really doing. So go out there. Make a change. Start a petition. Write an article in the newspaper. Anything. If you don’t speak up, there will be no difference.
Comments