Dear President,

       As President of the United States, you wield a certain amount of power and have a certain amount of influence on the world. One of the main forms of this is how you influence and change immigration. Immigration is a big issue currently, it is one of the biggest issues in politics today, with many radical opinions from many different people. It is one of the biggest issues in politics today. What I propose is a simple thing, and while it may not directly be a solution it will certainly help. I propose that we do nothing. We should wait and see what happens before making a decision.

       Many bad things have been created by rash decisions. Nuclear war was prevented by one Russian man who waited when he received a false missile warning. The world will be a different place in a few years, and we should wait for tempers to calm down before deciding what to do. In my plan, we will wait and make no major changes to immigration reform for four years. After that, we will reassess the situation. From there, there are two choices. One is to decide whether we should increase or decrease immigration. The other is to continue waiting for another four years. If the second option is chosen, the process is repeated until the first option is chosen. Once the government decides on which direction to go, small changes are implemented over the next four years. After that, a big change can be implemented, but it is not required. Then the cycle repeats, with four years of waiting to four years of small changes to a big change and more waiting.

       This system, while not being a direct solution promotes balance over anything else, hopefully to reduce the amount of bad decisions people make without perspective. Many of the large immigration changes have been flash decisions based on personal views. In the 1800s when the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed, most people were fairly prejudiced towards them, understandably so as they lost their jobs, but their hate influenced public opinion and made the Chinese Exclusion Act seem like a good choice. The Chinese Must Go, an anti Chinese play, prays on the American people’s fears. Taking that alone as evidence would severely sway you against the Chinese. But if you had read The Biography of a Chinaman, a Chinese immigrants autobiography, your view would be broader and your decisions would be different.

       But America has not always made rash decisions. The Irish in the 19th century are a good example of this. They were generally disliked and hated, for many reasons. They were treated badly and no one really cared about them or liked them. Their Catholicism made them different, and so they were disliked. Many newspapers published anti Irish articles and political cartoons. In Wages of Whiteness, David Roedger talks about how they were treated as slaves almost, used and discarded. Yet for all that hate, there was no Irish Exclusion Act. America waited, and the Irish assimilated into American society and became true citizens. A similar thing happened with the Mexican immigrants and laborers. They came here to work, and were disliked for it. While a similar problem still befalls today's immigrants, it was worse back then. There were many lynchings. But the immigrants persevered and eventually succeeded.

       There are more examples, but they follow a similar vein. When America waits, America profits. My plan would encourage this, President. In other words, America, when it comes to immigration, should wait for it.