Dear President,

I take great pride in calling myself an American. Being an American is my favorite attribute about myself, and has made me who I am today. Whether I’m in school or outside of school, I look forward to standing up with my right hand over my heart and stating the Pledge of Allegiance. When I pledge to my country I feel honored.

But in our country there is an estimation of about 11 million immigrants in the U.S (Zong, Batalova). That is six states full of illegal immigrants (Kukreja). It would not be fair of me to say they don’t stand and pledge to America, but I can imagine they don’t. Less than half of the immigrants speak English, and 13% do not speak English at all ( U.S. Census Bureau). If you are in a new country where you aren’t able to speak the language well, then how would you be able to state The Pledge of Allegiance?

Throughout history North America has always been the hot spot for foreign migration, but now it has been established as The United States of America. America is a thriving modern and cultural country, we offer all kinds of opportunities and ways of life, we are the perfect country to seek. But we are being taken advantage of, we have people entering illegal and never changing their illegal status. More immigrants never undergo the process of naturalization, 47% of immigrants are being naturalized, and 53% are not yet legal U.S. citizens (Zong, Batalova).

My concern with immigration is the toll it takes on us Americans. Early this year I was eligible to take my Learners Permit test, I passed and was so excited to embark on my journey of learning to drive. But a few days later a government investigator came to my home and informed my parents that my when my social security number is typed into the system at the DMV a picture of a female comes up, that obviously has foreign ethnic, with no other information. The best claim for it, because of the evidence, is that my social security number was most likely stolen to be used be an illegal citizen. It is not an issue that is the end of the world, or even an issue anyone else would care about besides myself, but it is still an issue. It has been said 75% of working age illegal immigrants in the U.S have used frauded Social Security cards (Mortensen). Considering the number of unnaturalized immigrants in America, that is a lot of theft. It is scary that I’ve gone most of my life technically “undocumented”, and even scarier that someone else has been walking around doing whatever they want under my credentials.

President, what I’m hoping to achieve from this letter is for your help to regain control over who is entering our country, for the safety and well being of us Americans. I’m not saying we shouldn’t stop immigration in our country, I think we need to handle immigration in a more strict way. For instance we could create policies to enforce naturalization by establishing a time frame of how long you can remain undocumented before they are deported, or make the process of checking the background of immigrants more challenging to prevent acts of terrorism and crime.

We the citizens cannot change how we want to live in our country on our own we need your help to change how we live, and your support for America and for our people is the only way we can can begin the process of that change. I have great respect for your dedication, and thankful for your willingness to be the leader of the United States of America.

Thank you for your time. Sincerely,

Abbey E.

Citations

“The Big Issues of the 2016 Election and Where the Candidates Stand: Immigration” by Charu Kukreja January 14,2016 http://ww2.kqed.org/

“Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants and Immigration In the United States” by Jie Zong and Jeanne Batalova April 14,2016 http://www.migrationpolicy.org/

“ Illegal, but not Undocumented” by Ronald W. Mortensen

June 2009 http://cis.org/Dear President,