Immigration's Broken; Everyone's to Blame

My father received a call at 6:00 in the morning "Come quick! Juan has been detained." This had become an ordinary call for us and an even more ordinary phrase among our small Hispanic Seventh Day Adventist church. My father being a head elder of our church was one of very few people that spoke English, had a valid driver's license and was a legal citizen of the United States. He would spend countless hours trying to find out where they were taken, consoling the wife and driving them to wherever they needed to go so they could see their detained family members, and I would babysit the children. These hours would be followed by him coming home exhausted telling those children their dad was being sent back to Mexico and most likely never see him again. Another broken family, another ordinary Sunday.

It has become increasingly hard to avoid the immigration debate between conservatives and progressives. As tensions rise, and twitter debates continue to heat up about what right and what's wrong, there are actual people in the middle of it all waiting for solutions. People who have fled their countries because of corrupt central and South American governments, gang violence, and lack of resources. It's no secret where I lie in this debate. I have seen it firsthand.

I've lost count of how many times I’ve turned off the news in disgust as a stream of headlines pop up in my face. "Shooter targets Hispanics", "Parents arrested at their work, while their children have no one to go home to", "ICE raids in neighborhoods of New York". It’s very hard not to take this personally. With the mixed reports on the ICE raids in the workplace in Mississippi and videos surfacing of a young girl crying for her parents repeating "my dad is not a criminal," the ominous and Un-American impression of an impending police state is unavoidable.

No matter what side people fall on, one truth remains eminent. The system as we know it is broken. Broken in the sense that it fails to effectively receive innocent newcomers, and broken in the sense that avoiding this situation further helps bring in the unwanted real criminals. The real culprits in this debate are the political parties who claim to want what's best for their constituents. These games are the detriment to immigration solutions. A push for an easier path to legal citizenship is the opening to opportunity.

Becoming a citizen of the United States is not a simple task. More than anything, it takes time. Time that not everyone can afford to have. So the simple yet ineffective solution that people offer "why don't you just do things the legal way", becomes more complex when you add a corrupt and dangerous government run by mafias, and drug cartels, waiting time, and dangerous living conditions. This is not to be overlooked as Central Americans deal with these issues every day. Fortunately, and unfortunately, I've had the opportunity of living in El Salvador for some time to see that the poverty level of these farmers and lower class people are so much worse than lower class life in America. No wonder people want to move here!

I don't want to just push aside legitimate concerns such as drug smuggling, illegal immigration crime rates, and economic questions. But I have a sneaking suspicion that if the path to citizenship were made easier, some of these problems would more or less disappear. People without criminal history and drug associations would have no problem with becoming legal economic participants of the United States. It would be made clear who the bad guys were in this case, therefore leaving people who are truly looking to better themselves alone, and detaining the right people. I have to admit that my research for economic detriments/ advantage with immigration has come to a dead end, and I am unsure what a high level of immigrant infiltration will do to our economy. What I can say is that rounding people who have lived here for 15+ years, who have set down roots, communities, and families, is not the way to see advancement. Providing a timeline to integrate them into our economic society is.

I've seen too many comments, tweets and headlines to persuade me that neither party truly cares for illegal immigrants. People are consistently being used as political pawns to further agendas. Donald Trump offers the continued funding of DACA students in exchange for the wall, the democrats say no. He gives two weeks for both parties to come up with a lucrative plan, no further advance has come of this. If they really cared about this issue, they would work together, they would sacrifice, they would adapt, compromise and put aside their own selfish desires without caring which side wins. I don't see any of that from either side. Our questions should be toward these two incompetent parties. Why are you playing games with people's lives? Why do you refuse to meet in the middle?

I often wish there could be a simple answer. Sadly, there isn’t. All I can do is believe both parties will be willing enough to work together, and ultimately make the path to citizenship easier which I believe is the first step to making some real changes in a broken immigration system. As far as I go, I'll continue to do anything I can for my community, as I see there is no better example of the American dream than immigrants.