To the Future President,

My name is Zoë from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. From the United States of America, in the Northern Hemisphere, on the planet Earth, in the Milky Way galaxy, in the universe. The point is that I can be considered a small dot in the existence of the universe, we can all be considered a small dot. However, no matter how small we may seem to others, our voices will always be expressed. So I am expressing my voice through this letter.

There will always be issues when trying to help run a country, whether that be an economy issue or a security issue. However one issue that is a spark of debate now is the issue of immigration.

My stance on the subject is that nothing can be solved simply by “building a wall” or “banning” people to enter based on their religion preferences. That isn’t going to solve anything in the long run. People will still be entering the country illegally and the legal immigrants will even decrease if faced the oppression in the ironic country that’s supposed to be the “Land of the Free.”

We can’t be the same country that enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. We have to move on from these bigotry view of immigrants and after we finally accept people as people we can make a larger decision that can affect millions of lives.

Now I’m not saying we can just sit by and let nothing change until then. Of course systems can be implemented to protect U.S. Citizens, but there also needs to be more systems to protect legal immigrants. We can’t keep wrenching people from their families, we can’t keep deporting people for minor offenses that isn’t treated as harsh as U.S. citizens.

Since 1820, there have been 74 million and more legal immigrants that have come over in this country. In fact, almost everyone has come into “our” country. If we track down our ancestors, a small fraction of us can actually call this our home land. Most of people’s ancestors all immigrated here more or less. Would you limit your own ancestor’s rights then too?

The National Origins Act in 1924 limited the immigration quota to 2% it was before the act was put into place. This is important because this was the main time people began to have this mindset of “national” pride and this moment spurred our thinking that certain people didn’t belong here or needed to get extra work for the same privileges. The people who were restricted to enter the country at that time weren’t even people you would think of. The Italians, the Polish, the Scots and Irish were all limited to get into the United States at the time. However, the Chinese Exclusion Act was still put into place and even though the eastern Europeans had troubles getting here, the Chinese were almost never let into our country after 1882 just because of their race and the off fact that many of them worked.

Even today we see history repeat itself, but just with different groups of people. The American Public targets the Mexicans of “stealing” their jobs now, as once they have with the Chinese in 1882. Refugees are almost impossible to come into the United States if they are from a certain part of the world and where you come from defines you when trying to immigrate here.

If the United States of America is supposedly supposed to be a beacon of hope, the land of the free, the melting pot of cultures, then why do we scrutinize who gets citizenship?